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the gun on which she was relying was no more use than a chunk of pig iron. The
man was rushing at her with outstretched arms....
Patricia had less than the twinkling of an eye in which to adjust herself to
the sudden petrifying reversal of circumstances, but she achieved the feat,
Hardly knowing what she did, she flung up her hand and hurled the useless
automatic with all her strength. It struck the man squarely between the
temples, and he went down in a heap.
The girl stood tense and motionless, wondering if anyone had heard. Her heart
was pounding furiously. That had nearly been a knock-out in the first round!
But it seemed that none of the other Tiger Cubs had been near enough to notice
anything, and gradually she got her breath back and found her pulse throttling
down to normal again.
The impetus of the man's onslaught had carried him halfway out of the door,
and she had to drag him back into the galley. She picked up the saucepan he
had thrown and chucked it in after him. Then she pulled the door to and turned
the key on the outside.
The next move was undoubtedly toward the bridge. There would only be the
skipper up there, unless Bittle or Bloem or perhaps the Tiger himself happened
to have gone up to watch the loading from that point, and even against those
odds the girl felt capable of keeping her wicket up, if she could only find a
weapon. And once again her luck was in. As she went back up the alleyway, she
observed a door standing ajar, and through it she glimpsed a row of rifles and
cutlasses and revolvers ranged neatly in racks. The Tiger was carrying a good
armoury.
She went in and selected a couple of revolvers. Boxes of ammunition she found
stacked up on the shelves below the gunracks. She loaded, and went out again,
locking the door behind her and tyirig the key to her belt. That at least
would worry the Tiger Cubs if it came to a straight fight.
The girl padded down the alleyway forward, her bare feet making no sound on
the carpet. At the end, the alley she was following ran into another alley
athwartships, and two doors faced her which she guessed would open into the
saloon. On her right, a companion went upward into darkness. She would have
seen the sky at the top of it if it had led on to the deck, and so she deduced
that it led up into the deckhouse. Climbing, she came, as she had expected,
into another alley, shorter and narrower than the one she had left, but the
companion continued its ascent, and thus she emerged on the upper deck.
Crouching under the shadow of a boat, she saw that she was just astern of the
bridge.
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The upper deck was deserted. She could hear the winch aft thrumming
spasmodically, and thanked her stars that all hands would still be engaged in
getting the gold aboard. But they couldn't take very much longer over it, and
before they were finished and bustling about getting up anchor she had got to
corral the skipper and the Tiger and any of the more mature Cubs who happened
to be loafing about up on the bridge.
The bridge was built over a couple of big cabins. Certainly the Tiger would
occupy one of those, and she marked them down for investigation later. But the
first thing to do was to attack the bridge.
The bridge companion faced her. She gained it in half a dozen paces and went
up.
There was a man leaning over the starboard rail; The moonlight revealed the
dingy braid ton his uniform and the peaked cap tilted back from his forehead.
He was gazing out to sea, chewing his pipe and wrapped up in his thoughts. If
details are to be insisted upon, he was speculating about the riotous time he
would have in Cape Town when he was paid off for the voyage. There was, for
instance, Mulato Harry's place down by the docks an unsavoury-looking joint
enough from the outside, but provided with a room furnished in Oriental
magnificence, to which only the favoured ones who were well provided with hard
cash were admitted. In that room were delights for which the soul of Mr. Maggs
hungered better liquor than was served to the proletariat in the filthy bar
beyond which the proletariat never penetrated, and decorative little pipes
from which curled up thin wisps of seductive smoke, and houris of a more
subtle loveliness than that of the painted half-caste women who frequented the
better-known dives. Mr. Maggs visioned the orgy which the Tiger's money would
purchase him; and, in his heavy and animal fashion, Mr. Maggs was a contented
man, for he possessed the unlimited patience of the third-rate beast. And Mr.
Maggs was stolidly champing over his dream for the umpteenth time since the
Tiger had found him in a dockside bar in Bristol, and made the offer of a
princely salary plus bonus, when something hard and round prodded Mr. Maggs in
the spine and he heard a command which was not quite unfamiliar.
"Hands up!"
The order was hissed out very softly, but 'there was a sibilant menace
permeating its quietness which made the experienced Mr. Maggs obey without
question.
A hand dipped into his jacket pocket, and he felt his gun being deftly
extracted.
"Now you can turn round."
Mr. Maggs pivoted slowly, and his jaw dropped when he saw the girl.
"You she-devil!" snarled Maggs, taking courage from the sight. "Sticking me
up! Well, honey "
He started to lower his arms. Two revolver muzzles jerked up and held their
aim at his chest. The hands that held them were as steady as the hands of a
stone image, and his keen stare could detect no trace of nervousness in the
face of their owner. Mr. Maggs, wise in his generation, read the threat of
sudden death in the girl's cold eyes, and stopped.
"Down the companion," said Patricia. "And don't try to get away or shout or
anything. There's bound to be shooting sooner or later, and it might as well
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