The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic Page 6

  CHAPTER XIII.

  OLD ANTWERP.

  Through varying winds and seas, the _Ajax_ plowed steadily on her way,and in due course arrived at Antwerp and discharged her cargo. Ofcourse, while in port, Jack was at liberty, and he spent his timeroaming about the quaint old harbor and city.

  Raynor joined him sometimes on these expeditions, but the young engineerwas kept busy making minor repairs on the engines and directing themachinists. Since he was the junior member of the engine-room crew, thiswork fell to his lot.

  On the voyage across, and in port, too, whenever it was possible, he hadbeen steadily perfecting himself in the wireless craft till he was quiteproficient at it for a beginner. Jack proved an apt teacher and theyoung engineer, himself unusually quick and intelligent, was a willingscholar.

  So the days passed pleasantly among the foreign scenes of the town andharbor. All this time Jack had been noticing surprising vigilanceconcerning the firemen and the crew of the big tanker.

  One evening while they were roaming about the town, making purchases ofpost-cards and other small articles, Jack asked Raynor about this.

  “They’re on the look-out for the tobacco smuggling gang,” explained hisfriend.

  “The tobacco smuggling gang? What is that?” asked Jack.

  “Do you mean to say that you have never heard of them or of theiractivities?” asked Raynor.

  Jack shook his head.

  “Not till this minute, anyway,” he said.

  “Well, then, you must know that most of the Sumatra tobacco used forcigars and so on comes to this port, and it can be bought here verycheaply. In New York there is a well-organized gang, as is known toevery seaman, that makes a practice of buying all that can be smuggledinto the country by the crews and firemen of ships trading out of thisport. Their activities have been reported in the papers many times, andall sorts of means have been employed to check them, but somehow thetrade still seems to go on. So now you know why we keep such a carefullook-out while in this port.”

  Jack was satisfied with the explanation and thought no more of thematter, but a time was to come, and that before very long, when it wasto be brought vividly before him again.

  Jack liked Antwerp, with its fine buildings and picture galleries. Buthe found that along the docks were all manner of tough resorts where theworst class of sailors spent their time while in port.

  He was passing one of these places one day when a man, whom herecognized as one of the engineers of the _Ajax_, approached him.

  “Hullo, youngster,” he said, “come inside and have something. I want totalk to you.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “I don’t go into places of that sort and I don’t smoke or drink.”

  The man looked at him and then burst into a roar of laughter. “You’llnot get very far at sea then,” he said.

  “That’s just where I differ with you,” said Jack, and was passing onwhen the man seized his arm.

  “Well, forget it,” he said. “See here, you’re a pretty smart sort of ladand I can put you in the way of making some money.”

  “What sort of money?” asked Jack.

  “Well, about the hardest part of your job will be to keep your mouthshut.”

  “You mean that there is something dishonest involved?” inquired the boy.

  “That all depends on what you call dishonest. Some folks are prettyfinicky. This something doesn’t come within the law exactly, but there’sgood money in it.”

  “I don’t want any of it,” said Jack, and moved off.

  The man called after him.

  “All right, if that’s the way you feel about it, but just forgetanything I said.”

  Jack did not reply, but hurried on. He was bound for the Boulevard desArts, one of the most beautiful thoroughfares in Europe. As he walkedalong, he wondered what the man who had intercepted him could have beendriving at. He finally gave it up as too tough a problem. But later onhe was to recollect the conversation vividly.

  Jack’s pay was not very large, nor was that of his chum, Raynor, but thetwo planned a trip one day on one of the canals. They boarded anodd-looking boat and for a very small sum they voyaged across thefrontier into Holland with its quaintly dressed peasants, low, flatfields and general air of neatness.

  It was drowsy work gliding along the canal at a rate of not more thansix knots an hour. Jack declared that he would have gone to sleep forthe voyage, had it not been for the captain of the canal craft, who wasa most willing performer with his whistle, and tooted at everything andeverybody he saw.

  From time to time they slowed up at a dock and the passenger, if a man,jumped off without the boat stopping. When a woman traveler wished toalight, the boat was brought to a standstill.

  “Look over there!” called Raynor suddenly, as they passed a prettycottage on the canal banks.

  There, on the roof, was a stork family, father, mother and two youngones.

  “Well, we sure are abroad,” declared Jack, gazing with pleasure at thepretty picture.

  “Low bridge,” or its equivalent in Dutch, was frequently called, andthen all hands ducked their heads till the bridge was passed. Cloudsbegan to gather, and one of the sudden rain storms which sweep overHolland descended in a pelting downpour. The passengers were driven tothe cabin, which they shared with a cargo of cheese, traveling in state.But the storm soon passed over and the sun shone out brightly once more.

  Windmills were in sight everywhere, their great sails turning slowly. Insome places the roofs of the farm houses were on a level with the banksof the canal.

  Occasionally a broad-beamed canal craft, with a patched brown sail,drifted lazily by, with a leisurely Dutchman standing at the sternplacidly smoking a big China-bowled pipe, his family, perhaps, or atleast a dog, voyaging with him.

