FOUR BELLS

A Tale of the Caribbean

BY

RALPH D. PAINE

Author of “The Call of the Offshore Wind”

“First Down, Kentucky!” “Roads of Adventure,” etc.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY

FRANK E. SCHOONOVER

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY RALPH D. PAINE

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

CHAPTER I

THE VOICE OF THE SPANISH MAIN

The romance of the sea! Damned rubbish, he called it. The trade of seafaring was one way to earn a living. This was about all you could say for it. He had been lured into the merchant service as the aftermath of an enlistment in the Naval Reserve for the duration of the war. There was a great hurrah, as you will recall, over the mighty fleet of new cargo ships which were to restore the Stars and Stripes to blue water—Columbia’s return to the ocean, and all that—a splendid revival of the days of Yankee ships and sailors of long ago—a career for ambitious, adventurous American youth.

This was true enough until the bubble broke. The painful malady of deflation suddenly afflicted the world’s commerce. Much of Columbia’s mighty fleet rusted at its moorings. Ambitious American youth walked the streets in quest of jobs afloat or relinquished the sea to the Briton and the Scandinavian. It could not be said that the nation was deeply stirred by this calamity. In a manner of speaking, it had long since turned its back to the coast and could not be persuaded to face about.

This Richard Cary was one of the young men who had not been cast high and dry by the ebb tide of maritime affairs. No auspicious slant of fortune favored him. He earned what came to him in the way of employment and promotion. All he knew was the hard schooling of North Atlantic voyages in bull-nosed brutes of war-built freighters that would neither steam nor steer.

During the period of booming prosperity, the supply of competent officers fell far short of the demand. Any ancient mariner with a master’s license and fairly sound legs could get a ship. Foreign skippers were given “red ink tickets” and shoved aboard big American steamers.

The iron discipline and austere traditions of the sea were jeered at by motley crews, alien and native-born, who had easier work and better treatment than sailormen had ever known. Mutiny ceased to be sensational. Noisy Slavs preached Bolshevism in the forecastle. Every dirty loafer had a grievance. Ships limped into port with drunken stokers who refused to ply shovel and slice-bar unless they happened to feel like it. Wise gentlemen ashore diagnosed it as the poison of social unrest.

Amid these turbulent conditions, such an officer as Richard Cary was worth his weight in gold. For one thing, the Navy had hammered into his soul certain ideas which he declined to regard as obsolete. These pertained to order, fidelity, and obedience as essential to the conduct of a ship. He was a young man unvexed by complex emotions. Life consisted in doing the day’s work well, and the Lord help the subordinate who held opinions to the contrary.

It was a doctrine which had vouchsafed its own rewards. At twenty-five years of age he was chief officer of a ten-thousand-ton steamer of the Shipping Board fleet. There was something more to this rapid advancement than the old-fashioned virtues referred to. A natural aptitude for the sea was a large factor. Linked with this was a strong serenity of temper that few besetments could ruffle. Chief Officer Richard Cary moved on his appointed way with a certain ponderous momentum of mind and body.

He was sprung from that undiluted pioneer stock which is still to be found in the rural New England that is remote from the wash of later immigration. It was the English strain, fair-haired and blue of eye, that throws back to the Saxon blood. There had been men of rare height and bulk among his ancestors. This was his goodly inheritance, that his head should brush the ceiling beams of his cabin on shipboard and his shoulders fill the width of the doorway. Mutinous or sulky sailors ceased to bluster about their rights when this imperturbable young man laid hands on them. This was not often necessary. What he called moral suasion was enough to quell a very pretty riot. He had this uncommon gift of leadership, of mastering men and circumstances, when he was compelled to display it.

There was lacking, however, the driving power of ambition, the keen-edged ardor that cuts its way through obstacles to reach a destined goal. This large placidity of outlook betokened a dormant imagination, a sort of spiritual inertia. There was no riddle of existence, so far as he was concerned. The romance and mystery of the sea? Silly yarns written by lubbers for landsmen to read! They ought to jam across the Western Ocean in the dead of winter with a doddering old fool of a skipper on the bridge and a crew of rotten scoundrels who deserved to be hung.

While enthusiastic crusaders were proclaiming the glorious resurgence of the American merchant marine, surplus tonnage began to pile up in every port. Richard Cary’s huge scow of a freighter could find no cargo and was condemned to idleness with a melancholy squadron of her sister craft. The chief officer decided to look around a bit before seeking another berth. One or two offers came from shipping men who knew him by reputation. Already he stood out from the crowd. Waterfront gossip had passed along various tales of the reign of law and order upon the decks which big Dick Cary trod. He was no cursing, bullying bucko mate, mind you. Six and a half feet of soothing influence is a fairer phrase.

Home he went to the New Hampshire farm for a respite from the hard toil of the sea. In February it was, and the bleak hills wore their deep blankets of snow. His younger brother drove him in a pung to the white house snuggled close to the ground which had sheltered six generations of Carys. It made his back ache merely to look at the miles of stone wall which, as a clumsy young giant, he had helped to keep in repair.

“I guess going to sea is easier than this,” said brother Bill. “You seem to have done mighty well for yourself, I’ll tell the world. Any chance for me?”

“Not a chance,” replied the deep, leisurely accents of brother Dick. “Seafaring is all shot to pieces. You stand by your mother and look after the farm till you are ready to go to the agricultural college. I’ll pay for it.”

“Plenty of excitin’ stories to tell us, I s’pose. Your picture was in the papers, Dick, after your ship came into New York with four men in irons. It said you subdued ’em. What with, I want to know.”

“I read poetry to ’em, Bill, and distributed bouquets of cut flowers. They seemed grateful. So mother is as spry as ever and working her head off because she likes it.”

“Yep, she sure does make me snap out, Dick. And I bet she takes no back talk from you.”

“I’m scared already,” grinned the herculean mariner. “Watch her start a rough house if I track in any snow.”

He strode up the path to the granite doorstep and whisked up the wiry little woman who wore a best black gown and a white apron. Into the house he carried this trifling burden and set her down in a rush-bottomed chair by the fireplace.

“Bless me, Richard,” she cried, “that’s a trick you learned from your father that’s dead and gone! I used to tell him it was dreadful undignified. Of course he didn’t have your heft, but there was no ruggeder man in the village. Do you realize it’s been a whole year since you came home last?”

“Couldn’t break away, mother. A mate has to drive like a nigger when a ship is in port. Has Bill been taking good care of you? Any complaints and I’ll wallop the kid.”

“William is a quick and willing boy,” was the maternal verdict—“not so easy and good-natured as you—more inclined to be fretty when things go wrong.”

“You always called me lazy,” laughed the elder son, “and a nuisance under foot.”

“I dunno as I was far wrong, Richard,” was the severe rejoinder, “but we all have our failings. You have been a generous boy to your widowed mother. My land, you must have sent me ’most all your pay. I’ve been as careful as I could with it, and the account in the savings bank makes me feel real rich. Of course it belongs to you.”

“Forget it,” Richard growled amiably, waving a careless hand of imposing dimensions. “I’ll eat you out of house and home in the next fortnight. What about a whole pie right now?”

“Too much pie is bad for you between meals,” she firmly announced. “I’ll go cut you a reasonable piece. And don’t you let me hear you make a fuss about it.”

“Not me,” he sighed. “I know better.”

Contentedly he submitted to this fond tyranny. After all, home was the only place where folks cared whether a man lived or died. He was in every respect so unlike this high-strung, unflagging wisp of a mother of his that the contrast amused him. She was a Chichester and ran true to type. Most of the women wore themselves out in middle age. Her energy burned like a flame. Idleness was a sin.

In her turn she was perplexed by this strapping son of hers. He was rated as a highly successful young man, and yet, in her opinion, he lacked both zeal and industry—cardinal tenets of her New England creed. Sprawled upon the cushioned settle, he would drowsily stare at the fire for hours on end. He read very little and was not a loquacious person. An excellent listener, however, his mother’s eager chatter about little things broke against his massive composure like ripples upon a rock.

Now and then, in oddly silent moments, she studied him intently. Rugged, like his father, but there resemblance strangely halted. Matthew Cary’s frame had been gaunt, his features harsh and shrewd with the enduring imprint of the Puritan tradition. Richard, the son, might have belonged to another race of men. The fair skin, the ruddy cheek roughened by strong winds and salt spray, the hair like minted gold, were unfamiliar among the recent generations of Carys and Chichesters.

Handsome as a picture and as big as all outdoors, reflected the canny mother with a thrill of pride, but she actually felt like boxing his ears to wake him up. There was no soft streak in him, no weak fiber. This much she knew. His record at sea confirmed it. To call him hulking was absurd. There was courage in the level, tranquil gaze, and resolution was conveyed by the firm lips that smiled so readily.

“What in the world do you think about when you sit there like a bump on a log?” impatiently exclaimed the mother. “Is it a girl? William has suffered from those moon-struck spells now and then, but at his age it’s no more serious than chicken-pox.”

“There’s never been a girl that I thought of very long,” dutifully answered Richard, his pipe between his teeth. “I’m not so anxious to meet the right one. Going to sea is poor stuff for a married man. They mean well enough, but I have seen too many lonely skippers and mates raising hell ashore.”

“Don’t you swear in this house, Richard. And I advise you to beware of low company. Sailors who have been properly brought up are true to their sweethearts and wives, like all decent folks.”

“Yes’m,” murmured her worldly young giant. “If Bill ground the axe, as I told him to, I guess I’ll go and cut two or three cords of that pine growth. I need to limber up.”

“Then please stop at the gate and get the mail, Richard. It must be in the box by this time. And don’t you let that axe slip and cut your foot. I know you’re a wonderful chopper, just like your father, but I always fret—”

“Aye, mother. You never saw a man so careful of his own skin. At sea, now, I run no risks at all.”

“Richard, you are joking. Please don’t cross the pond. The ice is melted thin and rotten with this February thaw. You might fall in and catch your death o’ cold.”

Chief Officer Cary, veteran of the North Atlantic trade, promised to avoid getting wet in the pond. Axe on his shoulder, he passed through the lane to the highway. In the box nailed to a gatepost he found a letter from a seafaring friend in New York. It appeared to interest him. After a hasty glance, he read it with more care. What it said was this:

My dear Dick:

I don’t know what your plans are. If you have a job already cinched you are a lucky stiff. You can’t throw a brick in this port without hitting an idle shipmaster. So far I haven’t been chucked on the beach. The port captain of the Union Fruit Company is an old friend of mine. I told him about you yesterday. He needs a second officer in a passenger boat, the Tarragona, on the run to Kingston, Cartagena, and so on. Fine people to work for. None better. You may turn up your nose at the notion of going second mate, but they can’t keep a good man down. The Tarragona sails next Wednesday. Wire me if you care to run down and size it up. Better come early and avoid the rush. The Spanish Main ahoy!

Faithfully yours

L. J. P.

Richard Cary let the axe rest against the gate while he pondered in his deliberate fashion. At first it had annoyed him to think of stepping down a peg. He had been looking forward to command in two or three years more. But times were hard and the tenure of employment in cargo steamers uncertain. He might be shifting about, from one company to another, and if freight rates dropped much lower he would be likely to join the luckless mob of stranded officers.

There was a prospect of advancement in the Union Fruit Company’s service. A second mate’s pay would meet his modest needs, with a surplus to send home. An easier life, decent men to handle, a smart, efficient ship—these were arguments not to be tossed aside. So much for the practical aspect of it. This was overshadowed, however, by the desire to make the southern run. It was more like an urgent impulse. Until now, voyaging in the tropic zones had never appealed to him. He had a Western Ocean sailor’s pride in fighting bitter gales and pounding seas.

Rather puzzled by his quick surrender to this summons, he turned back to the house and forgot to pick up the axe. He walked briskly, chin up, a man astir and efficient. Queer how a few lines of that letter had thrilled his matter-of-fact mind! He liked the sound of Cartagena and the Spanish Main. Where the devil was Cartagena? He knew there was a port of that name on the coast of Spain. This other one was somewhere in the Caribbean, down Colombia way, as he vaguely recalled.

Into the kitchen swung Richard Cary and demanded to know where the atlas was kept. His mother wiped the flour from her hands and exclaimed:

“First time I ever saw you in a hurry about anything except your meals. What under the sun ails you?”

“Outward bound—the night train for New York. I want to find out where I go from there.” His mellow voice rang through the low-studded rooms. His mother was dismayed. The sea had called her towering son and he was a different being. Almost timidly she said:

“But you expected to make a longer visit, Richard. Why, you aren’t really rested up. You sat around here—”

“And enjoyed every minute of it,” he broke in, with a boyish laugh. “Now I’m going south in a banana boat, where the flying fishes play. Do I have to pull this house down to break out the atlas?”

“Mercy sakes, no! It’s under the Bible on the parlor table where it has set for years. There’s yellow fever and snakes down there, and how are you off for summer underwear?”

With his chin in his hand he pored over the map of the Caribbean and the sailing tracks across that storied sea. Jamaica and the Isthmus of Panama! Thence his finger moved along the coast to Cartagena and Santa Marta and La Guayra. His kindled fancy played around the words. They were like haunting melody. It was an emotion curiously novel. To find anything like it, he had to hark back to the fairy tales of childhood.

The feeling passed. His mother’s anxious accents recalled him to himself.

“But is it necessary, Richard, for you to rush off and take a second officer’s position? Why don’t you wait for something better? It’s not a mite like you to fly off at a tangent like this. Common sense was always your strongest point.”

“This is just the berth I want, I tell you,” said he. “It sounds new and interesting. Now if you will help me get my dunnage together—clean clothes and so on—where’s Bill?”

“Gone to the village on an errand, Richard,” was the meek answer. “He will be back in plenty of time to drive you to the train. Well, I’ve seen you wake up for once. Is this the way you boss men around on a ship?”

“For Heaven’s sake, I didn’t mean to sound rough, mother dear. I can move lively when something has to be done. And I don’t want to lose the chance of sailing in this Tarragona.”

The details of departure arranged, he resumed his wonted humor, care-free and easy. His mother wept a little when the sound of sleigh-bells heralded the approach of William in the pung. There had been other partings like this, however, and she briskly waved a handkerchief from a window as he rode away. She still had her qualms about those outlandish ports, but he had solemnly sworn to shake the scorpions out of his shoes before putting them on, and this gave her some small comfort.

Young William fired a volley of questions on the road to the station, but his big brother had little to say. The spell of the Caribbean had faded. It was merely another job in a different ship. This lazy reticence irritated William who burst out:

“Sometimes you act as if you were dead from the neck up, Dick. You go to sleep in your tracks like a regular dumb-bell. Where’s your pep and punch if you’re such a blamed good officer? I’m entitled to talk plain, seeing as it’s all in the family. Don’t you ever get mad?”

“Quite peevish at times, Bill. There was a cabin steward last voyage who brought me cold water to shave with, two days running. I hated to do it, but I had to beat him to death with a hairbrush and throw his body overboard. He left a wife and seven children in Sweden and begged piteously for his life. Discipline, Bill! You have simply got to enforce it.”

William snorted with disgust. He was off this big lump of a brother, he said to himself, who treated him like a silly kid. The train was late, and while they waited at the station a stray dog wandered along the platform. It was no vagrant cur, but a handsome collie which had somehow lost its master and was earnestly trying to find him. The plight was enough to inspire sympathy in the heart of any man that loved a good dog.

“Take him home and keep him until you can ’phone around and stick up a notice in the post-office, Bill,” said Richard Cary.

Before William could catch the collie, the express train came thundering down. One of the loungers on the platform emitted a loud guffaw and tossed a bit of stick between the rails of the track. The collie rushed to retrieve it. Richard Cary cursed the man and yelled at the dog which bravely snatched the stick and fled to safety, escaping destruction by no more than the length of its plumed tail. It stood quivering in every nerve, nuzzling Richard’s hand.

“Put my bags aboard, Bill,” said the mariner. “I have a little business to attend to. It will take only a minute.”

William concluded to hover within sight and sound. His brother’s face was white as he moved closer to the man who had attempted to slay a dog in wanton sport. The offender was heavily built, with a truculent air, a stranger to the village. His coarse visage reflected alarm, but before he could fight or retreat his right arm was caught and twisted back in a grip that made him scream with pain.

A bone snapped. It would be some time before he could throw sticks with that right arm. Beside himself with rage and anguish, he bellowed foul abuse.

“Shut your dirty mouth,” commanded Richard Cary. “You are getting off easy.”

The tortured blackguard was given time to utter one more obscene insult. An open palm smote his face. It was a buffet so tremendous that the victim was fairly lifted from his feet. He pitched into the snow at the edge of the platform and lay huddled without motion.

“Good God-amighty, Dick, you busted that guy’s neck,” gasped William as he tugged at his brother’s sleeve. “And all you did was slap him. If you want to hop this train, you’d better hustle.”

“Broke his neck? No such luck,” growled Richard. “If he wants to see me again, tell him to wait till I come back. All right, Bill. Let’s go.”

He stooped to pat the head of the affectionate collie and ran to swing on board of the moving train. William had a farewell glimpse of his face at the window. Again it was ruddy and good-humored. The smile was a little wistful, almost like that of a boy leaving home for the first time. The younger brother stood staring after the train. His thoughts were confused. Presently he said to himself:

“Looks to me like there is a good deal for us to learn about Dick. You don’t catch me sassin’ him again. I certainly did run an awful risk when I called him a dumb-bell. Come on, pup. He told me to lug you home and I feel darn particular about obeyin’ orders.”

CHAPTER II

THE SEA DOGS OF DEVON

The Tarragona, of the Union Fruit Company’s fleet, was steaming to the southward, away from harsh winds and ice-fettered harbors. It was sheer magic, this sea change that brought the sweet airs of the tropics to caress the white ship when she was no more than three days out from Sandy Hook. Passengers whose only business was to seek amusement loafed on the immaculate decks or besought the nimble bartender to mix one more round of planter’s punches. The three-mile limit was another discomfort which had been left far astern.

To the second officer, Richard Cary, it was like a yachting cruise. He was adjusting himself to this unfamiliar kind of sailoring. In a uniform of snowy duck he stood his watches on the bridge or occupied himself with the tasks of keeping the ship as smart and clean as eternal vigilance could make her. It resembled dining in a gayly crowded hotel to take his seat at one of the small tables in the saloon and listen, with an ingenuous interest, to the chatter of these voyagers who had embarked for an idle holiday on the blue Caribbean. Among them were girls, adept at flirtation and not at all coy, who regarded this big, fair-haired second officer with glances frankly admiring. He was by all odds the most intriguing young man aboard the Tarragona.

His lazy indifference was provoking. When asked a question on deck he replied with a boyish smile and a courteous word or two, but could not be persuaded to linger. In his own opinion he was not hired to entertain the passengers. Leave that nonsense to the skipper. He had all the time in the world and seemed to enjoy making a favorite of himself.

Captain Jordan Sterry was a man past fifty years old, but reluctant to admit it. A competent seaman of long service in the company’s employ, he had a sociable disposition and could tell a good story. Sturdy and erect, his grayish hair and mustache close-cropped, he looked the part of the veteran shipmaster. He had one weakness, not unknown among men of his years. He preferred the society of women very much younger than himself. This expressed itself in a manner gallantly attentive to the bored young person who could find nobody else on board to play with, or to the audacious flapper who liked them well seasoned by experience and felt immensely flattered at attracting the notice of the spruce master of the Tarragona.

His attitude was nicely paternal. He deluded himself into believing that onlookers accepted it as such. In this respect Captain Jordan Sterry was not unique.

