They buried their faces in their arms, trying to protect themselves against the cabin wall.
Ken choked back a cough, his head pounding with the effort. Then he felt Sandy, close beside him, heave convulsively in the first stages of a vast sneeze.
Sandy’s head jerked back, his mouth uncontrollably open.
Ken clamped a swift hand over it. “Quiet!” he begged, in a frenzied whisper.
Sandy made a final effort. The sneeze came, but only as a slight snort muffled by the whipping wind. The thunderous noise Ken had dreaded didn’t occur.
“O.K.” Sandy straightened. “I’m all right now. But let’s move, huh?”
He was convinced that the package lying in there on the bunk contained something far more significant than two cartons of cigarettes. But he had no proof for his belief, and he could think of no way of finding such proof.
“Back the way we came?” Sandy’s whisper was definitely unenthusiastic.
Ken took one last glance through the window. The man was seated in his chair again, the coffee mug beside him on the table now and a newspaper spread wide in his hands. He had the air of a man who has settled down for a long quiet evening.
Ken shook himself impatiently. There was certainly no reason for them to remain here longer.
He realized that he hadn’t answered Sandy’s last question. He didn’t want to return the way they had come any more than Sandy did. And the ladder leading down from the barge they were on was less than twenty feet away.
He jerked his head toward it. “Let’s take a chance and use this one.”
They walked carefully toward it across the deck, sliding their feet in the darkness to avoid the possibility of stepping down on something that might upset their balance.
They had covered only half the distance to the ladder when they both started and froze where they stood.
A car had swept onto the dock, through the same opening in the fence which they had used earlier. It swerved to the right after it had gone only a few feet, and its headlights illuminated the barge in a wash of light.
With a single motion the boys dropped flat on the deck.
Somewhere below them the car stopped. The buzz of its engine was cut off and the lights disappeared.
If the driver of the car came aboard the barge, they would certainly be discovered where they lay. And it was too late to use the barge ladder now. They might walk directly into the arms of whoever had just driven up on the dock below.