  “Nobody seems to be in a hurry over here,” said Raynor.

  “No, it’s like that country where it is always afternoon, that we usedto read about in school,” said Jack.

  “Hullo,” he added suddenly, “what’s coming off now?”

  The little vessel was making for a sort of garden with tables set aboutin it.

  “Going to stop for dinner, I guess,” suggested Raynor.

  This proved to be the case. A true Hollander cannot go long withouteating, and the amount of food the voyagers consumed astonished theboys.

  “They’ll sink the ship when they get back on board,” prophesied Jack,looking about him with apprehension.

  The boys did not see Antwerp again till late, as the returning boat wasdelayed. They found everything closed up, although it was only eleven,and the streets deserted. Antwerp believes in going to bed early, andthe hotels are all locked by midnight. But that didn’t trouble the boys,for they had their floating hotel in which to stay and which theyreached without incident.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER XIV.

  SIGHT-SEEING.

  The boys found Antwerp a straggly town full of fine buildings andgalleries, but almost like a maze without a plan. Jutting right off eventhe finest thoroughfares were slums, and they were advised to follow thetram lines and keep off the more squalid of the streets.

  Jack, who was quite a student, struck up a friendship with a bookish oldman whom the boys met while exploring the great Cathedral. From thismentor, who, fortunately, could speak English,—French being the tonguemost heard in the capital of Belgium,—the boys learned much of thehistory of the town.

  Of course, as they already knew, he told them that Antwerp was thesea-port of the Schelde estuary, and one of the youngest of the Belgiangreat cities.

  The name originally meant “At the Wharf,” their old friend told them,and even in antiquity there was a small sea-port here, of which notraces, however, remain. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, asEurope quieted down, the city began to rise in im
portance. The large,deep, open port floated the keels of vessels from all over Europe. UnderCharles the Fifth, Antwerp was probably even more prosperous and wealthythan Venice, Queen of medieval sea-ports. The center of traffic wasshifting from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. In 1568 more than ahundred craft arrived at, and sailed from, Antwerp daily.

  It is to this period, so the old gentleman told the boys, that Antwerpowes the cathedrals and other fine buildings, containing pictures andobjects of art, which still adorn it.

  But the Cathedral itself is a mixture of different periods. Begun in themiddle of the fourteenth century, various parts were added till theseventeenth.

  The finest examples of the art of the two great painters, Quentin Matsysand Rubens, are to be found in Antwerp. The works of many other paintersof minor importance, too, adorn the galleries and churches of the cityin great numbers.

  The decline of Antwerp, if it can be so called, began in 1576, duringthe attempt of the southern provinces of Flanders to throw off the yokeof Spain. In that year a thousand fine buildings were burned, the townhall razed and eight thousand persons massacred by fire and sword. In1585 the famous Duke of Parma completed the destruction, and Antwerpseemed to be completely crushed.

  Then came the unhappy separation between Holland and Belgium. The Dutcherected forts on their own territory at the mouth of the Schelde andrefused to allow ships to proceed up the estuary. Finally, in 1648, itwas agreed by a treaty that all ships should unload their goods forAntwerp at a Dutch port, the freight being then transshipped to theBelgian city by small river craft.

  Naturally, this action proved a severe blow to Antwerp. Rotterdam andAmsterdam took her place as commercial cities. In 1794, however, theFrench, then in occupation, reopened navigation on the Schelde anddestroyed the commerce-killing forts at the mouth of the river.

  The great Napoleon caused new quays and a harbor to be constructed, andit began to look as though Antwerp were once more to enjoy some of herpristine importance. But after Napoleon’s overthrow, the city underwentanother change in her fortunes. She was made over to Holland and thusbecame, by a twist of fate, a Dutch sea-port.

  Even when Antwerp became independent again in 1830, the Dutch stillmaintained their heavy tolls on shipping. This was a constant drain onthe city which had already suffered much during the War of Independencewhen it was subjected to a heavy siege.

  In 1863, however, a large money payment bought off the Dutchextortioners and Antwerp’s prosperity began to rise. As the boys’ friendpointed out, the city was the natural outlet of the Schelde, and to someextent of all the German Empire.

  Since that time, so far as history is concerned, the rise of Antwerp toher old place as one of the world’s great commercial centers has beenrapid. It was on this account, as the old man explained, that Antwerpwas such a strange jumble of the ancient and modern, for, until theshipping embargo was lifted, she practically stood still in herdevelopment.

  The old man appeared to be very proud that Antwerp, unlike Brussels, hadretained her old Flemish ideas in spite of the march of her trade. Hetold the boys that it would require at least four days to get a clearidea of Antwerp, and after another day of exploration they began tobelieve him.

  But they made up their minds that they were going to be able to give thefolks at home a good account of the city, so they stuck to the task eventhough Raynor did yawn over pictures of the Old Masters in dull colorsand frames. The young engineer was extremely practical, and loudlydeclared in one of the galleries:—

  “Well, that picture may be all right, but give me something with alittle ginger and color in it.”

  “My, but you’re a vandal!” laughed Jack, consulting a catalogue. “That’sone of the most famous pictures in Europe. It is by Rubens.”