Richard Cary had an observant eye and a sense of humor. When he appeared sluggish, it was merely the sensible avoidance of waste motion of mind and body. He read the philandering skipper through and through and felt a healthy contempt for the soft streak in him, harmless enough, perhaps, but proof that there is no fool like an old fool. The man had been young once. Presumably he had had his fling. Why try to clutch at something that was gone, that had vanished as utterly as the froth of a wave? It was more than absurd. To Richard Cary, secure in the splendid twenties, unable to imagine himself as ever growing old, the skipper’s rebellion against the inevitable was almost grotesque.

Professionally no flaws could be found in Captain Sterry’s conduct. He ruled his ship with a firm hand, dealt justly with his officers, and was quick to note inefficiency. In all ways the Tarragona was a crack ship. It was to Richard Cary’s credit that the captain already approved of him. In fact, he was as cordial as the difference in rank permitted.

The chief officer was a sun-dried, silent down-easter who had found it slow climbing the ladder of promotion. He was always hoping for a command, yet somehow missing it. Dependable, incredibly industrious, he lacked the spark of initiative, the essential quality of leadership. Disappointment had soured him. He nursed his grievances and wished he were fitted for a decent job ashore.

After trying in vain to break through his crust, Richard Cary sought companionship elsewhere. He found it in the chief engineer, an extraordinary Englishman named McClement whose cabin was filled with books: history, philosophy, poetry; fiction translated from the French and Russian. There he sat and read by the hour, shirt stripped off, electric fan purring, a cold bottle of beer at his elbow. Half a dozen assistant engineers stood their watches down where the oil burners roared in the furnaces and the huge piston rods whirled the gleaming crank shafts. If anything went wrong, the chief engineer appeared swiftly, clad in disreputable overalls, and his speech was rugged Anglo-Saxon, of a quality requiring expurgation.

Now and then he strolled on deck of an evening, a lean, abstracted figure in spotless white clothes, hands clasped behind him, eyeing the capers of frivolous humankind with a certain cynical tolerance. They were as God had made them, but it was a bungled job. He ate most of his meals in his room, a book propped behind the tray. In this manner he evaded the affliction of mingling with tired business men and vivacious ladies eager to visit the engine room.

Richard Cary drifted into this McClement’s quarters by invitation, found a chair strong enough to hold him, and filled a blackened pipe from a jar on the desk. As usual he had not a great deal to say, but was amiability itself. He was content to sit and smoke and speak when spoken to. This pleased his host who read aloud choice bits of things and made pungent comments. The visitor borrowed a book and came again. They got on famously together because in temperament they were so curiously unlike.

On a clear day the ship sighted the lofty mountain range of Jamaica and steered to make her landfall for the harbor of Kingston. She drew near to the coast in the late afternoon. The breeze brought the heavy scents of the tropical verdure, of lush mountain vales, and the wet jungle. Richard Cary was on watch. Instead of standing at the bridge railing, with his calm and solid composure, he walked to and fro in a mood oddly restless. Intently he stared at the lofty slopes all clothed in living green, the tiny waterfalls bedecking them like flashes of silver lace.

He snuffed the air, so very different from the sea winds. The tropic island of Jamaica was strange to him, and yet it seemed vaguely, elusively familiar, as though he had beheld it while asleep and dreaming. The chief officer relieved him, but he lingered on the boat deck to see the black pilot come aboard from a dugout canoe. The steamer forged ahead again and passed into the harbor. The mountains loomed beyond the huddled roofs of Kingston. On the starboard side was a low, sandy point upon which were the trim, red-tiled bungalows of the quarantine station. The Tarragona paused again, to wait for the British health officer.

McClement, the chief engineer, climbed to the boat deck and said, as he joined Richard Cary:

“Port Royal yonder! No more than a sandbank now. The old town was sunk by an earthquake long ago. If you poke about in a small boat, they say you can see the stone walls of the houses down under the clear water. It was a famous resort of pirates and such gentry in the roaring days of the Spanish Main. Rum and loot, women and sin! All that made life worth living.”

“Port Royal?” exclaimed Cary. “I’m sure I have heard something about Port Royal. All gone, eh, Mac? Scuppered for their crimes. Served ’em right. A bad lot.”

“Very rotten, Dick, but they had certain virtues which the modern buccaneers of industry lack. We have two or three of these aboard. They never risked their skins to bag their plunder.”

Second Officer Cary muttered something and walked to the edge of the deck to peer down into the bright green water as if expecting to see the flickering phantoms of the wild sea rovers of the lost Port Royal. His blue eyes were bright with an ardent interest. McClement remarked, with a quizzical grin:

“I haven’t seen you really awake before now. What touched you off? Pirate yarns you read when you were a kid?”

“Perhaps so, Mac. I had this feeling once before. It was when I got word from a pal in New York, telling me about this job, that it was on the run to Cartagena. What is Cartagena like?”

“Wait and see it, my boy. Cartagena is a vision of vanished adventures, a gorgeous old Spanish treasure town preserved, by a sort of miracle, through three hundred years. Romance, color, tradition? It makes the days of the tall galleons and the bold sea dogs live again.”

“Tell me more about it,” demanded Richard Cary. His voice rolled out in a deep and masterful note.

“Come down to my room after the ship docks and I’ll give you some books to read, Kingsley’s ‘Westward Ho,’ Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages,’ and Captain Burney’s ‘History of the Buccaneers of America.’ ”

Some small sound in the engine-room far below them diverted McClement’s attention. His perception of such things was uncannily acute. He vanished instantly down the nearest stairway. Richard Cary also found work to do. This broke the spell of his day-dreaming. It did not recur to him during the Tarragona’s brief stay at Kingston. In the evening he was on duty at the cargo hatches while the passengers swarmed ashore to find entertainment at the excessively modern and luxurious hotel.

He had leisure to saunter a little way from the wharf, but felt no desire to explore Kingston. It was quite common-place, the streets noisy with electric cars and automobiles, the brick and wooden buildings as cheap and unlovely as those of any American town. Several charming young passengers failed to persuade him to join a party at the hotel where an orchestra was jazzing it, and he also declined, with due caution, the hospitality of thirsty voyagers who were making a night of it.

Returning to the ship, he went to his room at midnight and picked up the chief engineer’s books instead of turning in. Presently he found himself fascinated. For the sake of comfort he shifted into pajamas and lay stretched in the bunk. The ship’s bell tolled one half-hour after another and he was still reading. These printed pages were a key that unlocked the gates of enchantment. Now and then he lost himself in absorbed reverie.

These chronicles of hazards and escapes and hard fighting in the waters that washed the Spanish Main had been derived from documents, from the robust memoirs of men whose bones had crumbled in a century now dim and dead. The rich ports whose walls they had stormed with a bravado that defied all odds were no more than fragments of ruined masonry submerged in the jungle growth, Nombre de Dios, Porto Bello, and old Panama, names that still reëcho like the brazen blare of trumpets.

All gone save Cartagena, reflected Richard Cary. Cartagena still basking by the sea to recall that day when Francis Drake and his Devon lads had stormed it with the naked sword.

At length this brawny second mate of the Tarragona laid the books aside. Dawn was brightening the windows of his room. He thrust his bare feet into straw slippers and went on deck to loaf in the fresh morning air. His head was buzzing. He felt fatigued, although as a mariner he was hardened to wakeful nights.

In fancy he had been sailing, fighting, and carousing with those ferocious freebooters of the Caribbean. They seemed as real to him as the plodding, slow-spoken farmers of the New Hampshire soil on which he had been raised. Those clumsy, high-pooped ships with the bellying sails and gaudy pennants were as clearly etched in his mind as the stone walls, the square white houses, and the dark woodlands of his native countryside.

Confound the chief engineer’s books, he said to himself. They had turned his brain all topsy-turvy.

These impressions slowly faded until the Tarragona had sailed from Kingston and was steaming across that wide waste of sea that rolls between Jamaica and the Spanish Main. Strong winds were almost always blowing there, whistling through a ship’s stays, whipping the blue surface into foaming surges, with clear skies and hot sunshine. The Tarragona reeled to the swing of these restless seas, and the spray pelted her decks in sparkling showers. The passengers disliked it. Some of them uttered low moans and retired to their rooms. There were vacant chairs in the dining-saloon, regrets at having left the dry land of home, no matter how dry it was.

Richard Cary enjoyed it. He was amazed that he had ever regarded going to sea as drudgery. This part of the voyage appealed to him with a peculiar zest. For the first time he loved the ocean. This boisterous wind that blew beneath a hard bright sky, a cool tang to it that tempered the tropic heat—he drew it deep into his lungs, standing with arms folded across his mighty chest.

The astute chief engineer found something to interest him in the behavior of his herculean young shipmate. They were walking the deck together when McClement said, with his dry chuckle:

“Until we sighted Jamaica, Dick, you were majestic and quiet, like the everlasting hills. I welcomed you as a benign influence in a world of guff and jazz and nervous twitters. Now you fairly talk my head off. It doesn’t bore me, mind you, but I find myself perplexed to account for this flow of language. Were you bottled up all those years, and has the cork just blown out?”

“Something like that, Mac,” rather sheepishly admitted Richard Cary. “I can’t seem to help talking to you about the Spanish Main and the hard-boiled lads that put it on the map. You know all that stuff by heart, and I fairly eat it up.”

“Aye, Dick, you lick your chops over it. You have read every bally book I could dig up. It is like a craving for strong drink.”

Cary did not appear to be listening. The wind was blowing against his cheek. The deck was unsteady beneath his feet. Against the ship’s side the crested waves crashed and broke.

“Can’t you see them, Mac?” was his resonant exclamation. “Lubberly little vessels, as round as an apple, leaking like baskets, rotten with fever—wallowing off to leeward when the wind drew ahead? It was this same wind that blew them across this stretch of sea to the Isthmus of Darien and Cartagena, that made it possible for them to fetch the mainland. They had it on the beam, there and back. It served the Spanish galleons as well as the Englishmen that hunted them. Why, Mac, old man, the feel of this wind, now don’t laugh at me, is enough to tell me more stories than I found in all your musty old books.”

The chief engineer halted in his tracks. With a keener scrutiny than usual he studied the candid, engaging features of Richard Cary, the fearless vision, the resolute chin, the ruddy color, and the thatch of yellow hair. Cary was conscious of this deliberate appraisal. He flushed under it. McClement took another turn along the deck before halting to ask a question:

“Do you resemble the rest of the family, Dick?”

“Absolutely not. My dad used to say I was a throwback, and a long throw at that.”

“Precisely. That is what I am driving at. New England rural stock, you told me. English on both sides, I presume. Where did your forbears come from?”

“Devonshire, all of them,” answered Cary. “My mother’s folks came over from Plymouth a couple of hundred years ago and settled near where they live now. My father’s ancestors came later, just before the Revolution. They hailed from a little village near Bideford, so I used to hear him say.”

“From Devon?” exclaimed McClement, who did not appear greatly surprised. “The Carys of Devon! And your mother was—”

“A Chichester,” said Richard.

“Carys and Chichesters, of course, Dick. And you are the living image of Amyas Leigh in ‘Westward Ho’! He must have been about your build and bulk. The kind of lad they bred in Devon when the world was young!”

“Carys and Chichesters sailed with Drake and Hawkins,” broke in Richard, “in these same seas, and they fought the Spanish Armada along with Walter Raleigh and Martin Frobisher. I found the names in one of your books.”

“Aye, they did all of that and more too,” agreed the chief engineer. “I am too hard-headed to take stock in any fantastic theory of buried memories and such tosh as that. I’ll have to admit, though, that you are a bit startling, Dick. It’s out of the question, of course, that certain impressions and associations could have been handed down through your race, to come to life in you.”

Inherited memories of the Spanish Main? Such a notion had not occurred to Richard Cary. Fantastic enough, but his quickened imagination laid hold of it.

“There must have been a Cary in one of the expeditions against Cartagena, don’t you think, Mac?”

“My word, yes. You can bet your last dollar on that. Those stout Devon lads were all over the shop, wherever there was a chance to singe the beard of the king of Spain.”

“Then wouldn’t that account for the queer feeling that I have been in these waters before? Why, the idea of sailing for Cartagena made me tingle right down to my heels when I first heard of it.”

“Here, you can’t coax me into discussing anything like that, you fine big brute,” protested McClement. “It won’t do at all. Do you think you are a blooming reincarnation? Better come to my room and have a drink and forget it.”

“Then how do you explain it?” was the stubborn question. “On the level, I am getting worried about myself.”

“No occasion for it, Dick. You are a coincidence, in a way, and a vastly interesting one. What ails you, however, is the spirit of romance and adventure. You didn’t know you had it in you. Youth often finds it in a first voyage to the tropics. I was that way myself. And the Spanish Main has a beguiling magic of its own. Most of these wild tales were fresh to you. Unconsciously you identified yourself with them because you knew you were bred from that same strain of Elizabethan seamen.”

“Have it your own way,” rather sulkily agreed Richard Cary, “but there is more to this than you can figure out, as wise as you are.”

McClement had implanted a suggestion which oddly lingered in Cary’s thoughts and colored them with strange conjectures. Who or what was the real Richard Cary? The brawny rover of Devon who had diced with the devil and the deep sea, or the prosaic son of New Hampshire farming folk who had viewed seafaring as a means of earning his bread?

“Two Richard Carys,” reflected this second officer of the Tarragona. “All my life I may have been a mixture of both and didn’t know it. When I got sore at something and cleared for action, like wading into that bunch of fo’castle outlaws on the last Western Ocean voyage, I must have been the big Dick Cary of Devon that found his fun in walloping the Spaniards.”

His meditations trailed off into nebulous realms, into a haze of conjectures and dreams and anticipations. Instead of taking each day as it came, he found himself looking forward to something. It seemed to be beckoning him. Somewhere in these romantic seas, adventure awaited him. The chief engineer read aloud a poem that matched this new mood. Richard Cary listened with a smile on his face.

“Could man be drunk forever

With liquor, love or fights,

Lief should I rouse at morning

And lief lie down of nights.

“But men at whiles are sober

And think by fits and starts,

And if they think, they fasten

Their hands upon their hearts.”

CHAPTER III

A GREAT GALLEON

Señorita Teresa Fernandez was the stewardess of the Tarragona. A dark, handsome young woman, she wore a cap and uniform of white, severely plain, that were singularly becoming. They also conveyed the impression that she had no time for sentiment or frivolity. She talked easily, with a flash of white teeth, a sparkling eye, and graceful gestures. The ladies were apt to confide their affairs to her when she carried the breakfast trays to their rooms.

In return she told them various things about herself. She had been left motherless when a child. Her father, a South American merchant who had traveled much and visited many countries of Europe, had taken her with him and she had learned to know the sea and to speak French and Italian and English. He had died after very sad business troubles and there had been no relatives to look after her except an uncle, a very eccentric and disagreeable old gentleman to get along with.

She had preferred making her own way in the world to seeking shelter under her uncle’s roof. She was very young for a stewardess? Yes, but her father had been a friend of certain officials of the Fruit Company, and she had been given a trial. It was enough for her to say that she had been kept in the service. For one whose family was very old and dignified, with an honored name, it was unusual, in a way; but what would you? If Teresa Fernandez was not ashamed to be earning an honest living, why pay attention to what others might say?

When off duty she liked to sit in a wicker chair near the saloon staircase of the Tarragona. It was a cool, breezy place. She was close enough to the electric bells to respond to any summons. It was convenient for chatting with her friends as they passed, the second steward, the wireless operators, the purser, or the doctor. They agreed that Señorita Fernandez was a good scout.

Now and then Richard Cary had stopped for a bit of gossip. He liked this cheerful, good-looking young stewardess who always had a smile for him and a gay word of greeting. She offered to darn his socks and overhaul his shirts for missing buttons, and refused payment for it. This was out of the ordinary. She was a thrifty soul who overlooked no opportunities to add to her income.

From his seat in the dining-saloon, Cary often caught her looking at him when she was resting in the wicker chair near the landing. And when their eyes met, the tint in the olive cheek of Teresa Fernandez was likely to deepen. It was to be surmised that she was a woman of feelings as well as a very competent stewardess.

During the run from Jamaica to the Spanish Main, Dick Cary paused oftener and stayed longer beside the wicker chair. He had lost that air of serene indifference to the feminine equation. This Teresa Fernandez strongly attracted him. She knew ships and the sea and the ports of many climes. She made conversation delightfully easy.

One evening he found her standing on the lower deck, in a corner sheltered from the wind. A scarf of Spanish lace was thrown over her ebon, lustrous hair. She was alluring, exotic, a woman in another role than that of the efficient, industrious stewardess of the Tarragona.

“What are you, Spanish or Portuguese?” asked Richard Cary, gazing down at her from his commanding height.

“Oh, Spanish, ’most all of it,” laughed Teresa Fernandez, with a tilt of her shapely head. “Where do you think I come from, Don Ricardo Cary?”

“From Spain? Vigo? Santander? Bilbao? I know that coast. Fine women in those ports. They were easy to look at.”

“Gracias, señor. Is it a compliment?” she archly replied. “But I am not a fine woman—just a stewardess in funny clothes like a nurse or something. Ah, yes, I know Spain. I have been there in ships, but my home is not there. I am a Colombian, from Cartagena. Yes, my dear mother and father they died in Cartagena, and my uncle he lives there now.”

“Cartagena?” echoed Richard Cary, his pulse beating faster. “Did you really come from that old town? And you know it well?”

“Better than any other place, you bet,” cried Teresa Fernandez, her rounded shoulder touching Cary’s arm. “This Cartagena—poof! she is too old and dead, you understand. Plenty of big walls and forts and plazas for the tourists to see, but it is not up-to-date, not one little bit. Hot and stupid! Lots of people there, but they are too slow. Nothing doing, thank you.”

“I could tell you some things about Cartagena,” said Richard Cary, “but they might not interest you. I have been reading and dreaming about it until I know the whole story by heart.”

“The history, you mean, Don Ricardo?” she exclaimed, with a disdainful shrug. “The books you have been reading so hard? My gracious, I can tell you better stories than that. Look at me! I am what you call a chapter of the old history of Cartagena. Is it not much nicer to study me?”

“Very much nicer,” warmly agreed the yellow-haired giant of a sailor. He dared to let his arm steal around her trim waist and to press her close.

Teresa Fernandez laughed softly nor drew herself away. It was necessary, however, for her to explain:

“You must not think I am this way with the other boys in the ship. No, I am never this way at all. You ask them if you want to. They will say Señorita Fernandez is very proper—she minds her own business all the time. My goodness, Don Ricardo, what can I do with you? You are so strong, so terrible. I never saw such a man in my life. Will you not have some mercy on poor Teresa?”

True it was that she had never met such a man as this. Her heart might flutter, however, but it was not so easy to turn her head. An episode, this? Perhaps, but it was not to be resisted.

“A chapter of history, are you, Teresa?” smiled he. “Then you are all I want to read from now on. I was surely wasting my good time on books.”

“You were pretty thick, it seemed so,” said she. “Always talk, talk with that chief engineer. Listen! Now let me tell you something. My great-great—I don’t know how many times—grandfather was the capitan of the great galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario. His name it was Don Juan Diego Fernandez, a man very proud—what you call noble blood. There was his galleon, four hundred sailors and soldiers and maybe a hundred cannon, in Cartagena harbor. When we go into port, you will see just where she was anchored that time. My brave ancestor, this Don Juan Diego Fernandez, he was all ready to make the voyage to Spain with his galleon full of gold and silver bars from the mines of Peru, eh? The treasure it was brought across the Isthmus of Panama on the backs of mules. You know. It was the plate fleet that sailed once a year for Cadiz. This my old Don Juan Diego Fernandez he waited for the other galleons.

