were ninepins and I was a bowling ball, that's all!" groaned Herc. "And that looks to me like a first-class way to get in bad."
"Herc, you are incorrigible," groaned Ned; "and I agree with you. If this adventure of yours doesn't turn out badly for both of us, I shall be much surprised."
CHAPTER V.
TWO LADS WITH THE "RIGHT RING."
It seemed to Herc that he had been asleep but a short time when he awakened with a start and an uneasy feeling that he could not account for.
Gradually, however, as the semi-stupor that followed the opening of his eyes wore off and he became sensible of his surroundings, he was aware that something unusual seemed to be occurring on the ship. Shouts and the trampling of running feet were borne in to him, and his first sleepy impression was that it was morning.
Suddenly, however, he became aware that the shouts formed a certain definite cry.
What was it?
Herc straightened up as well as he could in his bunk and listened.
A thrill of horror shot through him, as, like a flash, he sensed the nature of the shouts that had aroused him.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
The terrifying cry echoed from bow to stern of the ship and Herc now recognized a fact which he had not in first sleepy stupor realized, and that was that their cabin was hazy with smoke, which was becoming momentarily thicker. The heat, also, was growing rapidly insupportable.
With one bound, the boy was on the floor, and shaking Ned by the shoulder.
"Ned, Ned, wake up!" he roared at the top of his voice.
"Aye, aye, sir!" came in a sleepy voice from Ned, who was dreaming that he was still back in the training school and that reveille had blown.
A minute later, however, Herc's shaking aroused him to his senses, and a few rapidly spoken words apprised him of the seriousness of the situation.
"Tumble into your clothes quick!" gasped Herc, as breathing in the smoke-filled room became every moment more difficult.
Ned needed no second telling. In a few seconds, thanks to their training, both boys were in their uniforms, and, grabbing up their suitcases, dashed out onto the decks.
The scene outside was one that might have turned cooler heads than theirs. The storm was still raging, and a white swirl enveloped the laboring ship, but the whiteness of the snow was tinged a fiery red with the reflections of towering flames that were by this time pouring from the engine-room hatch of the Rhode Island, and illuminating the night with their devouring splendor. Fire originating in a pile of oily waste against a wooden bulkhead had started the blaze.
Men and women in all stages of dress and undress rushed confusedly about the decks, praying, screaming, blaspheming and fighting.
In the emergency that had so suddenly arisen, the crew and officers of the ship seemed powerless to do anything. Instead of attempting to quiet the panic, they rushed about, apparently as maddened as the rest of the persons on the ship, by the dire peril that confronted them.
"The boats! The boats!" someone suddenly shouted, and a mad rush for the upper decks, on which the boats were swung, followed. Women were flung aside by cowardly men frenzied with terror.
"Here, I can't stand this!" shouted Ned, as, followed by Herc, he plunged toward the foot of the narrow stairway up which the frenzied passengers were fighting their way.
"Women and children first! Women and children first!" the Dreadnought Boy kept shouting, as he elbowed his way to the foot of the steps, closely trailed by Herc.
The roar of the flames was by this time deafening, drowning all other sounds. To add to the confusion, there now came pouring up from the lower regions of the ship a black and sooty crew – the firemen of the vessel. Maddened by fear and brutal by nature, the grimy stokers had little difficulty in shoving the weaker passengers aside and making their way to the foot of the stairway up which Ned and Herc were helping the women and children and keeping back the cowardly male passengers as best they could. They were not over gentle in doing this latter. It was no time for halfway measures.
Above them, the captain of the ship and two of his officers who had partially collected their wits, were directing the crew to lower the boats. The women and children were being placed in them as rapidly as possible as Ned and Herc passed them up.
"Can you hold them back?" the captain had shouted down to the boys a few minutes before, as he peered down at the struggling mass on the lower deck.
"We'll stick it out as long as we can," Ned had assured him, as he whirled a terrified male passenger about and sent him spinning backward whining pitifully that he "didn't want to die."
Suddenly Herc was confronted by a huge form, brandishing a steel spanner in a knotty fist.
It was one of the panic-stricken firemen.
"Let me by, kid!" bellowed this formidable antagonist.
"You can see for yourself that there are several women to go yet," responded Herc calmly, although he felt anything but easy in his mind as the muscular giant glared at him with terror and vindictiveness mingling in his gaze. "Women first, that's the rule."
"What in blazes do I care about the women?" roared the fireman, behind whom were now ranged several of his companions. "Let me by, or – "
He flourished the spanner with a suggestive motion anything but agreeable to Herc.
The red-headed boy gazed over in the direction in which he had last seen Ned.
There was no hope for help from that quarter, as a glance showed him. Ned was holding back an excited man with long whiskers and of prosperous appearance, who was shouting as if he were a phonograph:
"A thousand dollars for a seat in the boats! A thousand – two thousand dollars for a seat in the boats!"
Suddenly, so suddenly that Herc had not time to guard against it, the stokers made a concerted rush for him.
"Ned! Ned!" shouted the boy, as he felt himself borne down by overwhelming numbers and trampled underfoot.
Ned heard the cry, and in two leaps was in the midst of the scuffle, dealing and receiving blows right and left.
"Do you call yourselves men?" he shouted indignantly, as the stokers fought their way forward in a grim phalanx which there was no resisting.
"It's deuce take the hindmost, and every man for himself now!" shouted a voice in the crowd, and the cowardly mob elbowed forward through the few women that still remained on the stairway and its approaches.
Ned and Herc, who had by this time struggled to his feet, fought desperately to stem the tide. So effective were their blows that for a time they actually succeeded in checking the advance.
"Oh, for a gun!" breathed Ned.
"A cannon!" amended Herc.
Above them they heard a cheer, signifying that the first boat had struck the water.
"Stick it out, Herc!" panted Ned, as he struggled with a grimy giant, who, thanks to his ignorance of wrestling and tackles, was easily hurled backward by his lighter opponent. But the fight was too uneven to be of long duration.
Step by step, fighting every inch of the way, the two boys were borne backward by the opposing mob. Ned's foot caught in the lower step of the stairway and he was toppled over backward.
A mighty onrush of the fugitives immediately followed, and Herc shared Ned's fate.
The thought that they had failed flashed bitterly through each Dreadnought Boy's mind as they were trampled and crushed by hurrying feet of the terrified firemen, whose van was followed by the badly scared male passengers. The screams of the women who were being ruthlessly thrust aside tingled maddeningly in the boys' ears as they strove to regain their feet.
Suddenly, above all the noise of the fugitives and the crackling of the flames as they ate through the bulkheads about the engine-room hatchway, the boys heard a sharp command.
It