  “Guess I’m too much of a Rube-n to appreciate it, then,” was Raynor’scomment.

  But he was a methodical lad, as are most persons who have a mechanicalbent. He purchased and loyally used a small red note book, in which hejotted down everything they saw, good, bad or indifferent. He soon hadone book full, when he promptly began on another, noting down whateverwas supposed to be of interest, whether he understood it or not.

  The boys enjoyed sitting under the shady trees in the Place Verte,surveying the scene. It is one of the few places in Antwerp from which aclear view of the Cathedral can be obtained, mean-looking housesshouldering up to the great structure and spoiling it from other pointsof vision.

  “Say, Jack,” exclaimed Raynor one evening as they walked rapidlyshipward, “I’m getting tired of moldy old cathedrals and rusty oldgalleries full of Rubes,—beg pardon, I mean Rubens; can’t we dosomething more lively?”

  “What would you suggest?” asked Jack.

  “Oh, let’s take a few trips around. Another canal boat ride, forinstance, or something like that.”

  “That would be fine but for one consideration,” said Jack.

  “And what is that?”

  “Funds, old boy, dollars and cents. I don’t know about you, but I’mpretty well down to my limit.”

  “Same here. Say, you’ve got to be rich to enjoy these places, Jack.”

  “I begin to think so, too,” declared his chum.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

  CHAPTER XV.

  AN ADVENTURE—

  The boys were walking briskly down a tree-bordered, rather badly lightedstreet in the residential quarter as this conversation took place. Theyhad been to the home of a friend of Captain Bracebridge with aconfidential note. The man to whom they had taken the message had beenabsent at the theater. As they had a verbal message to deliver, too, andsupposed that it, like the note, was confidential, they had not wishedto confide it to a servant but had decided to wait. It was, therefore,late when, their errand completed, they started back on a lonely walkthrough the residential section to the ship.

  The good folk of Antwerp go to bed early. No one else was on the streetas the boys hurried along. Tree shadows lay across the road in blackpatches, where there were lights brilliant enough to effect suchresults.

  “Well, I suppose we ought to be glad to have the chance to get abroad atall,” muttered Raynor, continuing the conversation whose record began inthe last chapter.

  “Yes, indeed, we’re lucky fellows,” said Jack cheerfully.

  “Yes, it’s a fine old city and all that,” admitted Raynor rathergrudgingly, “and I’ve certainly enjoyed my stay here; but I’d have likedto look about a little more. I wonder if there isn’t some place wherethey have machinery to show?”

  “Gracious! I must say you’re a barbarian. Can’t you see all themachinery you wish in that greasy, fire-spitting old engine room ofyours, without wanting a sight of more?”

  “Well,” retorted Raynor, “would you trade one of those ‘old masters,’ asthey call them, for a dandy set of modern instruments to put in yourwireless room at home?”

  Jack was fairly stumped. He broke into a laugh.

  “That’s not a fair way of putting it,” he said after a minute. “I likemonkeying with wireless as much as you do with machinery, but I canenjoy other things.”

  “So can I. An ice-cream soda, for instance.”

  “I’m with you there,” agreed Jack, “but we’ll have to wait for that.”

  “Yes, till we get back to the U.S.A. The stuff they sell you for sodahere wouldn’t be offered you by a bankrupt druggist in Skeedunk withbats in his belfry.”

  Jack broke into a laugh, which suddenly changed into a quick exclamationof astonishment.

  “Hark!” he cried.

  “What’s the matter?” breathlessly from Raynor. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “You didn’t? You must be—there it is again.”

  This time it was Raynor’s turn to start.

  “I heard it all right then,” he exclaimed. “It was——”

  “A woman screaming.”

  “
That’s what. Gracious, what’s the matter?”

  “It’s off down that street there,” decided Jack, pointing a littledistance ahead where a small street branched off the main thoroughfareand skirted a small, unlighted park. “Come on,” he shouted to Raynor,and was off.

  “What are you going to do?” called Raynor.

  “Find out what’s the trouble. There’s something serious the matter.”

  Suddenly the cries stopped as abruptly as if a hand had been clappedover the mouth of the person uttering them.

  “There’s no time to lose,” panted Jack, sprinting.

  “I’m with you,” gasped Raynor, running at his companion’s side.

  The two lads dashed around the corner. Before them lay a narrow, gloomystreet, edged by the dark trees of the little park, which, at that timeof night, was, of course, deserted.

  At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary appeared. Then theysuddenly saw the headlights of an automobile. As suddenly, the lightsvanished. They had been switched off by somebody.

  “There’s where the trouble is,” cried Jack, and was conscious of a wishthat he had some sort of weapon with him. They were rushing into theyknew not what danger; but Jack was no quitter. Some woman was introuble, and that was enough for him.

  The same was the case with Raynor. Both lads, typical Americans,lithe-limbed, stout of heart and muscle, and with grit to spare, didn’tgive a thought to the danger they might be incurring by their daringdash to the rescue. The mere idea that they were needed urgently wasenough.