“Valgame Dios! Right into the harbor of Cartagena sailed the Englishmen, the piraticos. The forts bang at them plenty. They give those forts the merry laugh. Two little ships! My old grandfather, so proud in his gold armor, he was not scared at all. He would sink these crazy little ships and send the English heretics to the Holy Inquisition in Cartagena. Now listen to this! What do you suppose? Mother of God, they gave Don Juan Diego Fernandez no show at all to fire his hundred cannon and shoot the muskets of his four hundred sailors and soldiers. Did he get a run for his money? I guess not! First thing you know, one little English ship is tied fast on the starboard side of the tremendous big galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario, and the other little ship on the port side.

“Carramba! These crazy Englishmen they climb to the decks of that galleon just like monkeys. These four hundred Spanish sailors and soldiers are all chopped to pieces. The tall galleon she is on fire and blazes all up. And these English piraticos dump the gold and silver bars through the ports, into their two little ships, just like you shovel coal.

“Whew! My old grandfather in his shiny armor, all so grand and brave, has to give up his sword to the English capitan. He is treated very nice as a prisoner, but he has to get ransom for himself in Cartagena, four thousand pieces of eight. Some money, to buy old Don Juan Diego Fernandez with! Maybe if those wicked Englishmen had not captured the Nuestra Señora del Rosario, I will be a rich woman now and not have to go to sea.”

“Yes, the old boy was out of luck,” heartily agreed Richard Cary. “Of course I feel more like cheering the Englishmen. Do you happen to know the names of their ships?”

“Yes. It is written down in Spanish, in the library of the Bishop of Cartagena. My father made a copy one time. The ships were named the Bonaventure and the Rose of Plymouth.”

Richard Cary seemed to forget the allurement of Teresa Fernandez. He folded his arms and stood detached and erect, staring out at the darkened sea. It was thus he stood whenever these misty, fleeting emotions came to disquiet him. McClement was right, no doubt. It was nothing more than the voice of romance to which hitherto he had been deaf. He brushed a hand across his eyes. His massive body relaxed. He laughed awkwardly, patted Teresa’s soft cheek, and muttered:

“You described it so well that I seemed to see the thing just as it happened.”

“Please do not look like that again,” said Teresa, her accents slightly tremulous. “You scare me. It was just like the ghost of one of those mad Englishmen in the little ships. I was going to tell you some more, but you must be nice and gentle. The ship’s bell from the galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario was saved by a Spanish officer from a fort when the hulk drifted ashore. This one he gave the bell to my old ancestor, Don Juan Diego Fernandez, and it stayed always in Cartagena. I give you my word, Ricardo, it is hanging right now in the patio of my uncle’s house, close to the Plaza de la Independencia. There is the bronze bell, very beautiful, and it hangs from an oak timber that was in the galleon. If you go ashore with me, I will show you the bell in my uncle’s patio. We can sit there, and my uncle he will amuse you. He is a very funny old guy.”

“The bell of the Nuestra Señora del Rosario,” Richard Cary mused aloud. “Yes, I shall want to see it, Teresa.”

“Hum-m, in Cartagena you will be admired, let me tell you that, Ricardo,” said she, with a flash of asperity. “A girl in every port? And you have made a fool of Teresa Fernandez. It does not happen every day. I swear by the blessed Santa Marta.”

“I’ll swear it never happened to me before—to find a girl like you and fall in love with her,” was his ardent declaration.

“Do you truly love me, Ricardo? Such a man as you?” Her sigh was both wistful and happy. “I was hoping—I thought I saw it in your eyes, in your smile, but—”

For answer he kissed her on the lips, clinging lips that returned the caress. Responsively she surrendered to his masterful sway. In her heart was the faith to believe that he could never be fickle or inconstant, once his love was pledged. A girl in every port? She had spoken in jest.

It was time for them to part. On watch, later in the night, he found himself repeating:

“Could man be drunk forever

With liquor, love or fights,

Lief should I rouse at morning

And lief lie down of nights.”

He stood alone with the wind and the clamorous sea and the stars in the velvet sky. Gazing forward from the bridge, the ship’s derrick booms and cargo winches were obscurely shadowed. The forecastle deck and lofty prow lifted against the curtain of night. The spray broke over them and beat like gusts of rain. It was possible to forget that this was a modern steamer, infinitely complex and cunningly contrived, a steel trough driven by tireless engines. To Richard Cary she was a ship steering across the Caribbean as ships had steered in bygone centuries. Never had his heart beat so high nor had he been conscious of such a keen-edged joy in living.

Teresa Fernandez, the blood in whose veins ran back to Don Juan Diego Fernandez, commander of the shattered treasure galleon! It pleased Richard Cary’s awakened fancy to picture such a girl as this in the Cartagena of long ago, a scarf of Spanish lace thrown over her lustrous hair, and a tall, fair Devon lad to woo her when the seamen of the Bonaventure had landed on the beach to parley for ransom.

At breakfast next morning, Cary could see the competent stewardess, graceful, light of foot, flitting to and fro on this errand or that, with a shrewd eye to the main chance. No nonsense, her aspect seemed to say. She was the “good scout,” the unsentimental friend of the second steward, the wireless operators, the purser, and the doctor. She colored divinely, however, when her sailor lover smiled a greeting from his table. A little later, when he passed her on the staircase, and they were unobserved, her fingers lightly brushed the sleeve of his coat.

The Tarragona was approaching the Colombian coast. In the afternoon a trifling incident occurred. It was destined, however, to affect the fortunes of Richard Cary in a manner unforeseen. Captain Jordan Sterry, that vigorous figure of a middle-aged shipmaster, had displayed a fatherly interest in a pert young creature with bobbed hair who seemed to enjoy it, for lack of a better game to play. He had invited her to visit the bridge. It was a courtesy often shown favored passengers.

The second officer was on duty. He happened to overhear some chance remark of the skipper, a rather silly thing to say, fatuous in a man old enough to be the bobbed one’s father. Most unluckily Richard Cary chuckled aloud. A lively sense of the ridiculous was too much for him. The infatuated Captain Sterry turned and glared. Cary was fairly caught. His face betrayed him. It mirrored the merciless verdict of youth. Words could have put it no more bitingly.

Captain Sterry turned red. He bit his lip. His second mate thought him absurd. To be laughed at was degrading, intolerable. It penetrated his vanity and seared his soul like acid.

A fleeting tableau, but Cary had made an enemy who both hated and feared him. His offense was beyond all forgiveness. He stepped to a wheel-house window and took the binocular from the rack. It occupied him to watch a distant steamer almost hull down. He felt rather sorry for what he had done. It was uncomfortable to think of the look in the skipper’s eyes, not so much anger as profound humiliation. Never again would these twain be happy in the same ship together.

It meant that Richard Cary might have to leave the Tarragona and find another berth. This was his regretful conclusion. He liked the ship nor could he imagine himself as forsaking the Caribbean Sea to return to the Western Ocean trade.

CHAPTER IV

THE ANGER OF COLONEL FAJARDO

The steamer sighted Cartagena in the rosy mists of dawn. It seemed to rise from the sea and float like a mirage. It was a mass of towers, domes, and battlements, of stone houses tinted pink and yellow with tiled roofs that gleamed and wavered. The surf broke against the wall of enduring masonry which marched around this ancient city of the conquistadores, a mighty wall broken here and there by massive gateways and bastions.

Defiantly facing the sea, secure of itself, this proud stronghold of Cartagena de Indias had been increasingly fortified until it had become impregnable to the foes who, in the very early days, had harried and plundered it. These walls and escarpments, the flanking towers and the guardian forts looming from the nearby hills and forelands, had cost the kings of Spain untold millions drained from the fabulous mines of Potosi. They had been determined to make this Caribbean seaport the Gibraltar of the New World.

The Tarragona changed her course and moved to the southward of the city, past the tall palms clustered on the hot, white beaches. What appeared to be a wide entrance to the harbor was soon revealed, but the breakers frothed against a barrier that ran athwart it like a reef. On the chart this reef was a curiously straight line, as if laid down with a ruler. Richard Cary was shading his eyes with his hand when the chief officer remarked:

“If the Colombians had any get-up and gumption they would blow a hole in that submerged wall and open the old ship channel. It was built across there, God knows how long ago, to keep the buccaneers out. Some building job, that! There must be almost a mile of it.”

“Yes, it was put there after the Englishmen sailed in past the forts and sacked the town,” quickly exclaimed Cary. “It wasn’t there when Drake took Cartagena. He used this Boca Grande.”

It was necessary for the Tarragona to proceed seven miles to the southward and enter the narrow passage of the Boca Chica, tortuous and difficult, and then to make her way through the reaches of a blue lagoon. She passed between the outermost forts, gray and grass-grown, but still resisting the slow processes of decay. On the port side was the Castillo de San Fernando with its crenelated walls and deep embrasures in which rested dismounted brass carronades. In the lee of the lofty water-gate rode a Colombian trading schooner. A few Indian canoes were drawn up on the beach.

On the starboard side, the Castillo de San Juan jutted from the sea like a huge rock. Patches of verdure had found root in the crumbling counterscarps. Flowering vines wreathed the round sentry boxes.

Steaming slowly through the placid lagoon, the Tarragona found a circuitous path to Cartagena. The wharf, the corrugated iron cargo sheds, the railway tracks, were ugly and modern. Looking away from them, however, one saw only the stately seaport of the vanished centuries. Behind its ramparts the galleried streets and shaded plazas drowsed through the heat of the day until the breeze came sweeping from the sea with the setting sun.

The Tarragona had much freight to discharge before resuming the voyage to Santa Marta and filling her holds with bananas. Richard Cary had to be an efficient second mate with his mind on the job while the clattering winches plucked the rope slings filled with cases, bales, and casks from the open hatches. At the noon hour he found leisure to loaf under an awning.

Teresa Fernandez found him there. She had something to say. One of her swift and supple gestures indicated a swarthy Colombian in a handsome military uniform who reclined in a steamer chair on the promenade deck. He was gaunt, grizzled, and harsh-featured. Just now his eyes were closed. His hands were comfortably clasped across his belt. He was enjoying a brief siesta after a bountiful luncheon in the saloon as the guest of the ship.

“You see that fellow?” exclaimed Teresa, with a shrug that betokened disfavor. “All his brass buttons and medals? He is the Comandante of the Port, Colonel Fajardo. The boss of the custom-house police and things like that. What do you think of him?”

“Is he a friend of yours?” Dick Cary cautiously parried.

“Last voyage that Colonel Fajardo asked me to marry him,” candidly answered Teresa. “Yes, that fellow told me he was in love with me. He is not as old as he looks, unless he is a big liar. Forty-two years old he says.”

Cary glowered at the somnolent Comandante of the Port. In a way, this was startling news. Next he fixed a questioning eye on the charming Teresa whose demeanor hinted that, as a suitor, the colonel had not been finally disposed of on that last voyage. She flashed a brilliant smile, furtively caressed Cary’s hand, and deigned to explain:

“It was just like this, Ricardo. This Colonel Fajardo is a very important man in Cartagena. The Fruit Company must treat him nice and pat him on the back or he will make trouble for the ships. He can find something wrong with the papers and delay the sailings or maybe a poor sailor is caught smuggling some cigarettes ashore. You see, I am in the Company’s employ and I must not make this Colonel Fajardo mad with me. It is best to be diplomatique, to jolly him along, you understand?”

“It sounds well enough,” growled Richard Cary, by no means appeased, “but what about this voyage? Has that buzzard proposed to you again?”

“Oh, yes, as soon as he came aboard this morning. He was waiting, very impatient. He had told me he had plenty of money and a very good house. His pay is not much, you know, except what he can steal. I asked my uncle in Cartagena to find out about this Colonel Fajardo. My uncle he cannot come down to the ship to-day, but he sends me a letter. This fine Comandante is a false alarm, Ricardo. He has spent all his money on women and his house is mortgaged up to the neck. He is no good at all. Bah! Why should I marry that fellow, even if I am a poor girl that has to go to sea and work very hard?”

“Have you told him so?” sternly demanded Dick Cary. Her nonchalance rather staggered him.

“Yea, I could not string him along any more,” serenely confessed Teresa Fernandez.

“But if he had all kinds of money, what then?”

“Never, Ricardo. He disgusts me. That last voyage, when I told him to wait, you had not kissed me then.”

“You are my sweetheart,” he passionately exclaimed. “And I’ll take care of that Colombian blackguard if he pesters you again.”

“You would kill him, Ricardo, because you love me?” happily sighed Teresa Fernandez. “But, listen, don’t you go making trouble with that man if he acts jealous. I will be glad when the ship sails for Santa Marta to-morrow.”

Richard Cary’s laugh was lightly scornful. He held the amorous Colonel Fajardo in very small esteem. By this time the latter gentleman had awakened from his siesta. He yawned and blinked at the harbor upon whose oily surface a small sailing vessel drifted becalmed in the blistering heat. Then his gaunt frame uprose from the steamer chair and he stiffly straightened himself in the frogged white uniform with the ornate gold shoulder-straps.

He was not a man to be dismissed with a careless laugh. A visage tanned to the hue of brown leather was bitten deep with the lines of a hard and cruel temper. The thin lips and jutting nose were predatory. One thought of him as perhaps a soldier who had seen more arduous service than this lazy billet of Comandante of the Port. He had the air of command, but sloth and dissipation were corroding him as rust destroys a good weapon.

Yawning, Colonel Fajardo lighted a cigarette and smoothed the wrinkles from his tunic. Then he twisted the ends of a mustache that was prematurely flecked with gray. He sauntered forward, to the gangway, and swore viciously at two of his custom-house guards who had retreated to the shade of a deck-house. One of them he kicked by way of emphasis. From this part of the ship he caught sight of Teresa Fernandez under the awning with the huge, yellow-haired young second mate of the Tarragona.

At a glance it was easy to perceive that they found this dalliance agreeable. Excessively and infernally agreeable, in the opinion of this interested Colonel Fajardo. It was a mordant sight for him to behold. He felt suddenly feverish. It was, indeed, like a touch of calentura.

A certain thing was revealed to him. It displayed itself beyond a shadow of doubt. Teresa Fernandez had considered his offer of marriage. Yes, she had been favorable, his vanity led him to believe, delaying the answer until the ship had returned to Cartagena.

Now she had rejected him; the humble stewardess of the Tarragona rejecting the renowned Colonel Fajardo, Comandante of the Port, who might have had so many other young and beautiful women. It was because she had found a Yankee lover. Little devil, would she so wantonly flaunt this great, stupid beast of a sailor before the eyes of Colonel Fajardo? It was amusement for those two.

The Colonel’s lean fingers quivered as he lighted a fresh cigarette. The thin lips twitched beneath the martial mustache. He turned on his heel and strolled aft to the smoking-room. There he slumped upon a cushioned settle and rested his elbows upon the table. He ordered a whiskey and soda and drank it very slowly. Another Colombian official joined him, a loquacious person who babbled about various matters and was indifferent to the brooding, ungracious demeanor of Colonel Fajardo. After a while this acquaintance departed.

The colonel continued to drink, steadily and alone, until the chief engineer drifted in for a cold bottle of beer. He was sweaty and dirty and his legs ached. For sociability’s sake he sat down at the table with the Comandante of the Port. It was an error, as he presently discovered. The morose gentleman of the gold shoulder-straps contributed no more than an occasional grunt or a bored, “Si, señor.”

His eyes were slightly bloodshot and failed to focus. Otherwise his sobriety could not be challenged. He brightened only when about to plunge his predatory beak into another whiskey and soda. Having prudently slaked his own thirst, the chief engineer betook himself back to the task of tinkering with a balky condenser in a temperature that would have made Hades seem frigid. Later in the afternoon, when he emerged on deck for air, he accosted Richard Cary.

“Hearken to me, shipmate. If you insist on sparking the beautiful stewardess, I suggest that you suspend operations until Cartagena is in the offing. What I mean to say is, a little discretion wouldn’t be half bad.”

“Thanks, Mac, but if you had just as soon mind your own damn business,” was the discourteous retort, “I can hearken a lot easier. How did you get this way?”

“By using a normal intelligence and powers of observation in which you are so colossally lacking,” was the unruffled reply. “You have already driven Colonel Fajardo to drink. He has been at it ever since luncheon, according to Jimmy, the barkeep. No, he isn’t drunk, but, my word, his disposition is ruined. He may be chewing glass by this time.”

“Humph! You read too many novels, Mac. Trying to stage a melodrama?”

“This from you, Dick Cary? You wild ass! After boring me with your fantastic nonsense about buried memories of the Spanish Main? Accuse me of being stagey when I offer a friendly bit of common sense? Oh, very well, if you get a knife in your ribs or a bullet in your back, you needn’t expect me to hold your hand and listen to your last words. I have heard gossip in Cartagena, that this Colonel Fajardo has bumped off one or two sprightly young caballeros who got in his way.”

“And you listen to such rot?” scoffed Dick Cary. “The drunken counterfeit! Somebody ought to call his bluff. I wish he would give me a chance.”

“The Devon lad? Spaniards are good hunting,” quizzed McClement. “Up, my hearties, and at ’em.”

Instead of dining at his favorite café in Cartagena, Colonel Fajardo remained on board the Tarragona. He swayed just a trifle as he walked into the saloon, but his bearing was haughty and sedate. He held his liquor well, did this seasoned soldier of the tropics. A man of blood and iron! More accurate, perhaps, to say that he had a copper lining. Whatever emotions may have tormented him, his appetite for food was not blighted. He ate enormously and gulped down cup after cup of black coffee.

This treatment was sobering. The colonel’s eyes were again in focus. They expressed an intelligence alert and sinister. His gait was normal when he returned to the promenade deck. He posted himself where he could observe the gangway steps that led down to the wharf. It was not long before Teresa Fernandez appeared. As he suspected, she had been warily avoiding him. Just now she failed to see him because she was looking elsewhere, forward, where the stairs led down from the officers’ quarters on the boat deck.

This was a woman of a very different aspect from the industrious stewardess of the Tarragona in her white garb so severely trim and plain. The wide black hat framed a face girlish and piquant. The gown was of some gray stuff, thin and shimmering. It revealed the soft contours of her shoulders, of her slenderly modeled arms. The ancestry which could boast of a Don Juan de Fernandez, captain of the great galleon of the plate fleet, had survived in Teresa’s small-boned wrists, in the curves of her slim silken-clad ankles. Greedily did the lustful Colonel Fajardo gaze at her. Damnation! Never had he so greatly desired to possess a woman. In proof of this he had been even willing to marry her.

She gayly waved a hand, but not at him. The second officer of the ship was hastening to join her, the great, insolent ox of a Yankee sailor. He, too, was in shore-going clothes, a jaunty Panama with a crimson band, cream-colored suit of pongee, a bamboo stick crooked on his arm. He was so flagrantly the happy lover off for a holiday hour ashore that Colonel Fajardo muttered blasphemies the most picturesque. The intention was to annoy him, to make him beside himself. It was odious.

The perfidious Teresa Fernandez hung on the arm of Richard Cary as they descended to the wharf and walked to the custom-house gate beyond which waited a group of little open carriages, plying for hire. The drivers raised their voices in clamorous persuasion, naming extortionate prices. Teresa scolded them in voluble Spanish as piraticos and children of the Evil One. They meekly subsided. The carriage with the least bony and languorous nag rattled over the cobblestones in the direction of the nearest gateway through the city wall.

Colonel Fajardo moved to the gangway. He halted to think. His hard, worn face was not so angry as perplexed. It was to be surmised that things had taken a disappointing turn. Possibly it would have pleased him more had the second officer gone ashore alone. The fact that Teresa Fernandez had accompanied him intruded a certain awkwardness. In a way, it was unforeseen. In previous voyages she had declined to leave the ship after dark.

Colonel Fajardo absently fingered a scar on his chin. The circumstances were regrettable, but he was not one to neglect a matter of importance so long as there was the remotest chance of success. Immediately he made his way down to the wharf and strode as far as the office of the customs. He entered this small building, locked the door, and talked softly into the telephone. The conference was brief. His language was so guarded that it could mean nothing at all if overheard. The message was a masterpiece of circumlocution. It was understood, however, by a certain sallow young man who had been playing a guitar in a café of shady repute in a dingy street of Cartagena.

He had been waiting for a message. In the afternoon a dusty urchin had come from the wharf with a few unsigned words scrawled on a bit of paper advising him to hold himself in readiness for orders.

In employing the telephone, Colonel Fajardo displayed the modern spirit. In certain aspects of his private affairs he harked back to earlier centuries. From the wharf he returned to the ship and sought the smoking-room. With a mien of somber abstraction he applied himself to a whiskey and soda.

Meanwhile the shabby open carriage had rattled through a cavern of a gateway in the wall. Cartagena by moonlight! Richard Cary was glad he had waited until night. All traces of garish modernity were banished by the sorcery of the silver moon. In the shadows of the winding streets, gallants whispered at grated windows. The tall houses with overhanging balconies that almost met across these narrow streets were gravely beautiful. In the stones above their doors were chiseled the crests of conquering hidalgos whose bones had been dust these hundreds of years.

There was almost no traffic. Strollers loitered in the grateful breeze, a group was singing as it passed. There was the hum of voices from the balconies, the distant music of a band in a plaza. To Richard Cary it was like the ghost of a city, untouched by change or dissolution, which dwelt with memories great and tumultuous. He gave himself over to its spell.

Teresa Fernandez also was silent. When she spoke, it was to say, with deep emotion:

“It is so wonderful to be with you, Ricardo, away from the ship and all those noisy people. To-night we seem to belong right here in my old Cartagena, you and I. This is like a beautiful dream, but, ah, dreams never last very long. Will you love me for more than a little while?”

“Aye, Teresa mine; forever and ever. McClement calls me crazy, but I feel as though I had loved you in Cartagena long ago.”

“Santa Maria, do I look as old as that?” she rippled. “And I thought I had made myself muy dulce for you. If you will stay crazy about me, I don’t care how crazy that old chief engineer thinks you are.”

When deeply stirred, Ricardo was not one to turn a ready compliment. She was satisfied, however, with his smile of fond approval, with his manifest pride in her slender and elegant beauty. One thought made them wistful. To forsake the open carriage and wander at their will, to a stone bench in the shadows of the Plaza Fernandez de Madrid, or to the murmuring beach, this was their desire. But they could not remain long away from the ship.

Teresa had petulantly explained that there was no evading a call at the house of her uncle, Señor Ramon Bazán. It was a promise, made last voyage, and she was a woman of her word. Besides, this funny old guy of an uncle, said she, had vowed to leave her all his money when he was dead. It was necessary to be nice to him while he was alive. Ha, not one dollar would he give her until he was dead, not if she begged him on her knees. A terrible tightwad was the Señor Ramon Bazán.

Richard Cary made no comment. He felt sorry for the girl who had been compelled to travel rough roads of life, courageously battling for survival. She was not sordid, but anxious. Money was a weapon of self-defense. She had been compelled to think too much of it.

The carriage halted in front of the frowning residence of Uncle Ramon Bazán. The iron-studded door was stout enough to have stopped a volley of musket balls. It was swung open by a barefooted Indian lad in ragged shirt and trousers. Teresa brushed him aside and led the way into the patio, open to the sky, where a fountain tinkled and flamboyant flowers bloomed. A little brown monkey scampered up a trellis and swung by its tail. A green parrot screeched impolite Spanish epithets from a cage on the wall.

The Indian youth shuffled into the patio and timidly informed the señorita that her uncle had gone out on an errand and would soon return.

“I hope he forgets to come back, Ricardo,” said Teresa. “Now we can sit down by the oleander tree and I will show you the bell of the old galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario.”

They crossed the moonlit square of the patio. Cary saw a heavy framework of Spanish oak timbers, more durable than iron. From the cross-piece was suspended the massy bell whose elaborately chased surface was green with time and weather. By the flare of a match, Cary discovered a royal coat of arms in high relief and the blurred letters of an inscription, presumably the name of the galleon and of the port whence she had hailed.

Teresa Fernandez groped for the clapper and let it swing against the flaring rim. The bell responded with a note sonorous and musical. Lingeringly vibrant, the sound filled the patio. With more vigor Richard Cary swung the clapper. The voice of the galleon’s bell swelled in volume. The air fairly quivered and hummed. It was unlike any ship’s bell that Richard Cary had ever heard at sea or in port. And yet its timbre thrilled some responsive chord in the dim recesses of his soul. It was such a bell as had flung its mellow echoes against the walls of Cartagena, of Porto Bello, of Nombre de Dios when the tall galleons of the plate fleet had ridden to their hempen cables.

The sound of the bell had died to a murmur when Teresa spoke. The quality of her voice was attuned in harmony with it, or so it seemed to the listening Richard Cary.

“When I was a little girl,” said she, “I liked to come and play with the old bell. I had to stand up on my toes and push the clapper with my two hands. Dong! Dong! It sang songs to me. They made me feel like you say you do when you hear the wind in the palm trees, Ricardo. There is something about this bell—very queer, but just as true as true can be. You will not laugh, like the other Americanos. If anything very bad is going to happen to the one it belongs to, this bell of the Nuestra Señora del Rosario it strikes four times. Dong! dong!—Dong! dong! Four bells, like on board a ship. When there is going to be death or some terrible bad luck! It has always been like that, ’way, ’way back to my ancestor Don Juan Diego Fernandez.”

Richard Cary nodded assent. It was not for him to find fault with a legend such as this. Teresa, encouraged by his sympathy, went on to say:

“Yes, it was heard the night before the two little English ships, the Bonaventure and the Rose of Plymouth, came sailing into Cartagena harbor. Dong! dong!—Dong! dong! There was no Spanish sailor near at all on deck when it struck four bells. A hundred years ago there was a General Fernandez who fought with Bolivar in the revolution against Spain. His wife she sits right here in this patio and waits for news from her brave husband. One night it is very quiet and everybody is asleep. She is waked up. What does she hear? Not so loud, but very sad and clear. Dong! dong!—Dong! dong! Four bells!

“This poor woman knows her husband must be dead in some battle for the flag of Bolivar. Pretty soon a soldier comes from the Magdalena with a message, but she has had her message already. Another time, my Ricardo, it was a Fernandez that got drowned in a ship. It went down in a hurricane off Martinique. The bell told his mother. Now I have told you enough gloomy stuff, Ricardo. Maybe that old bell will belong to me some day. I think I will throw it in the harbor. It is a Jonah.”

CHAPTER V

RICHARD CARY STROLLS ALONE

A wisp of an elderly man appeared in the moonlit patio, with no more sound than the rustle of a dry leaf. He seemed to move with an habitual air of stealth. Bent and meager, his linen clothes flapped on him. He peered this way and that. The little brown monkey came dancing down from the trellis and perched, chattering, upon his shoulder. He stood fanning himself with a dingy straw hat. He was short of breath, wheezing audibly. No matter how trifling his errands, it was to be conjectured that he always flitted to and fro in a hurried, secretive manner.

Teresa moved out of the shadows. He jumped back, easily startled. His niece called out some affectionate Spanish phrase and dutifully advanced to embrace him. Señor Ramon Bazán pecked at her cheek, cackled a welcome, and wriggled clear. He was fascinated by the formidable size of the stranger who hovered between the galleon bell and the oleander tree. It was a phenomenon that provoked excited curiosity.

Uncle Ramon Bazán sputtered questions. Teresa proudly presented the second officer of the Tarragona who felt baffled because he could talk no Spanish. This failed to check the wordy welcome of the uncle of Teresa. He was impressed and amused. On tiptoe he patted Cary’s mighty shoulder and measured his height. It was like a terrier making friends with a Saint Bernard.

“He says you are as big as the hill of La Popa,” swiftly interpreted Teresa. “You do his poor house an honor. Everything in it is yours. You have made a delicious hit with him, Ricardo. He does not like many people.”

Cary bowed and conveyed his thanks. Uncle Ramon chuckled like the squeak of a rusty hinge. He had made a joke, explained Teresa. Why offer the house to this Señor Cary when he could easily carry it off on his back if he felt so disposed? They found chairs near the fountain. The Indian muchacho brought glasses of iced lemonade. Cary smoked his pipe and idly listened. To hear Teresa’s voice, flowing, musical, talking in the language of her native Cartagena, was a new delight.

Presently the wee brown monkey clambered to his knee and sat there. The wrinkled visage bore an odd resemblance to that of Señor Ramon Bazán. Richard Cary knocked the ashes from his briar pipe and laid it on the bench beside him. The monkey noted the procedure, with a grave scrutiny. Then it picked up the pipe, carefully rapped the bowl against Cary’s knee, and inserted the stem between its teeth. Cary courteously offered his match-box and tobacco-pouch. Uncle Ramon’s shrill mirth was so violent that a coughing fit was nearly the death of him. Teresa was gleeful because to win the monkey’s favor was a signal distinction. In her uncle’s sight, it was the final seal of approval.

Soon it was time to go back to the ship. The host escorted them to the street and sent the Indian lad in quest of a carriage. He warmly urged Richard Cary to make the house his home whenever he was in port. It was expressed with gusto. They left him in the doorway, a bizarre figure, the monkey tucked under one arm.

“Never have I seen my uncle like this,” said Teresa as they drove away. “He hates ’most everybody. You are his big pet, Ricardo. Any favor you ask, he will tumble over himself to do it.”

“I was sorry I couldn’t have a chat with him, he seemed so cordial. A comical old chap.”

“Pooh, he can talk English when he wants to. He lived in Washington one time, for the government at Bogotá. He is funny. To-night it was a trick, his talking only Spanish. Maybe you would say something about him to me, eh? He was sizing you up. He is just as sly as that little monkey. But I must not speak so horrid of my uncle. He is a very old man—cracked—some bats in the cabeza. How old do you think he is?”

“I couldn’t get a slant on him in the moonlight,” answered Cary. “He is pretty well warped and dried up, but he seems to have a kick in him.”

“Nobody knows how old that Ramon Bazán is, Ricardo. He looked just like this when I was a little, little girl.”

Cary absently filled his briar pipe. Teresa snatched it from him and objected:

“That monkey was trying to smoke it just like a man. Dirty beast! Here, you take a cigarette from me and I will scrub that pipe with boiling water.”

One other thing troubled her. That story of the galleon bell. Did Ricardo think she was stupid to believe all that stuff? It sounded true in the patio, in the moonlight of Cartagena, but would he laugh at her when he was at sea again in the Tarragona with that wise amigo of his, the chief engineer? Listen! It was no more wonderful than the marble pulpit in the cathedral, all carved with the images of the saints. It was well known to everybody that the Pope had commanded the best artists of Spain to carve that pulpit for a gift to the faithful people of Cartagena. The Pope had blessed it before the ship sailed from Cadiz. Oh, very long ago!

The ship was close to the Spanish Main when the English buccaneers had captured her. They were very angry to find the cases of marble that were all carved with the blessed images of the Catholic saints. So they threw the cases overboard when they plundered the ship. All this heavy marble! It did not sink at all, but floated on the waves. A long time these cases of marble floated until, one day, they washed right up on the beach of Cartagena.

The bishop called all the people to see the holy miracle and there was a procession to the cathedral with incense and banners and hymns. And there is the marble pulpit to-day, and the priests saying Mass under the canopy.

Richard Cary gravely agreed that such a miracle could not be doubted, even by a heretic. And he did not have to be persuaded to believe in the marvelous powers of the galleon’s bell to toll a warning of disaster. This comforted the heart of Teresa Fernandez, so shrewd and yet so credulous. She was radiantly happy in these golden moments with the man she loved.

He left her at the ship’s gangway. The chief officer was on watch. Dour and taciturn, he was human enough to say:

“You didn’t have to hurry back, Mr. Cary. A pity to cut it short on a night like this. The old man is ashore.”

“That is very thoughtful of you, but the stewardess had to come back and report for duty.”

“An uncommonly pretty young woman,” was the gruff comment, “and as good as she looks, from all accounts. I can’t blame you for taking notice. Don’t lose your head, though. Going to sea is a dog’s life for a man that’s fool enough to get married.”

“Exactly what I used to say,” replied Cary, “but a man has been known to change his mind.”

He drifted along the promenade deck and chatted with a passenger or two. This failed to interest him. In the lee of the cargo sheds, where the ship was moored, the air was hot and heavy. He went to his room and tried to read. A cabin steward came in with the briar pipe, sent by Teresa who had thoroughly cleaned and boiled it. He lighted the pipe and went on deck again, roaming to and fro alone.

It occurred to him to walk into Cartagena, as far as the nearest shops, and buy some picture postcards to send to his mother in New Hampshire. He had noticed them in the windows, attractively colored, giving impressions really vivid of the charm and antiquity of the place. They would be treasured at home, probably passed around at a meeting of the missionary society or the Ladies’ Aid.

It was an excuse to work off his restless humor. An absurd anticlimax, in a way, to be tied to the routine of a fruit steamer, to be separated from one’s sweetheart because, in the role of a stewardess, she had to wait upon a lot of fussy, pampered women. Richard Cary swore under his breath. Dreams of adventure? The sense of tingling expectancy? Bonds not easy to break constrained him, habits of discipline and environment. He was torn two ways. It was a conflict between the two Richard Carys.

After finding the postal cards and mailing them, he walked through one quaint, shadowed street after another. Certain buildings he felt drawn to find, the House of the Holy Inquisition, the towered cathedral, which was so bold a landmark from seaward, the cloistered convents whose nuns had fled inland whenever the topsails of the buccaneers had gleamed off the Boca Grande or the Boca Chica.

He was passing a café when he noticed, with a casual glance, a military officer seated just inside the iron grillwork of a long window. The officer waved a hand and called out a courteous invitation. Cary recognized him as Colonel Fajardo, the Comandante of the Port. This was rather surprising. Affability was unexpected. Richard Cary was intrigued. The chief engineer had taken pains to warn him against this gentleman as both truculent and dangerous where a woman was involved. Apparently Colonel Fajardo wished to dispel such an impression. He pointed at the tiny cognac glass in front of him and suavely suggested:

“Will you give me the pleasure? You are enjoying the lovely night, and alone? How unfortunate!”

“Thank you. I can tarry a few minutes,” replied Cary. He entered the door and took a chair facing the Colombian colonel. The café was more than respectable. It was what one might have called a resort of fashion. A perfectly safe place in which to sit with Colonel Fajardo and sip a tiny glass of cognac. He was sober enough, reflected Cary. Haggard and a little the worse for wear, but not in the least quarrelsome. Jimmy, the bartender of the Tarragona, must have been unduly excited. No prospect of melodrama in such a situation as this.

Nonsense, to imagine plots of revenge and murder just because a man was a South American and had a few drinks in him! It was true enough that Colonel Fajardo looked the part. To incur his dislike and then encounter him in a dark street might possibly be unhealthy. Apparently, however, he had thought discretion the better part of valor. It was off with the old love and on with the new.

“You will stay in the Tarragona?” inquired the colonel, with an air of friendly solicitude. “You are fond of the ship and the trip to Colombian ports?”

“Yes, thank you. It is a pleasant change after the North Atlantic. I hope to stay in the ship, if only to see Cartagena again.”

“Ah, ha, there is no other reason, Mr. Cary? Pardon me, I do not intend to be personal,” murmured Colonel Fajardo. He laughed, without mirth. The leathery cheek was flushed. Richard Cary ignored the implication. He was not one to invite trouble. Let the other man show his hand.

Colonel Fajardo smothered a yawn. It had been a fatiguing day. Cary found little to say. At his leisure he finished the glass of cognac. Colonel Fajardo declined another. He had an engagement to wait for a friend. Cary therefore bade him good-night. A courtly bow from the waist, a graceful phrase, and the colonel sat himself down again.

Rather fortunate, reflected Richard Cary as he resumed his promenade through the streets of Cartagena. He would have to meet this man on shipboard every voyage. It might have been disagreeable, also awkward, a personal row with the Comandante of the Port.

Into a sleeping square hemmed in by houses rambled Richard Cary and came to the massive church of San Pedro Clavér whose bells had jangled in the squat tower through long centuries. At its altar the Spanish conquerors had knelt in ornate armor before invading the fetid jungles and daring the unknown mountains to seek the fabled El Dorado.

Crossing the square and halting to gaze at the church, Cary happened to notice, from the tail of his eye, several men loitering on a corner underneath a balcony. The shadows somewhat obscured them. He thought nothing of it. One thrummed a guitar. They were singing some plaintive, long-drawn love song with many minor chords.

The second mate of the Tarragona glanced at his watch. He ought to be retracing his course, in the direction of the waterfront. He walked along one side of the square. The group of serenaders beneath the balcony strolled in the same direction. They were still singing. It was agreeable to listen to them.

Richard Cary turned into a street which was no more than a gash between shuttered walls of stone. No lights were visible. The musicians, care-free and idle, drifted into the same street and followed along behind him. They were in no haste. The night was still young. Cary felt like loitering until they finished a song whose refrain carried a cadence sweet and wistful.

They walked a little faster. The guitar and the harmonious voices were silenced. Richard Cary quickened his own gait and swung into a long, easy stride. Presently it caught his attention that the musicians had also increased their pace. He was not drawing away from them. This was a trifle odd. The Colombians of Cartagena were not apt to walk as fast as this. They seldom exerted themselves.

As a rule, this stalwart American mariner was contemptuously careless of danger nor borrowed trouble of any sort. He was likely to be unsuspicious. Now, however, he turned to glance over his shoulder at these unusually energetic Colombians. His ear noted that they were not shod with leather. Their footfalls made a quick, soft pit-pat on the stone pavement. It was like the tread of furtive animals.

They crossed a thin, white shaft of moonlight where a house had crumbled and fallen. It was discernible that they were young men, quick and slender, wearing white shirts, but no coats. A moment later Cary saw them divide, two flitting across the street.

He looked ahead of him. The street was like a dark ravine. It had taken a slight bend. He could see one lighted window, perhaps a hundred feet distant, a long, yellow rectangle laced with iron bars.

He was unarmed. The bamboo cane was merely ornamental. Instinct told him that he stood in peril of his life. These bravos of Cartagena were not intent on robbery. They were of the breed of the mediæval night-hawks of the cloak and sword, the gente de capa y espada, the rufflers who did murder for hire.

Long of limb and deep-lunged, Richard Cary might have run away from them and saved his skin. There was no pith in these thugs of the Cartagena slums to overtake him in a stern chase. He flung the thought aside. By God, no Devon man had ever turned his back when outnumbered in these same narrow, frowning streets. Five to one? They paid him a handsome compliment.

He suddenly whirled about to face the pursuers. He stood massive and alert, head thrust forward, like a bull about to charge. The two bravos who had crossed the street came gliding back to take him in the rear. The three whom he faced deployed to encircle him. They moved rapidly, in silence.

He dreaded to hear a pistol shot. They were not as clumsy as that, to make a noise and alarm the street unless it had to be done that way. Richard Cary was ashamed to cry out for help. It was like striking his flag. He drew in his breath. His strong teeth were set tight together. His fists were clenched. They swung at his sides. They were like terrible mallets.

He moved, slowly, until his back touched the wall of the overhanging house. He was at bay. The bravos approached him like cats. They entertained a profound respect for him. The most reckless one of them plucked a knife from his shirt. He led the attack. A quick thrust or two and the thing would be done. It would be like sticking a steer for beef.

Colonel Fajardo was waiting at the Café Dos Hermanos for the word that the business had been dispatched. He had the money ready in his pocket. It would not do to fail. Madre de Dios, no! Not when a man like that one gave the order. He knew too much about these five bad young men of Cartagena. He had them by the scruff of their necks, as you might say.

In spite of this, there was a reluctance to close in with the huge figure of the yellow-haired Americano who stood so silent, so unafraid, with his back against the wall. He was mysterious, terrifying. However, there could be no delay. It was a ticklish undertaking at best, to kill him in an open street, in the middle of the evening. Earlier they had trailed the open carriage in which he rode with the woman from the ship, but it had been impossible to arrange anything.

The leader of the bravos lunged forward, one arm upraised. He stooped low, to thrust up. The Americano had no pistol. He would have fired it by now. Before that upraised arm could drive home the knife, it was gripped between the elbow and shoulder. Richard Cary’s hand had been as swift as the dart of a snake. Here was better luck than he had dared expect. His other hand clamped itself on the bravo’s forearm.

Before the rest of them could rush in to cut him down, he leaped away from the wall, dragging his struggling captive by the arm. The fellow was scrawny, no great weight for Richard Cary to do with as he pleased. He planted his legs apart, tightened the grip of his two hands and swung the body of the helpless bravo by the arm as a handle. Sheer over his head he swung him, in a circle as he might have whirled a bludgeon.

As he swung this extraordinary weapon he ran forward, with an agility amazing, dumbfounding. It cleared the path. The four ruffians scattered. They were crying out to each other. One dropped upon his knees. Another flung himself flat. A third was not quick enough. The revolving body of the bravo, extended straight, seemingly rigid, struck him with a peculiar thud. He reeled and limped into the shadows.

With a laugh, Richard Cary released his grip. The bravo, converted into a missile, went hurtling into the middle of the street with a dreadful momentum. He flew as if propelled from a catapult. His body smote the cobblestones. It sprawled without motion.

Snatching at this brief respite, Richard Cary turned and ran. It was not a retreat. He was running for that lighted window with the rusty iron bars set in the ancient mortar. The four bravos rallied. They were mindful of the menace of Colonel Fajardo’s wrath, as well as of the fat price he had promised them. They sprinted to overtake the fleeing Americano, wary to avoid such a blunder as had cracked the skull of their leader.

Richard Cary was too quick for them. He plunged against the iron bars of the window. A glance showed him an empty room. There was no help there. He had not hoped to find it. This was his own joyous battle, to be waged alone. At random he laid hold of an iron bar of the grating. Both ends of it were embedded in mortar which had become cracked and rotten. He braced a knee against the stone window ledge. His broad back heaved. The great shoulders strained. The veins purpled his temples. Suddenly his back straightened. The bar came away in his hands, bending, ripping out of the sockets in the mortar. It had been the work of a moment.

Now he had a weapon to his liking. Again he laughed. The bravos disliked the sound of that laugh. It made them tremble. By the light from the window they could see the iron bar in the hands of the colossal Americano. One of them jerked out a pistol and fired. The bullet clipped a lock of Cary’s yellow hair.

Before the rascal could pull trigger again, the iron bar smote him a slanting blow on the neck. He crumpled upon the cobblestones. His neck was beyond mending. There were three of them left. Two took to their heels. Behind them the iron bar beat the air like a flail. They moaned prayers to San Pedro Clavér, to the Blessed Virgin herself. They were murderers grown suddenly religious.

One of them stumbled. Death fanned him with its breath. He tried to wheel, knife in hand. Over him loomed the dread figure of the giant with the charmed life. The bravo was of a mind to clasp his hands and wail for mercy. The iron bar fell. It crashed against his shoulder and crushed it like putty. He rolled over, kicking and making queer noises in his throat.

Richard Cary halted in his tracks. One lone bravo was in sight, fleeing for the slums which had spewed him forth. He ran with the staccato pit-pat-pat of feet that spurned the cobblestones. Never in his life had he run with such speed. A bullet could not have overtaken him.

Four of the gang had been disposed of. Where was the fifth? Richard Cary was puzzled. He turned to search the street behind him. As he moved, a shadow moved with him. It was the shadow of the fifth bravo. He had recovered his wits, this cool and vigilant one who had a flair for dexterous assassination. Instead of exposing himself to a blow from that bone-crushing iron bar, he had hugged the nearest wall, awaiting an opportunity, keeping himself at Richard Cary’s back, shifting whenever he did. He hunted like a ferret.

From a trousers pocket he withdrew a bit of rubber hose filled with bird shot, flexible and heavy. He slipped his hand through a loop of cord. The weapon hung from his wrist. In the other hand was a knife with a thin blade.

Unable to fathom the disappearance of the fifth bravo, Cary delayed an instant longer. The iron bar was poised in his two hands. Just behind him moved a shadow. Suddenly he seemed to sense its presence. He stiffened and turned his head. It was a fraction of a second too late. A blow on the head stunned him. His eyes were filled with fire. His strength left him. He toppled forward with a groan. The iron bar clanged on the pavement.

As he fell, a knife was driven between his shoulder blades. He felt it sear like a red coal. A tremor passed through his mighty frame. Then he stretched prone and inanimate, an arm twisted under his head.

The only sound in the dark, narrow street was the pit-pat-pat of a man running away.

CHAPTER VI

THE TROUBLED HEART OF TERESA

Teresa Fernandez, the trim, immaculate stewardess, on her way to a passenger’s room with a breakfast tray glanced into the dining-saloon. Richard Cary’s chair was vacant. He had not yet come down. Usually he was punctual. It had been a pleasure to see him sitting there, so big and clean and wholesome, always good-humored, with a smile for every one. Teresa was disappointed at missing this first morning glimpse of him. It had not happened before.

She visited several staterooms and was blithe to the ladies who were too indolent to bestir themselves. Then the chief steward detained her with a list of the ship’s laundry which required checking up. This meant an inspection of the shelves in the linen room. As soon as she was free, the stewardess hastened to the nook beside the stairway and the wicker chair, on the chance of intercepting Richard Cary.

Bad luck this time! He must have come and gone. His chair was empty. She went to the foot of the stairs and beckoned her friend, the second steward. Mr. Cary had not been down, he told her, nor had he ordered breakfast sent to his room. A hearty man who had never missed a meal before! Perhaps he felt under the weather. The climate of Cartagena was trying for a stranger, and Mr. Cary had worked all day in the sun. The amiable young second steward decided to find out for himself.

Teresa hovered near a doorway of the promenade deck. She was anxious for Richard Cary’s health, but it would not do to show it. She had been careless already, perhaps, in inviting gossip. It was unwise for a woman compelled to live in a ship. Busy-bodies were eager to carry tales to the captain’s ears. The code of behavior was rigid and she had always avoided any appearance of fondness for a shipmate. She had treated them all alike and her record was clear of the breath of scandal.

When the second steward returned from his errand to the officers’ quarters, his face told her that something was wrong. She was afraid to hear news of an illness. Her heart pounded. The words flew to her lips:

“Is it the fever? Has the doctor been up to see him?”

The second steward shook his head mysteriously. He motioned Teresa into the library where they could be alone. With an effort she masked her agitation. She could be a clever actress. Richard Cary was merely another friend of hers.

“Vamoosed! Flown away!” exclaimed the second steward. “Mr. Cary is not in the ship. His bed wasn’t slept in last night, Miss Fernandez. He was supposed to go on watch at midnight. Now what do you think of that?”

“He is not in the ship?” she echoed, trying to keep her voice hushed. “Who told you so?”

“The third officer. A nice kid. He’s all fussed up about it. Mr. Cary is a regular tin god to him. You know what the rest of ’em are saying. Mr. Cary hit the beach last night and got soused. His first trip down this way, and the Cartagena rum slipped one over on him. He’ll turn up with a head on him before the ship sails. It will sure put him in wrong with the old man.”

“Who dares say these wicked things?” blazed Teresa. “Mr. Cary is not a common sailor bum. Thank you very much, Frank. If you find out any more, please come and tell me. It is very strange.”

The second steward was inclined to linger and discuss it, but Teresa’s manner dismissed him. She had no intention of betraying her emotions. This made it difficult to press her inquiries, to attempt to discover the facts in the case. Her head was throbbing. She felt tired. In order to be alone a few minutes she went to her room and bolted the door.

She had returned to the ship with Richard Cary before ten o’clock. He had said good-night at the gangway. A little later she had sent the deck steward to his room with the briar pipe. He had returned his thanks.

With a gesture of disgust she flung aside the theory that he might have sneaked ashore later for a quiet spree in Cartagena, wine and women, like so many of the men she had sailed with. Concerning the masculine sex she had few illusions left. Respectable shipmasters, passengers of pious repute at home, sporting young officers whose blood was hot, she had seen them yield to the lures of foreign ports.

Ah, thank God, Richard Cary was not that kind. In her eyes he was the perfect knight without fear and without reproach. It was now she realized how much she loved him, a love untarnished by the jealousies and suspicions that were native to her. Mere passion would have made her tremble with dreadful doubts that Don Ricardo had amused himself with her as a pastime and then had roved ashore to slake his desires with wanton girls.

Teresa wept a little, oppressed by the mystery of it, consumed by an anxiety that scorched her. Superstitious, she wished she had not let him touch the galleon’s bell in the patio of Señor Ramon Bazán. Perhaps the bell was accursed, bringing misfortune as well as foretelling it. Then she courageously fought down her quaking trepidation and wild fancies. Richard Cary was strong and unconquerable, a man to defy evil or disaster.

He was not in the ship. He had been absent most of the night. He had not slept in his room. Either he had gone ashore on some lawful business of his own, as an afterthought, or he had fallen overboard. Ridiculous, this! Teresa permitted herself a whimsical smile. It dimpled the corners of her mouth. Valgame Dios, he would have made a splash to awaken the whole harbor and make the ship rock at her moorings. Ha, ha, it would have made a tidal wave on the beach and floated the fishing boats into the streets.

Teresa Fernandez bathed her eyes, powdered her nose, smoothed her hair, and then emerged from her room. The ship was to sail at noon. Passengers from Cartagena were beginning to come on board—a rich Colombian family for the A suite, the mother very stout and overdressed, dapper father of a dusky complexion, a wailing baby, children of various sizes, a frightened nurse, innumerable parcels and bags. The stewardess was demanded to talk Spanish to them and bring order out of this domestic chaos.

As soon as possible, she ran on deck. Her eager vision searched the bridge, the cargo hatches, the wharf. The boyish third officer was at the gangway. She tried to speak casually.

“I heard Mr. Cary was missing. Has he come back yet?”

“Not a sign of him, Miss Fernandez. Darned if I know what to make of it. He was as steady as a clock. Reliable was his middle name. A quartermaster saw him leave the ship last night, about ten o’clock. The last he saw of Mr. Cary in the moonlight, he was walking into town. He didn’t feel sleepy, I guess, and went out for a stroll. And then he fell off the earth.”

“It is very, very queer, is it not?” sighed Teresa. “ ’Most twelve hours away from the ship! Has the captain tried to find him? Has he sent anybody into Cartagena? Has he ’phoned to the police?”

“Not that I know of,” answered the third officer. He hesitated and looked to right and left before going on to say: “It’s my notion that Captain Sterry won’t look for him, from something I heard him spill to the first mate. There is some hard feeling between them, Miss Fernandez. I can’t give you the dope on it, but the skipper doesn’t seem a mite broken-hearted over leaving Mr. Cary behind. He hasn’t lifted a finger to find him, as far as I can make out. It’s a rotten situation, believe me.”

“And you tell me the captain don’t care what has happened to Mr. Cary?” breathed Teresa, aghast at this disclosure. “He will stand the second mate’s watch on the run back to New York? I have been at sea as much as you, young man, and I give you my word this is too queer for me.”

To desert the ship herself, to use her own intelligent energy in the quest of the missing man, this was Teresa’s natural impulse. She knew Cartagena, on the surface intimately, beneath the surface by hearsay. It would be foolish, perhaps, to do such a thing until the very last moment. She would wait before making up her mind, wait until the whistle blew to cast off from the wharf.

Her superior officer, the chief steward, had seldom found fault with Miss Fernandez, but now he noticed her frequent tours on deck and the interruptions in her routine of duty. He was a fat Swiss who perspired copiously and eternally prowled through the kitchens, the pantries, the corridors in search of delinquencies. A pudgy finger beckoned the stewardess, and a hoarse voice barked:

“Miss Fernandez, I haf got to call you down. You vill lose your job mit me if you don’t mind it better. Vat is all dis rubberin’ and beatin’ it upstairs and down again? Here is dot woman in number seventeen ringin’ like hell and tellin’ her cabin steward she can’t get you.”

“That woman in seventeen ought to be poisoned, Mr. Schwartz,” sniffed Teresa. “All she does is eat, eat. I know what she wants now, orange juice and biscuit and a little fruit. My gracious, for breakfast I took that woman a cereal, a melon, bacon and eggs, fish, fried potatoes, and a stack of toast. She is suffering with a nervous breakdown and must be careful of herself, she tells me. You let her ring is my advice, Mr. Schwartz.”

The chief steward mopped his dripping jowls and sulkily retorted: “Dot woman pays big money for the cruise, a room mit bath, Miss Fernandez. Go chase yourself on the job, and no more runnin’ all over the ship like a crazy girl. Vas you smugglin’ or somethings? You mind your step. I can get plenty of goot stewardesses in New York for the Tarragona.”

Teresa’s white teeth closed over her lower lip. She detested this puffy swine who was in a position to bully her. He saw the temper flare in her black eyes and awaited the explosion. To his surprise she held herself in check. Her voice was almost indifferent as she replied:

“Yes, Mr. Schwartz. I will do as you say. I am feeling nervous this morning, not very well. I need to go on deck to get the air. But you will not have to scold me again.”

The stewardess hurried away. Mr. Schwartz gazed after her and sopped his bulging neck. The moods of Miss Fernandez were beyond him. Competent as she was, he would have preferred a Swiss or German woman. These Spanish girls were flighty. You couldn’t keep up mit ’em.

A few minutes later Teresa whisked into the passage leading to the room of Mr. McClement, the sagacious chief engineer. Here was a world secluded from the passenger quarters, a grimy, hard-working world in which moved scantily clad men with towels thrown over their shoulders. Teresa was safe from the espionage of the apoplectic chief steward. She rapped on a door which was opened by Mr. McClement, whose lean, freckled countenance was white with lather. He waved a razor in a gesture of cordial invitation.

Teresa entered. He removed a disorderly heap of books and clothing from a chair and offered no apologies.

“Just came out of the shower and was shifting into fresh duds,” he explained. “Been taking one of those condemned winches to pieces. The misbegotten machines go wrong every voyage. What can you expect, though, with these nigger donkeymen we pick up from port to port? I wanted to take a turn ashore, but couldn’t get off sooner. It is Dick Cary, of course. Where the deuce is he? Any theories to offer, Miss Fernandez?”

“Nothing at all, Mr. McClement. Not one thing at all,” she said, no longer trying to hide what she felt. “You are his best friend in the ship and—and he is a friend of mine, too. You know. You are so wise that it is no use fooling you.”

“I shouldn’t say that the large and ingenuous Cary had baffled my perceptions,” was the dry comment. “When I last saw him he was wearing his heart on his sleeve. God made him that way. The bigger they are the harder they fall.”

“And you honestly think he fell for me?” cried Teresa, with her most enchanting smile. It was like a flash of sunshine in a rifted cloud.

“His symptoms convinced me, Miss Fernandez. Humph! This pleases you, I see, but it gets us nowhere. Well, he didn’t go ashore to pull the town to pieces. I know him better than that. The captain makes that excuse for leaving him adrift.”

“You believe in Mr. Cary, just as I do? Ah, I could kiss you for that. I have heard those horrid lies on deck—”

“Pardon me, while I remove this lather, and perhaps you can find a dry spot,” he interrupted. “A kiss from you would be a noteworthy event in the somber chronicle of existence.”

“For shame, Mr. McClement. How can you joke with me?”

“Very well, then. In all seriousness, I am as uneasy about Cary as you are. I still take it for granted that he will turn up with some perfectly good alibi. This feeling is, I presume, because he is such a husky, two-fisted beggar with a level head on his shoulders. No greenhorn, either—accustomed to knocking about strange ports at all hours. But, confound him, he hasn’t turned up. You can’t get away from that, can you? And I don’t know where to look if I go buzzing around Cartagena for the hour or two before the ship sails. I did call up the central police office soon after breakfast. My Spanish is bad and a congenital idiot was on the other end of the line. I got nothing at all.”

“These police of Cartagena,” sighed Teresa. “They are a bunch of nuts.”

“Rather well put,” agreed McClement, who was no stranger to the Spanish Main.

“Is there anybody that hates Mr. Cary?” she asked, expressing the fear that had been lurking in her troubled soul. “I am foolish, maybe, but I cannot make myself forget that Colonel Fajardo. I dreamed about him last night, a terrible dream. I woke up crying. Do you believe in dreams, Mr. McClement?”

“In this instance I don’t really have to,” said he, rather glad to have her broach this sinister topic. He had been reluctant to alarm her.

“Then you know something about this Colonel Fajardo that is not a dream?” exclaimed Teresa. “It has to do with Mr. Cary?”

“Possibly. You are a sensible young woman, in spots, Miss Fernandez. And I can’t imagine your kicking your heels in hysterics. Besides, my room is too cluttered up for that sort of thing. I warned Cary yesterday afternoon to keep a weather eye lifted for this saturnine Comandante of the Port. He was drinking hard and the liquor seemed to make him wicked instead of drunk. You know what I mean? I got the impression that he had a provocation. You threw him over, I believe. I was looking on, last voyage and this. The emotions of Colonel Fajardo were quite obvious.”

“I should say so,” exclaimed Teresa. “The whole ship knew he was daffy about me. And he is now jealous of Mr. Cary? He has plenty of reason to be so. I am proud to say it to you, Mr. McClement, that Richard Cary is much more to me than my life. You are his friend and I can tell you.”

“Mutual, I should say,” was the comment. “You bowled him clean off his pins. The splendor of youth and romance! I am envious. It seems a frightful pity to upset you, my dear girl, but I do suspect this Fajardo blackguard. Cary laughed at me. Piffle, melodrama, and all that.”

“Yes, Mr. McClement, he would laugh. But I saw how that Colonel Fajardo looked at me when I told him I would not marry him. I swear to you, I crossed myself and said my prayers. And I saw him looking at Mr. Cary. Ah, now you understand why I had awful dreams last night.”

“Hum-m, and he saw you go ashore with Cary in the evening, Miss Fernandez. I noticed him stalking about and muttering to himself. He left the ship soon after that.”

“Ah, I believe it was a dream to warn me,” murmured Teresa, “but it was too late to save Mr. Cary.”

“Oh, I won’t say it is as bad as all that. I’ll toddle ashore right away and have a look around. Ten to one Dick Cary will come galloping aboard just before the whistle blows, as fresh as paint and with some extraordinary yarn or other.”

“You wish to jolly poor Teresa Fernandez,” said she. “Are you sure the captain will not help to find him?”

“Rather! Cary was unlucky enough to puncture his self-esteem, a most painful wound. It was the plump flapper with the bobbed hair—Captain Sterry was on the bridge with her—Cary snickered. And there you are. One of those momentous trifles. Life is like that.”

“I know,” said Teresa. “Captain Sterry is mushy sometimes. I have seen it with some other young girls. I know men pretty well. That was enough to queer Mr. Cary, all right. Well, Mr. McClement, I must go back to my job. You will tell me, if you find out anything?”

“Like a shot. Cary is not going to lose you if he can help it. Remember that. You can gamble on him to break out of almost any kind of a jam he gets into. I hope to God you and I are a pair of false alarms.”

Teresa had no more to say. The chief engineer was inserting the buttons in the cuffs of a fresh shirt. She walked slowly along the passage, scarcely seeing where she went. Richard Cary was dead. She said the words to herself. They hammered in her brain, over and over again, like the strokes of the galleon’s bell. No other reason accounted for his disappearance.

The air in the passage reeked with steam and oil. It was also intensely hot. She felt faint. Steadying herself, she opened a door to the lower deck. She leaned on the railing and stared at the blue harbor and the dazzling sea beyond. A slight breeze fanned her cheek. The vitality returned to her lithe and slender body. This was no time to be weak, to play the coward. She had never flinched from life. It was something to be a Fernandez of Cartagena. They had never whimpered when they held the losing cards.

Mr. Schwartz, the corpulent chief steward, prowling in search of whom he might annoy, discovered her at the railing. He began to growl, noticed her pallor, and changed his tune to say:

“You haf a sick feeling, Miss Fernandez? You look like you vas all in. Why didn’t you told me so? You go lay down. Let ’em holler. I vill be the sweet leetle stewardess for an hour or so.”

“I am not sick, Mr. Schwartz,” she gratefully assured him. “Dizzy, a little bit. I will go sit in my wicker chair till somebody rings.”

He grunted, slapped her on the shoulder with a sticky paw, and lumbered off to find victims more deserving of his wrath. Before sitting down to rest, Teresa wearily climbed to the promenade deck.

She was in time to see Colonel Fajardo ascend the gangway steps. His demeanor was haughty and dignified. The lines in his harsh face seemed to be graven a little deeper, its expression more predatory than usual. He was puffy under the eyes. A nervous twitching affected his upper lip. It was the morning after. Whiskey and cognac had not been good even for a man of blood and iron, a man with a copper lining.

It was unusual for him to come to the wharf so late on sailing day. He made some suave explanation to Captain Sterry who happened to meet him on deck. Teresa Fernandez stood watching them. She was tensely observant. Would she be able to read the soul of Colonel Fajardo? She must try. It was a throw of the dice. He was striding toward the smoking-room when she accosted him in Spanish:

“Pardon, Colonel Fajardo. You omit to say good-morning to me. Am I no longer the lovely flower of Cartagena?”

“Car-r-amba! I am as blind as an owl, not to see the adorable Teresa,” he jauntily responded. “You were shy, my little one. Not so much like the rose to-day. White like the lily, but no less beautiful.”

“A tongue as ready as his sword,” smiled Teresa. “What a devil with the women! Have you heard? The second officer of the ship cannot be found. It is sensational. In our peaceful, sleepy Cartagena of all places, where there are no wicked people to molest a sailor ashore!”

“Very true, señorita,” he gravely returned. “I am amazed. Captain Sterry mentioned the matter just now—the big second mate with the yellow hair. Not so easy to mislay him, by the Apostles. A dear friend of yours, too! It is distressing, and I sympathize with all my soul. Alas, I am in darkness, with no information for you. And the ship sails in two hours. It will be an unhappy voyage—for the friends of the deserter, Second Officer Cary.”

“Not a deserter, Colonel Fajardo,” she protested, very careful of her words and icily restrained. “You are, of course, acquainted with the chief of the municipal police. He is your brother-in-law? If a ship’s officer was in trouble, it would be reported to you as Comandante of the Port?”

“Doubtless I should hear of it, my lovely one,” he gravely assured her. “This man you speak of may have fled from Cartagena by night. Possibly he had planned to escape into hiding in order to avoid the consequences of some crime committed elsewhere. Has this occurred to you?”

“No, I am a stupid woman,” said Teresa. “A thousand thanks, Colonel Fajardo.”

“Permit me to kiss your hand, Señorita Fernandez. It is my condolence, my feeling of pity for you, to lose such a friend as the valiant, the enormous, the sentimental Señor Cary. Would that I might lighten your sorrow.”

She snatched her hand away and regarded him with a steadfast and penetrating scrutiny. His voice had held a note of flagrant mockery. Her ear was quick to detect it. His gloating smile also betrayed him. Yes, she was looking into his soul. It was like the gift of second sight. What she saw there made her shiver. Unwittingly he had made confession. Teresa Fernandez knew. His guilt had ceased to be a torturing surmise.

She let him pass into the smoking-room. Then she went down to her own stateroom. As she entered it, the faint sound of the ship’s bell on the bridge came thin and metallic. Ting, ting—ting, ting! Four bells! Ten o’clock! Two hours until sailing time. It was useless to wait and hope for Richard Cary to return at the last moment. Teresa was now convinced of this.

For some time she sat lost in thought. To a knock on the door she paid no heed. She was quite calm. The only sign of nervousness was the pit-pat-pat of one little white shoe on the rug. She rose and looked in the mirror. What she saw was unlike the bonny Teresa Fernandez with the red lips, the warm tint in the olive cheek, the eyes that had shone with the joy of living only yesterday. All expression seemed to have been ironed from her face. It was blank and very solemn.

She lifted a rosary from the nail where it hung at the head of her bed. She fingered the beads. Her lips moved. Then she placed the rosary around her neck, underneath the plain white shirt-waist of her stewardess’s garb. There was no indecision, no struggle.

Presently she opened a drawer at the bottom of the closet and held up a wooden box. In it was an automatic pistol, so small that she could almost hide it in her hand. It had been advisable to have the little pistol with her when ashore at night in seaports where the streets led through the haunts of rough men.

She slipped it into the pocket of the white apron. She would deal out justice, if needs be, and willingly pay the price as became a woman who had loved and lost, who was a Fernandez of Cartagena.

CHAPTER VII

THE MAN WHO LIED

These last hours before the sailing of the Tarragona made the indolent wharf bestir itself against its inclination. It was a pity to disturb the tranquil noontide when all Cartagena closed the shutters and went to sleep. In its baking, quivering streets the proverbial pin would have dropped with a loud report. However, for every departing passenger many friends exerted themselves to go down to the steamer, even though the voyage might be no farther away than Santa Marta or Porto Colombia. The promenade deck was like the stage of an opera, tears, embraces, perfervid dialogue, animated choruses surrounding the actors.

The railroad whose tracks ran out upon the wharf shared this intense excitement. Belated freight cars filled with hides and sacks of coffee came rolling down in frantic haste. It was always that way, a general air of surprise, almost of consternation, that the steamer actually proposed to sail on time instead of mañana. Why, she was mad enough to leave passengers, influential people of Colombia, and heaps of coffee and hides, even if they were only a few hours late. It was discourteous, to say the least.

Amid this confusion and noise, Colonel Fajardo moved like an imperious dictator. He was unmistakably the Comandante of the Port. Thievish idlers fled from the gaunt figure in the uniform of white with the medals and gold stripes. A scowl and a curse, and the traffic untangled itself to let a porter pass with a trunk on his back or an American tourist buying a green parakeet and the beaded bags woven by the Indian women.

Teresa Fernandez desired another interview with Colonel Fajardo. It was imperative. To make a scene on board the ship, however, was repugnant to her sense of decorum, of her fidelity to the Company’s service. This difficulty perplexed her. She was jealous of the ship’s good name. She was a deep-water sailor with a sailor’s loyalties and affections for the ships she served in.

Her eyes followed the movements of Colonel Fajardo who found much to do on the wharf. She had certain questions to ask him. Liar that he was, the odds were all against his answering anything truly, but the chance would be offered him. Justice demanded it. Intently she watched him as he stalked to and fro. She was singularly unmoved by impatience. What was destined to happen would happen.

No longer did her gaze, questing and wistful, turn landward in the hope of seeing Richard Cary come back to the Tarragona. There was no such thing as hope.

The cargo sheds extended almost the length of the wharf. Between them and the ship were the railroad tracks and the entrance from the custom-house gate. On the farther side of the cargo sheds was a narrow strip of wharf where smaller vessels could tie up, mostly Colombian sailing craft that traded with the villages on the lagoon or made short trips coastwise. Just now the graceful masts of one schooner lifted above the roofs of the sheds.

It did not escape Teresa’s notice when Colonel Fajardo passed around the outer end of the cargo sheds to the narrow strip of wharf behind them. He was screened from the sight of the ship; also from the laborers at the freight cars and the hoisting tackle. He had betaken himself into a certain seclusion which offered Teresa the opportunity she craved.

Unheeded she tripped down to the wharf. It was usual for her to pass to and fro on farewell errands, perhaps to purchase curios for the ladies who were unable to bargain in Spanish. And there were always friends, residents of Cartagena, with whom she enjoyed exchanging greetings. The sailing hour was likely to be a gala time for Señorita Teresa Fernandez. She was the most popular stewardess of the steamers in this service.

Slipping aside, she followed Colonel Fajardo around the outer end of the long cargo shed. He had been on the deck of the Colombian schooner alongside and was just stepping back to the string-piece of the wharf. Evidently he had found no one in the schooner. Whatever the purpose of his visit may have been, it was banished from his mind by the sight of Teresa Fernandez. He appeared startled.

Walking a little way along the edge of the wharf, he was abreast of the schooner’s stern when Teresa confronted him. He halted there, lifted his cap with an elaborate flourish, and signified that he could not be detained. Teresa put a hand in the pocket of her apron. She kept it there while she said:

“Please do not move, Colonel Fajardo. It will be unfortunate for your health. I am so glad that you came to this quiet spot where we are not interrupted. I could not sail without giving myself the pleasure of saying adieu. The other side of the wharf is so crowded, so conspicuous.”

He was not deceived into surmising that this desirable woman had repented of her coldness. It was no coquetry. Her voice had a biting edge. Her face was even whiter than when he had met her on deck. Uneasily he glanced behind him and then over her shoulder. They were alone and unobserved. The Colombian schooner, her crew ashore, rocked gently at its mooring lines. Beyond it was a wide stretch of azure harbor upon which nothing moved except a far distant canoe as tiny as a water bug. Between this strip of wharf and the shore was a high wooden barrier with a closed gate. It was a curious isolation, with so much life and motion on the other side of the cargo sheds, only a few yards away.

Colonel Fajardo bared his teeth in a forced smile as he said:

“As I remember, señorita, you were not so anxious for the pleasure of my company yesterday. I am, indeed, flattered to have you seek me out for an adieu, but I must return to my duties. The Tarragona will soon blow her whistle. Have you anything of importance to say before you sail?”

Teresa removed her hand from the pocket of the white apron. Her hand almost covered the little automatic pistol. The colonel caught a glimpse of it, this object of blued steel with a round orifice no bigger than a pill. He was still standing close to the edge of the wharf. Astonished, he almost lost his balance. Recovering himself, he snatched at Teresa’s hand. She eluded him with a quick backward step.

The pistol was aimed straight at the belt of Colonel Fajardo. He stood rigid, his posture that of a man mysteriously bereft of volition. Carefully Teresa lowered her hand until the pistol nestled in the pocket of her apron, concealed from view, but the short barrel bulged the white fabric. It was still pointed at the middle of Colonel Fajardo. Instinctively he flattened his stomach until it was like a board. He had a shrinking feeling in that region, like that of a man who has fasted many days.

Thus they stood facing each other in a tableau as still as a picture. When Teresa Fernandez, spoke, it was not loudly, but her voice vibrated like a bell.

“Place your hands on your hips, outside your coat, Colonel Fajardo. And be careful to keep them so. Your own pistol is in a holster inside your coat. I have noticed it there. It will be unwise for you to try to get it.”

Her captive’s gaze was wild and roving. He dared not cry out. This hell-begotten woman carried death in a touch of her finger. Lunacy afflicted her. It was a predicament for such a man as himself, a situation incredibly fantastic. His gaze returned to her face, and also to that little bulge in the pocket of her apron. It gave him the effect of being cross-eyed. The nervous twitching of his upper lip was like a grimace. He was grotesque.

Teresa Fernandez had no time to waste. She asked, peremptorily: “Where is the second officer of the Tarragona? What misfortune occurred to Señor Cary in Cartagena last night? The truth, Colonel Fajardo, or, as God beholds me, I shall have to kill you.”

He could not make himself believe that the game was up. He had twisted out of many a tight corner. It was impossible for him to conceive of being beaten by a woman. He would endeavor to cajole this one, to play for time. Her nerves would presently break under the strain. He was watching her like a cat. Let her waver for an instant and he would pounce. He answered her questions in the earnest tones of a man who lived on intimate terms with truth.

“By the holy spirit of my dead mother, señorita, your words are like the blank wall of the shed yonder. They mean nothing. You have deluded yourself. Some malicious person in the ship must have led your mind astray. I have made enemies. Why not? It is evidence of my integrity and courage. What is this big second officer of the Tarragona to me? I have not even spoken to the man. He is a stranger.”

Teresa’s hand moved slightly in the pocket of her apron. The little bulge indicated that the orifice of the pistol was pointed somewhat higher than the colonel’s belt. He perceived this. His two hands rested upon his hips, outside the coat. They seemed to have been glued there. His leathery cheek blanched to a dirty hue. He swallowed with an effort. The cords stood out on his neck.

Solemnly Teresa Fernandez framed her accusation in words: “You have killed Señor Ricardo Cary. You yourself, Colonel Fajardo, or more likely by the hands of others. If you are ready to confess it, I will permit the Government of Cartagena to decree the punishment. It will be left to the law and the courts. Do you confess?”

“Confess to what, my little one?” he blurted, with a touch of the old bravado. “Careful! You are in a strange frenzy, and that pistol may explode before you know it.”

“I will know it,” said Teresa, “and you will know it, Colonel Fajardo. I am familiar with the little pistol. For the last time, are you a guilty or an innocent man?”

“As innocent as the Holy Ghost—” he protested, but his voice stuck in his throat, for he read death in the girl’s unflinching glance. Desperately he attempted to snatch at the holster on his hip, with one swift motion to take her by surprise and slay her where she stood. It was instinctive, like the leap of a trapped wolf.

Teresa read his sinister purpose. If he was swift, she was the swifter. She raised her hand from the pocket of her apron. It paused for a small fraction of a second and almost touched a bit of red ribbon attached to a medal on the left breast of Colonel Fajardo’s handsome white coat. He stammered thickly:

“Ah, wait—wretched slut of a woman—Jesus, have mercy—oh, oh, my heart—may you roast in hell—”

The report of Teresa’s pistol had been no louder than the crack of a whip. One report, no more. When a bullet had drilled clean through a man’s heart, it was unnecessary to fire again.

Colonel Fajardo’s hands flew from his hips. They were beating the air. His mouth was slack, like that of an idiot. He blinked as if immensely bewildered. His chin fell forward. His body swayed tipsily. Teresa stood waiting, her left hand clasped to her bosom. It was the end. She had seen death come by violence to men on shipboard.

The unforeseen occurred when Colonel Fajardo, swaying and sagging, tottered backward and disappeared. He had been standing close to the edge of the wharf. His fingers clawed the empty air as he plunged downward, barely clearing the overhanging stern of the Colombian schooner.

Teresa laid hold of a piling and stared down at a patch of frothy water. Small waves ran away from it in widening circles. They lapped against the schooner’s rudder. Nothing else was visible. Presently, however, a huge black fin, triangular, sheared the surface like a blade. Another like it glistened and vanished. There was the sheen of white bellies as the greedy sharks of Cartagena harbor swirled downward into the green water.

Teresa Fernandez averted her eyes. The body of Colonel Fajardo would never be seen again. He was obliterated. She let the pistol fall through a crack between the planks of the wharf. Then she walked to the side of the cargo shed and leaned against a timber. She had pictured herself as almost instantly discovered and seized, the body of Colonel Fajardo lying upon the wharf. For this she had prepared herself. She had been willing to pay the price.

Now she realized that her deed was undiscovered. The isolation was unbroken. The harsh commotion of the ship’s winches, the rattle of the freight cars as the switching engine bumped them about, the yells of the Colombian stevedores, had made the whip-like report of the pistol inaudible. And the whole thing had been so quickly done. Perhaps two or three minutes she had stood there and talked with Colonel Fajardo.

A revulsion of feeling shook the soul of Teresa Fernandez. Why should she suffer bitter shame and die in expiation of a righteous act? It was no crime in her sight. She had administered justice because otherwise it would have been forever thwarted. And, in the last resort, had she not fired the little pistol in self-defense? These thoughts raced through her brain during the moments while she leaned against the timber of the cargo shed.

She mustered strength. Her knees ceased trembling. A hint of color returned to her olive cheek. Her lips were not so bloodless. Head erect, she walked along the narrow strip of wharf, but not to pass around the outer end of the shed. Instead of this, she sought the shoreward exit through the high wooden barrier. The gate was fastened, she found, but another way of escape led through an empty room in which baggage was sometimes stored for examination. She passed through this room and emerged on the railroad tracks.

Between two freight cars she made her way and so to the custom-house gate and the main entrance from the open square beyond. In a shady spot squatted an Indian woman with beaded bags displayed on her lap. Another drowsed beside a pile of grass baskets. Teresa paused to buy two beaded bags and a basket.

Just then a carriage dashed into the open square. A portly Colombian gentleman and his wife called out cordial salutations to Señorita Fernandez. A small boy fairly wriggled with joy as he flew out of the carriage to fling both arms around the waist of the stewardess of the Tarragona.

She welcomed them gayly. They had made the southward voyage with her several months earlier, en route to their home in Bogotá. Teresa walked back to the ship with them, the small boy clinging to her hand and piping excitedly in Spanish. Would she show him again how to play those wonderful games of cards? He had forgotten some of them. And the story of the jaguar that sat on the roof of the peon’s hut and clawed a hole through the thatch and tumbled right in?

Yes, Teresa would tell him all the tales she could remember. There would be plenty of time during the voyage to New York. In this manner the stewardess returned to the ship, beaded bags and grass basket on one arm, the happy urchin from Bogotá clinging to the other. The youthful third officer was at the gangway. He halted her to say:

“Nothing doing. Not a sign of Mr. Cary. The chief engineer drove into town. He may dig up a clue, but I doubt it.”

“Mr. McClement is a sharp one,” said she, “but the time is too short.”

“Sure! It seems as if that chesty gink, Colonel Fajardo, might have helped. He ought to be wise to what goes on in Cartagena.”

“Ah, yes, it would seem so,” said Teresa as she stepped on board the ship. She found the staterooms of the family from Bogotá and saw that nothing was lacking for their comfort. Then she proceeded to her own room, but not for long. She washed her hands, scrubbing them with particular care. In a way, it was a symbol. Then she put on a fresh apron. The one she had worn on the wharf was wrinkled. The pocket showed a small stain of oil where the little pistol had nestled.

A few minutes later she met the chief steward in the corridor. He detained her to rumble:

“You haf tooken my advice, Miss Fernandez, and laid off a leetle while? Now go chase yourself on the job.”

“All right, Mr. Schwartz. I will make myself pleasant to that cranky woman in seventeen.”

Teresa went and knocked at the stateroom door. A querulous voice said, “Come in.” The woman curled up on the divan, under the electric fan, was not much older than Teresa, but she looked faded and unlovely. Rouge and lip-stick simulated a vanished bloom. An empty cocktail glass was at her elbow. An ash tray reeked with dead cigarettes.

“For God’s sake, Miss Fernandez, is the ship ever going to leave this beastly hole?” she complained. “I’m dying with the heat and bored sick. Rub some of that bay rum on my head. It feels as if the top would fly off.”

“Yes, madam. It will be cooler soon, when we get out of the harbor. Cartagena is always hot in the middle of the day.”

“Hot? You said something. And stupid! I didn’t mind the cruise until we tied up to this dump. A fool doctor shoved me off on a sea voyage, and my husband couldn’t leave his business. It was wished on me, all right.”

“Cartagena is very beautiful, so many people think,” ventured Teresa.

“Huh, they must be dead ones. Nothing has happened here in three hundred years. I’ll bet you couldn’t wake it up with a ton of dynamite. How did you ever stand living here? You seem to have some pep. Got it in little old New York, I’ll bet.”

“Perhaps, madam. New York is a live one.”

“Right-o. That’s where you get action. No Rip Van Winkle stuff. You can always start something. These Colombians? Dead on their feet—asleep at the switch.”

“I am a Colombian, madam,” smiled Teresa, an absent look in her eyes. “Yes, nothing ever happens in Cartagena. It is stupid and asleep. Nobody could start anything at all.”

Deftly the stewardess ministered to the aching head of the woman in seventeen, soothing her with a murmurous, agreeable flow of talk. The steamer blew three long, strident blasts. Teresa excused herself and hastened on deck. The Tarragona was moving slowly away from the wharf. Presently she swung to traverse the wide lagoon and so reach the open sea through the narrow fairway of the Boca Chica.

The swell of the Caribbean was cradling the steamer when Teresa Fernandez found time to rest in the wicker chair beside the staircase. She gazed into the dining-saloon. At a small table in a corner sat a wireless operator and the assistant purser. Between them was an empty chair. Teresa sighed and closed her eyes. She would move her wicker chair to another place. She did not wish to see the second officer’s empty chair.

Late in the afternoon she met the chief engineer on deck. In spotless white clothes he strolled with hands clasped behind him, alone as usual, a lean, abstracted figure. He paused to stand at the rail beside the stewardess.

At first they found nothing to say. They were staring at the roseate, misty city of Cartagena. It seemed to rise from the sea and float like a mirage. The surf flashed white against the wall of enduring masonry that marched around this ancient stronghold of the conquistadores. Teresa Fernandez said in a low voice:

“Do you understand what Mr. Cary meant when he talked about the Cartagena of ages and ages ago, as if he had really been there? He is dead, I know, but it seems to me that he must be alive, that he will always be alive in Cartagena.”

“It was a romantic obsession of his, Miss Fernandez. By the way, did you say anything to Colonel Fajardo? I fancied you might have given him the third degree, after the session in my room. I found out nothing when I drove into town. It was a gesture, as you might say. I had to be doing something.”

“I asked him very straight, Mr. McClement,” replied Teresa, her eyes meeting his. “He swore he had nothing to tell me.”

“Humph! Then I’m afraid we can never find out.”

McClement resumed his stroll. More than once he glanced at Teresa still lingering at the rail and looking at distant Cartagena, now a vanishing vision. The chief engineer shook his head. The expression of his intelligent and reflective face was inscrutable. To himself he muttered:

“But men at whiles are sober

And think by fits and starts,

And if they think, they fasten

Their hands upon their hearts.”

CHAPTER VIII

UPON THE CITY WALL

The prison of Cartagena consisted of a long row of arched, tomb-like apartments built against the inside of the city wall. Two centuries earlier, this series of stone caverns had been the barracks of the Spanish troops who had defended this treasure port against one furious assault after another. Here was a prison likely to hold the most desperate malefactor. Only an earthquake could have weakened such masonry as this.

Upon a cot in one of these gloomy rooms lay stretched the body of a young man of heroic proportions. He was not a native. The fair skin and yellow hair were alien to the coasts of the Caribbean. His hairy chest was bare. Around it was bound a strip of cloth as a hasty bandage. His head was half-swathed in other folds of cloth. It was perplexing to know whether he was alive or dead.

The door faced a small open yard in which was a rude shelter from the sun, a shack knocked together of poles and boards. It had a covered porch in which hammocks were slung. A Colombian soldier lolled in one of them. Two others squatted on the floor and languidly shook a leather dice-box. They were small, coffee-colored men wearing coarse straw hats and uniforms of blue cotton drilling much faded. Their rifles leaned against a plank table littered with dirty dishes and black with flies.

The soldier in the hammock was a corporal. He aroused himself to scuffle to an iron door and peer in at the silent figure upon the cot. It had not moved. A waste of time to have washed and bandaged this murderous prisoner. Now these poor soldiers would be put to the trouble of digging a grave, and such a devil of a big grave! The two privates, Francisco and Manuel, were shaking the dice to see who should wield the accursed shovel.

The corporal yawned and loafed back to the hammock to rest. The journey of a few yards to the iron door had fatigued him. The trio chewed sugar-cane and lazily discussed the huge Americano, a most uncommon fish to be landed in their net. Alive and vigorous, he would be most dangerous. It would be as much as a man’s life was worth to enter his cell. Fortunately he had been hit on the head and stabbed in the back when discovered in a street not far from the little plaza of the Church of San Pedro Clavér.

He had run amuck, loco with rum, not much doubt of that. He had attacked as many as five young men of Cartagena, a serenading party innocently singing and playing the guitar. He had broken the necks of two and smashed the shoulder of another. Like a flail he had swung an iron bar actually plucked from a window with the strength of a giant and the fury of a madman.

By chance, the Comandante of the Port, the famous Colonel Fajardo, walking home from the Café Dos Hermanos, had discovered the body of the Americano and his victims, a sight to wonder at in that respectable street of peaceful Cartagena. Colonel Fajardo had summoned the police. They had decided to keep the matter hushed until they could investigate. They had been annoyed to find a little life in him. Such a man was better dead. He was unknown to the police. Perhaps a sailor from a ship or one of those red-faced, hard-fisted Yankee foremen from the gold mines of the Magdalena.

It had been advisable to put him in the prison instead of the hospital. Think what he had done! Tried to kill five young men because he disliked the way they sang and played the guitar!

Richard Cary was not quite so near burial as they took for granted. His breath so faint that it would scarcely have fogged a mirror, he had remained in the black realm of unconsciousness until now. The return to life was blurred and glimmering, like a feeble light in this profound darkness. It refused to be snuffed out. At first like a mere spark, to his stupefied senses it seemed to become hotter and hotter until it glowed like a coal, burning inside his head and torturing him.

He did not try to move, but lay wondering why these fiery pains should dart and flicker through his brain. He raised his leaden eyelids and dimly, waveringly perceived the arched stone ceiling blotched with dampness. It was like a dungeon. Were these merely things he had read of in books that shocked and quickened the mysterious process of his awakening? His groping mind was ablaze with illusions which seemed intensely actual. Tenaciously he endeavored to banish them, but they poignantly persisted. The sweat ran down his face. He groaned aloud. Spasms of alarm shook him.

Was this a dungeon of the Holy Office of the Inquisition? The cord was already twisted around his temples. His head was almost bursting. The stake and the fagot were waiting for him in the courtyard. Such had been the cruel fate of many a stout seaman of Devon—burly James Bitfield twice racked and enduring the water torment until death eased him—young Bailey Vaughan slashed with two hundred stripes in the market-place and enslaved in the galleys for seven years—gray-haired John Carelesse dying of the strappado, the pulley that wrenched joint and sinew asunder.

The pains in his head were intolerable. The yellow-robed agents of the Holy Office were twisting the cord tighter, to bite into his skull. By God, they could never make him recant like a whining cur and a traitor to his faith. The torture of the cord wasn’t enough for them. The fiends were pressing the red-hot iron to his back, between the shoulder blades.

It was the agony of these hallucinations that roused him out of his coma, that held him from slipping back into the dark gulf. One hand moved and clenched the frame of the cot. His eyes remained open and wandered from the gray stone arch above his head. His chest rose and fell in normal suspiration. Mistily he recognized himself as the Richard Cary who was the second officer of the Tarragona. Cartagena in the moonlight and Teresa Fernandez—a galleon’s bell that foretold disaster, dong, dong—dong, dong—the twang and tinkle of a guitar, of an ominous guitar.

He had been knocked out? Well, it was a mighty hard head to break. Solid above the ears, his young brother Bill had delicately hinted. The pain was terrific, but this didn’t necessarily mean a crack in it. That head had been banged before now.

Stabbed in the back, besides! That was more serious. It ought to have finished him. Such had been the bravo’s intention. But he had never thrust a knife into a back as broad and deep as this, with such thick ridges of muscles that overlaid it like armor. Also, in the flurry of haste, he may have driven the blade aslant.

Anxiously Richard Cary drew in his breath and expelled it. He concluded that his lungs were undamaged. That his heart was still beating proved that the knife had missed a vital part. A deep flesh wound and muscles that throbbed and burned! So much for that.

He was alive and not mortally hurt. He felt hazily thankful. This stone kennel was too much like a prison cell to be anything else. A rotten deal, to throw a man in jail after failing to kill him. This seemed like the fine hand of Colonel Fajardo. It was one way to finish the job. His five bravos had made a mess of it.

His disordered mind fitfully clearing, Richard Cary became aware of the one thing of supreme importance. His ship was to sail at noon. He fumbled in the pockets of his torn trousers. His watch and money were gone. What hour of the day was it now? He rolled his head and blinked at the little window set in the iron door. The sunlight blazed like a furnace in the yard outside. It was the breathless heat and brightness that smote the city near the middle of the day. Perhaps it was not yet noon.

His first voyage in the Tarragona and logged as a deserter? An officer who had earned promotion on his merits in the hard schooling of the North Atlantic trade? It was an imperative obligation to return to the ship. Had Captain Sterry made an effort to find him? Perhaps not. Good riddance might be his feeling in the matter. An official word from the Union Fruit Company would have set powerful influences at work in Cartagena. Political connections safeguarded its vast commercial interests on the Colombian coast. The inference was that Captain Sterry had been willing to let his too candid second mate go adrift.

The hope of getting back to the ship was another delusion. This the battered man on the cot presently realized. He was buried alive in this stone vault of a prison and lacked strength even to lift his head. Tears of weakness filled his eyes. He felt profound pity for himself. He was a forlorn derelict on a lee shore.

Soon, however, the sweat dried on his face. His skin grew dry and hot. His heart was beating faster. The burning sensation in his head was diffusing itself through his body. The air of the room was more stifling than ever. It was like a furnace. Strange, but he felt less inert, not so helpless to move. He was dizzy, light-headed, but this was preferable to the incessant waves of pain. He did not know that fever was taking hold of him. He mistook it for a resurgence of his tremendous vitality, evidence that he could pull himself together and break the bonds of his weakness.

He lay motionless, waiting, trying to think coherently, while the fever raced through his veins. He seemed to be floating off into space. The sensations were agreeable. No longer sorry for himself, he was unafraid of any odds. Keep him in a Cartagena jail? Nonsense. All he had to do was to use his wits. He laughed to himself, but he was careful to lock his lips. Not a sound escaped him. He was wary and cunning.

The Colombian corporal of the guard decided to pry himself from the hammock and ascertain whether the big Americano was dead by this time. Instead of peering through the window, the corporal thought best to make a closer investigation. He was impatient with this prisoner who had stubbornly refused to become a corpse. A clumsy iron key squeaked in the rusty lock of the door. The corporal walked in and stooped over the cot.

Yes, the Americano had about finished with the business of living. A hand held over his mouth detected no breath at all. The corporal was about to shift his hand to the naked chest to discover if the heart had ceased to beat.

Two mighty arms flew up. One of them wrapped itself around the corporal’s neck and pulled him down. Fingers like steel hooks squeezed his throat. He gurgled. He was pop-eyed. His grass sandals were kicking the stone floor. It was a small, scratching noise unheard on the porch of the shack where the two privates drowsed and rolled cigarettes.

The corporal’s toes ceased their rustling agitation. His lank body was as limp as an empty sack. It slid gently from the side of the cot. It sprawled so still that a green lizard ran over one twisted leg and paused close by to swell its ruby throat. The hour of the siesta appeared to have overtaken this luckless corporal somewhat earlier than usual.

His absence would cause comment. Richard Cary upheaved himself from the cot and almost toppled over. He struggled to keep his feet. Drunk with fever, he began to walk with a giddy, erratic motion in the direction of the door. He succeeded in reaching it. Grasping the timbered framework, he stood there half-blinded by the dazzle of the sun. The two Colombian soldiers looked up and saw him.

Body and blood of San Felipe! What an apparition! A man raised from the dead and such a man! What had befallen the corporal? It was easy to guess that. For the moment these two affrighted soldiers were incapable of motion. The love of life, however, pricked them to scramble for their rifles. Already the fearful specter of the Americano was lurching from the doorway, across the yard, straight at them.

With chattering teeth, Private Francisco dived to clutch a rifle. Private Manuel tripped and rammed into him. They clawed each other, with bitter words. The sturdier Francisco was first to lay hands on a rifle. He pulled trigger. Nothing but a foolish click. It was the corporal’s rifle, unloaded because he had intended cleaning it mañana. Francisco flung the useless thing aside. He could run faster without it.

The Americano picked up the discarded rifle and wheeled in pursuit of him. For a dead man, this yellow-haired ogre could be as quick as a tiger. As if the rifle were no heavier than a pebble, he hurled it, butt foremost, at the fleeing Francisco. It struck him on the hip. He turned a somersault. So fast was he running that his heels flipped over his head. When he fell, the dust whirled like brown smoke. He tried to crawl away on hands and knees.

The Americano turned to find the other soldier. He was on the porch, about to fire his rifle. The barrel waved like a leaf in a gale. Here was enough to disturb the bravest soldier. The first bullet went singing off into the blue sky. Before Manuel could shoot again, something like a house fell upon him and flattened him out. His head whacked a plank. A fist drove his jaw askew. He was instantly as peaceful as the corporal who slumbered with a green lizard for a comrade.

The disabled Francisco had not crawled far on hands and knees. Richard Cary tottered after him and dragged him to the timbered doorway of the vaulted cell. A thrust of the foot and Francisco rolled inside like a bale. It was better to stay there, he thought, than to try to run away again. And now Manuel was dumped in on top of him. The iron door closed and the key squeaked in the rusty lock. Richard Cary tossed the key over the roof of the shack.

Thus far he had behaved with normal promptitude and efficiency. Now he reeled to the bench on the porch and fought against utter collapse. His head spun like a top as he groped for a coffee pot on the table and drained the black brew to the dregs. It seemed to steady his quivering nerves, to clear the mists of fever from his brain. He would go and search for his ship until he dropped in his tracks.

One of the discarded rifles caught his eye, but he found it too heavy to carry. A machete hung from a peg in the wall. It was a handy weapon, with a straight blade. With it he slashed strips from the hammock and tied them around his bare feet. There was a grain of method in his madness.

The machete in his hand, he moved out into the yard and gazed up at the city wall. Here and there were easy ascents, he knew, built for the passage of troops and vehicles. One of these sloping roadways ought to be somewhere near the prison which had once been the barracks of the Spanish garrison. From the lofty parapets he should be able to see the harbor and the wharf where the Tarragona berthed. Then he could perhaps make his way thither before an alarm was raised. If they tried to stop him, he would hack a path with the machete.

Rocking on his feet and muttering aloud, he walked out of the yard and turned at random. Unseen, he passed into a paved alley and saw in front of him a wide ramp leading to the top of the wall. Fortune had not deserted him. Very slowly he climbed the rutted, crumbling slope, panting for breath, his face a bright crimson, his knees crippling under him. He could not finish the ascent, and yet he did. He was broken in body, but his will urged him on.

Gaining the broad esplanade he made for the nearest parapet. It was at the corner of a bastion where stood a small, round sentry tower. With arms outspread he clung to this support while his swimming gaze raked the harbor. It was not yet noon, for the white hull and the yellow funnel of the Tarragona glistened alongside the cargo sheds. The distance was not far. Through a gateway in the wall he might reach the beach and so leave the city behind him. Unless his strength should utterly forsake him, a merciful deliverance was beckoning.

He found it much easier, however, to cling to the small round sentry tower than to resume his pitiable pilgrimage. He tried it once, twice, and stumbled drunkenly. But he was not beaten—he could not be—while the blessed sight of the Tarragona compelled him. He tried again and advanced toward a square, grim mass of stone that marked the nearest gateway.

Then he heard three blasts blown on a steamer’s whistle, deep-throated and prolonged. He knew the Tarragona’s voice and what this signal meant. It was her courteous adieu to Cartagena. She was outward bound, through the Boca Chica and to the rolling spaces of the Caribbean. Richard Cary dragged himself to the parapet and stood looking at his ship, but only for a moment. Then he buried his face in his arms. Sobs shook him. It was the cruelest joke that ever a man had played on him. He damned Captain Sterry for a dirty hound that would leave his second mate in a fix like this.

Ashamed of crying like a silly woman, he retraced his steps to the sentry tower. It was shady inside, with deep slits of windows. He did not wish to see the Tarragona move away from the wharf. He slid to the floor and sat propped against the wall, his chin against his breast. His ruling impulse had kept delirium under for a little while. Now he became a prey to all manner of curious thoughts. Dominant was the resolve that they should not take him alive. He whetted the edge of the machete on a rough stone, and tested the balance of it and the grip of the hilt. He would give a good account of himself on the wall of Cartagena.

CHAPTER IX

THE GOOD HERMIT OF LA POPA

The cloth bound round his tousled head, the torn shirt that bared his chest, the pongee trousers soiled with sweat and dust, the strips of canvas wrapped about his feet, made this wounded fugitive the image of a buccaneer as he sat waiting in the round watch-tower with the machete across his knees. It was not long before the temper of savage defiance yielded to exhaustion. Oblivion enfolded his senses and he relaxed in a stupor that was a counterfeit of sleep. The scowling visage took on the gentler aspect, boyish and engaging, that was familiar to his shipmates. It was an interlude.

He did not stir when the stone barracks inside the city wall were agitated by some loud excitement. There was confused shouting, orders bandied to and fro, the shrill alerte of a bugle, squads of soldiers pattering at the double-quick. All this indicated that the hapless privates, Francisco and Manuel, had found an audience.

The hue-and-cry passed by the broad ramp that led to the top of the wall. It was perhaps assumed that the mad Americano would spread havoc in the city streets or break for the harbor to hide in some boat and escape by sea. It was the first duty of the soldiers to protect the people of Cartagena. Therefore they scattered to warn and search, ready to shoot on sight.

Meanwhile the hunted man’s respite was unbroken. When, at length, he lifted his head and hastily caught up the machete to resume his sullen vigil, the prison area had resumed its wonted quietude. There were no sounds to suggest an alarm. The sun had passed the meridian by an hour or so, as Richard Cary discovered through a slitted window. He was surprised that his hiding-place had not been discovered. He could hope for no such good fortune as concealing himself in the watch-tower until nightfall. And how would that aid him? He was trapped. Death clamored for him in the city. It was certain to overtake him in the swamps and jungle if he should succeed in stealing away. The sea was also impossible. He could never reach it.

The effort of rising to his feet left him all spent and trembling. He could not have walked a score of yards in the deadly heat of the sun. The muscles of his back were so stiffened and inflamed that he was bent like an old man knotted with rheumatism. His head was even more troublesome. After the lull, it was aflame again. One moment he was able to think, the next he was lost in a welter of phantasms. He closed his eyes because the light hurt them. He would hear the Colombian soldiers when they came near the watch-tower.

A little while, however, and the aching brightness of the sky was tempered by clouds that gathered swiftly. They grew black as they rolled toward the zenith, with a flickering play of lightning. The distant mutter of thunder swelled in rolling detonations. At first the rain came in a flurry of drops. Richard Cary mistook the sound for the pit-pat-pat of the hurrying feet of Colombian soldiers. With a groan he lurched out of the watch-tower to finish the thing in the open.

The tropical rain came down like a flood, as though the clouds spilled a solid deluge of water. A whistling squall swept it in sheets. Between the parapets was a gushing river which spouted through the embrasures and rushed down the ramp. It was a torrential downpour unknown to northern climes.

To Richard Cary it was the saving grace of heaven. It beat against him, cooling his parched skin, refreshing him like an elixir. It quenched the fires that had so grievously tormented him. He felt the strength revive in his weary body. He forgot the stiffness, the hurts, the hopelessness of a man in the last ditch. He scooped up the rain in his cupped hand and lapped it like a dog.

The blessed rain did more than this. It offered a chance of extricating himself from the immediate perils besetting him. The squall drove the rain in sheets, obscuring the buildings of the city, veiling the harbor. He gripped the machete blade between his teeth and threw a leg over the outer parapet. It was a thirty-foot drop to the bottom, which was a shallow depression where the moat had been. The stones had been cunningly cut and fitted to build a wall with a smooth facing, but the tooth of time had gnawed deep crevices in which grass had taken root.

Richard Cary’s fingers found rough corners to cling to, and lodgment for his toes. Cautiously groping, he let himself down from one stone to another. It was not a vastly difficult feat, easier than those other Devon seamen of long ago had found it to scale these same walls with ladders. When giddiness halted him, he fastened himself to the stones like a great bat and waited for the spell to pass.

Finally he let go and dropped to the ground. It had been a wrenching ordeal, but when the pain was unendurable he had the machete to bite on. The space outside the wall, which was a populous open-air market and resort for idlers, had been suddenly deserted. The terrific rain had driven every last soul to shelter. The fugitive made a limping détour to reach a strip of beach beyond the quay. Fishermen with their baskets, the vendors of green stuffs, the carts and the burros, had scampered to find dry places.

It was a homing instinct, this endeavor to escape to salt water. There was no plan. In fact there was no clear expectation of getting anywhere. It was enough, for the moment, to be outside the walls of Cartagena. Far better risk drowning than be riddled with bullets by the comrades of Francisco and Manuel.

Between the driving sheets of rain he caught glimpses of the yellow beach. Two or three dugout canoes were drawn up. One of them had a lading of green bananas. The fugitive plodded toward them and no man came to hinder him. The rain was all about him like a misty curtain. He stumbled in the soft sand above high-water mark and fell against the gunwale of an empty canoe. It was a small craft, but heavy. To push it into the water seemed a task altogether beyond him. However, he set his shoulder against the blunt bow and dug his feet into the sand.

Gashed and harried and fevered, it was the inherited bulldog strain in “Big Dick” Cary that sufficed for this final struggle on the sands of Cartagena. The canoe moved, an inch at a time, to the harder surface of the tide-washed beach. Then it slid faster until the surf kicked up by the squall was splashing against it. The stern floated.

Cary stood up and looked out at the foaming, rain-swept lagoon. He could not drive the canoe ahead against the wind, but he remembered a wooded point not far away and a lee beyond it. This he might fetch on a slanting course with the ebbing tide to help.

A last dogged thrust and the canoe floated in the surf. He tumbled over the side and fell face downward in the tepid rainwater that washed over the bottom boards. Righting himself, he caught up a short paddle and swung the bow away from the beach. He crouched amidships and did little more than steer, with a few strokes now and then to hold the course and avoid drifting broadside on. These motions were done mechanically, like an automaton. The canoe safely skirted the shore where it curved an arm out into the lagoon. Behind it was calmer water, a rippling surface on which the canoe floated lazily.

The paddle was idle. The fugitive sat with folded arms, indifferent to the whims of destiny. The tide pulled at the sluggish canoe and it slowly moved abreast of the shore. The rain ceased as suddenly as it had flooded down. The clouds broke and dissolved in ragged fragments until the sky was an inverted bowl of flawless blue. The sun poured its breathless radiance upon a lush landscape that steamed as it dried.

To Richard Cary this was an affliction. An hour of sun would be the finishing stroke. He had not even a straw hat to shield his head. It didn’t very much matter what happened to him. He was beyond caring, but it was peculiarly unpleasant to be grilled alive. He made shift to steer the canoe inshore until it grounded. Just beyond the belt of marsh he saw a densely verdured knoll marked by one tall palm. He filled the baling can with the rainwater in the canoe and carried it with him. The machete served to chop a few bushes and so make room for him to crawl into the thicket and lie down.

In spite of the heat a fit of shivering seized him, the chill that presaged a recurrence of fever. Mosquitoes swarmed to plague him. The afternoon waned and he had not moved from this lair in the thicket. Not until sunset did he go crashing through the brushwood and hold fast to the palm tree while he stupidly glared this way and that, imagining ambushed foes.

Behind this bit of low land was a hill that soared abruptly to a height of several hundred feet. Its crest was stark and rugged, with a sheer cliff that dropped toward the sea. It stood alone, this bold and frowning hill, and was a famous landmark from many miles offshore. La Popa, mariners had always called it because of the resemblance to the castellated poop of a galleon. What made it even more prominent was the massive convent whose walls were like a fortress, a structure which, at a distance, looked as if it had never been despoiled and forsaken. Both Drake and De Pontis the Frenchman had held it for ransom.

It had become a mere shell, a noble relic of the religious zeal of another age. At one end nestled the chapel and this had been preserved, still used for the infrequent advocation to Our Lady of La Popa by priests and pious pilgrims of Cartagena. From the city a rough path led up the sloping ridge of the hill, a path trodden by many generations of nuns and worshipers.

La Popa! The huge white convent looming on the summit of the cliff! A place for a man to hide and scan the Caribbean for sight of a ship. There Drake had posted his sentries to guard against surprise by galleons coming from the north or south. A long, hard climb up the hill, through the jungle at the base, and then a circuit to get clear of the cliff where the defenders had rolled rocks down upon the heads of certain English seamen. It might be done, however, if a man could find the path. A full moon rising early and the convent gleaming above to set his bearings by!

Soon after dawn of the following morning, the caretaker of the Chapel of Our Lady of La Popa came pottering out of a hut built in a corner of the roofless convent. His errand was to tether his two goats on the herbage of the slope. He was a spare man, lame in one leg and feeling the burden of years. Having lived much by himself in this lonely retreat, he had formed the habit of talking to himself in the unkempt gray beard. By way of variety he often talked to the goats whom he fondly addressed by name.

Having tethered them while the air was still cool, this kindly Palacio untied a rusty tin cup from his belt and milked Mercedes who was a docile animal. The cup of warm milk and a tortilla of coarse meal was a breakfast that sufficed him. While munching the sooty tortilla he gazed about him from under shaggy brows and, as always at this time of day, admired the roseate splendor of Cartagena and its everlasting walls. There was nothing in all the world to compare with it, reflected this elderly recluse. The browsing Mercedes waggled her tufted chin in agreement.

Presently Palacio picked up his cane and wandered along the slope to inspect his garden patch of beans and peppers. It was a continual skirmish to save the beans from the forays of the other goat, Lolita, who was a young creature of feminine caprices and often possessed of a devil. Palacio’s rebukes, even the threat of making goat’s-meat of her, left Lolita’s heart untouched.

In the grass beside the garden patch, Palacio was startled to perceive a large object which had not been there before. Cautiously he backed away and leaned on his stick while he scrutinized the phenomenon. It was a man asleep or dead, a man of prodigious bulk and brawn whose clothing was no more than dirty tatters. His skin was criss-crossed with scratches and smeared with dried blood. A stranger to Palacio, and a man so strange to this part of the world that he might have dropped from the skies!

Timidly the caretaker approached the body in the grass and knelt to touch its cheek. The flesh was warm, even hot and angry. Gaining courage, he tugged at the man and rolled him over to discover any serious injuries. He found a knife wound in the back and a lump on the head as big as a tangerine. If the man had climbed the hill of La Popa, it was a miracle. Where had he come from? It was the divine influence of Our Lady, whose shrine was in the chapel, that he should be found alive in this place.

“What a thing to stumble on when I lead my goats out in the morning!” said Palacio, both hands in his beard. “Never has a wonder like this happened to me. I am at the end of my poor wits. If I go down to Cartagena to find a doctor, it is slow walking for me with my lame leg on the rough path—and this enormous man may die in the grass. Soon the sun will be too hot to leave him without a roof over his head.”

In his agitation Palacio limped to and fro. Could he roll this man over and over like a sack of coffee, as far as the threshold of the convent? Then perhaps he might drag him into the hut. It could do him no more damage. As it was, he looked as if he had fallen off the cliff. In spite of his lameness, Palacio was tough and sinewy. When in his prime he had been a laborer on the quay, carrying heavy freight on his back.

The goats had cropped the grass until it was a green sward. Palacio grunted and began to roll the man like a cask. A groan dismayed him. This would not do. It was more merciful to try to drag the body a little way at a time, like a burro hitched to an ox-cart. Nobly Palacio hauled and panted until he had progressed as far as the stake that tethered Mercedes. She trotted over to nuzzle him. It was an expression of sympathy. He felt much encouraged. Lolita, the jade, was waiting to rear on her hind legs and butt her master behind the knees.

“Horned offspring of perdition,” he told her, “do not add to my troubles. Poor Palacio is almost breaking himself in two for the sake of love and charity. Butt me again and the dust shall fly from your speckled hide.”

A back-breaking task it was, but Palacio managed to drag his burden to the hole in the convent wall where a door had been. A bed of straw and a blanket on the floor of his hut was all the comfort he could contrive for the unbidden guest. So fatigued that his legs were like two sticks, the anxious Palacio mixed a little warm goat’s-milk and rum in the tin cup and forced it between the man’s lips. It seemed to trickle down his throat. Then he dosed him with a bitter draught from a bottle, a tincture of quinine and herbs which had assuaged his own spells of fever.

With a singular deftness, Palacio washed the patient and tore up a clean shirt to bandage him. That wound in the back was alarming, so livid and inflamed, but it might heal if kept cleansed and dressed.

“A man like this is very hard to kill,” he said aloud. “To look at him you would say he had already suffered several deaths. The air is cool and healthy up here on La Popa, and there is the sweet presence of Our Lady. I will light a candle at her shrine and a fresh one as soon as that is burned down, poor man though I am. The life of this enormous stranger with the hair like gold belongs to me. It is a gift of God.”

It was a battered, useless gift, the wreckage of Richard Cary. Hard to kill, though, as Palacio had concluded. In his favor were youth, extraordinary vitality, and clean blood untainted by dissipation. Illness was unknown to him. Through two long days and nights the devoted Palacio watched and nursed him, nodding off at intervals. That bitter brew in the bottle was holding the fever in check, and the diet of goat’s-milk and onion broth was efficacious.

The patient babbled while delirious. Palacio understood almost nothing of what he said, but one inference was beyond doubt. The sick man’s voice, the message of his eyes, the restless movements of his hands were easily interpreted. He was afraid of discovery. Enemies were in pursuit of him. It was an issue of life and death. Palacio referred the problem to the responsive Mercedes while milking her.

“What is to be done, little comfort of mine? This man is innocent of crime. You have seen him for yourself. He has won my trust and affection, and he is my guest. Not many visitors come to La Popa from the city. It is an old story to them. But the American tourists from the fruit boats will come early some morning to see the convent. The men will sit on the rocks and say, ‘Zowie! damn-fine-view,’ and the women will poke their noses everywhere. Our guest will make curiosity and be chattered about in Cartagena and down at the ships. He wishes to be hidden away until his health is restored. What do you advise, most intelligent of little goats?”

The most intelligent Mercedes tossed her head and ambled in the direction of the convent wall, as far as her tether permitted. Then she pawed the grass with a sharp hoof. Palacio eyed her gravely. She was trying to assist him. He pondered the matter, twisting his beard tight. Blockhead that he was! To have to be instructed by a goat! She was showing him what to do. He hurried into the hut for a lantern. Into the convent cellar he clambered and then crept into an opening where the stones had been dislodged.

It was the entrance of the ancient tunnel which was said to have led to the foot of the hill and so beneath the walls of Cartagena as a secret passage to be used in time of siege. Such was the tradition. It was possible, however, to explore only a short distance from La Popa because rocks and dirt had filled the tunnel.

“Two or three days more,” said Palacio, “and I can move my guest into this chamber where only God himself will find him. Visitors can be told that the tunnel has caved in since the last heavy rain.”

This was partly the truth. A hole had appeared in the gullied surface of the hill, but it was a dozen yards away from the convent wall and hidden by a clump of small trees. It let the light into the tunnel, and the air drew through it by day and night. Palacio courteously thanked Mercedes for stamping her hoof directly over the underground passage. She had handsomely solved the problem.

He spared no pains to make the secret chamber habitable for his guest. In the chapel was found a disused table and a carved oak chair big enough to hold an archbishop. There was also a strip of carpet and two brass candlesticks. Palacio fashioned a bed of limber poles bound with rawhide thongs, and stretched a piece of old canvas across the frame.

During the labor of love, what of Richard Cary? The stormy stress of mind and body was past. The whirling tumult of emotions, the repeated shocks of perils and escapes, were no more tangible than dreams. Indeed, they seemed to belong with his dreams of the Cartagena of the galleons and the conquistadores. He was in a haven of lucid tranquillity, unvexed by the past, with no thought of the future. Physical weakness constrained him, but Nature was eager to heal and restore, and he felt no great discomfort. It was a state of apathy that brought the anodyne of contentment.

It amused him to listen to the droning monologues of Palacio as he pottered about the hut. They exchanged a few phrases in English and Spanish and became amazingly well acquainted thereby. Between them was the fondness of a father and son. The goats walked in to pay their respects, Mercedes the well-mannered lady at a bedside, Lolita rudely foraging for provender and chewing stray garments until Palacio thumped her with a broken stool.

It was a memorable moment when the guest was helped to lift himself from the pallet of straw. He swayed against the straining Palacio, their arms across each other’s shoulders. In this manner they staggered into the cellar by arduous stages and thence to the chamber inside the tunnel entrance. The guest expected his weight to crush the spare Palacio, but it was do or die. The achievement made them hilarious. Palacio uncorked a treasured bottle of red wine. Later he knelt at the shrine of Nuestra Señora de La Popa and humbly offered thanks for the recovery of his dear friend and guest.

In the underground room the hours passed without impatience. Light filtered through the gullied opening in the roof. The air was never sultry. A roving armadillo tumbled through the hole and consented to stay a while, lured by bits of food. It curled up in its scaly armor and slept under a bench. Its serene attitude toward life was worthy of imitation.

“But I can’t stay here curled up in my shell,” said Señor Cary to the placid armadillo. “For one thing, I am imposing on Palacio’s good nature with no way of repaying him. And the old codger is pretty well worn out. As soon as my legs will hold me up, I must work out some plan of campaign or other. But why fret about it now? Mañana!”

With a steady mind he returned to the situation day after day. To try to smuggle himself aboard a Fruit Company’s steamer was one possibility. It was thrashed out and dismissed. Ignorant that Colonel Fajardo had ceased to be the Comandante of the Port or anything else, he pictured him as venomously vigilant to watch and search every vessel leaving Cartagena. Without friends or money it was out of the question to try to reach some other port by land. The delta of the Magdalena was one vast wilderness of swamp and water-courses.

He was still ensnared, but no longer a frenzied fugitive without a refuge, and he possessed the unquenchable optimism of a strong and competent young man.

Very often his thoughts dwelt with Teresa Fernandez. Her kisses were dearly remembered, her voice echoed in his heart, and the gay fortitude with which she met the buffets of life appealed to his chivalry. She was a woman worth loving forever and a day.

A fortnight more, and the Tarragona would be steaming across the Caribbean, on another southern voyage, to pick up her landfall for Cartagena, sighting the abrupt and lofty hill of La Popa from many miles at sea. Now that his strength was flowing back, Richard Cary could not remain buried like a mole. Inaction would soon become both irksome and cowardly. One thing was certain. He swore to find Teresa Fernandez, returning in the Tarragona, and to hold her in his arms.

There was only one hope of attaining this desire, of making the resolve more than an empty boast. Teresa’s uncle, that “funny old guy” Señor Ramon Bazán, had shown a liking for him during that brief visit in the moonlit patio. “A delicious hit,” Teresa had called it. This might mean nothing at all. A man in his dotage, tricky and whimsical, had been the impression left by the shriveled uncle with the little brown monkey perched upon his shoulder.

What his relations might be with the officials of Cartagena was impossible to surmise. He had been a person of consequence in earlier years, a figure in the political affairs of Colombia. This much Teresa had conveyed in the remark that he had once been sent to Washington by the Government at Bogotá. Would he feel inclined to protect an American refugee whom the authorities were hunting like a dangerous animal? What of the obligations of the hospitality which he had so warmly proffered? A rope of sand, as likely as not. Spanish courtesy in its finest flower had been displayed by the lowly Palacio, but with Señor Ramon Bazán it was a very different situation. Doubtless he knew what Richard Cary had done and why he was branded as a criminal condemned to execution.

Ah, well, what else was life than a gamble on the turn of a card? A proper man ought not to hesitate whenever the stake was worth the hazard. Teresa Fernandez would risk as much for him, of this Richard Cary felt convinced. She was that kind of a woman. Win or lose, he would try to meet her in the house of Uncle Ramon Bazán while the Tarragona was in port.

There was only one way to put the hazard to the touch. This was to send Palacio into Cartagena with a note to the bizarre old gentleman. It meant revealing the hiding-place on the hill of La Popa and inviting capture. The message would have to be an appeal to find some ingenious plan of smuggling the fugitive through the city streets. He was not yet strong enough even to walk down the rocky path to the foot of the hill.

“A rotten poor bet,” said the guest of the good Palacio, “but show me another one. And if I can get into Cartagena, I can get out again. By God, I’m going to kiss my girl.”

CHAPTER X

THE GREAT YELLOW TIGER

Sending a message to Señor Bazán was easier said than done. Pen and paper were not essential to the simple life of Palacio for the excellent reason that he had never learned to read or write. The hut was rummaged in vain. Much perturbed, Palacio limped into the chapel and returned with a tattered missal. Heaven knows how long this illuminated black-letter volume had reposed in a dusty niche of the pulpit. Sacrilege it might be to tear out a broad-margined leaf, but Palacio promised himself to do penance. With a sharp bit of charcoal the derelict mariner wrote on the margin:

My Dear Señor Bazán:

I am disabled and in serious trouble. If you feel like lending a hand, you will have to send somebody to get me down the hill of La Popa, and safely to your house. The Señorita Teresa Fernandez told me how to say ver las orejas del lobo. “To see the ears of the wolf” means to be in great danger, I take it. This seems to fit the case of

Yours sincerely

Richard Cary

Anxiously Palacio looked on and furiously rumpled his gray beard. He did not approve. To hear the name of old Ramon Bazán was enough. Some unpleasant gossip or other had lingered in his simple mind. He had not always been the hermit of La Popa. Timidly at first and then in a scolding humor he objected to the procedure. The beloved guest was safe, as things were, and rapidly regaining health and vigor. Leave it to Palacio to safeguard him against his enemies and, in due time, to devise some means of flight. It might be up the great river and across the mountains to the other ocean, such a journey as Palacio had made in his own youth.

Gently but stubbornly the guest persuaded his benefactor to undertake the mission. Consent was hard wrung, but in the last resort Palacio could not deny any wish of the mighty, fair-haired Ricardo, the apple of his eye. It was toward the middle of the afternoon when the reluctant messenger took his staff and said farewell.

“God willing,” he called back. “God willing,” he was repeating to himself as he trudged past the garden patch, “Como Dios es servido, ó si Dios es servido—ó siendo Dios servido.”

Shortly after the departure, Richard Cary concluded to essay walking out of his tunneled chamber, as far as a gap in the convent wall. It was necessary to know whether he was capable of this much effort. Very carefully he guided his uncertain steps across the cellar, like a child learning to walk. It seemed ridiculous. A touch would have pushed him over. His brawn had been so much fuel for the fever to feed upon.

Elated by the venture he sat down to rest on a broad stone slab from which he could see the slope of the hill toward Cartagena, and the sea flashing beyond the barrier of the Boca Grande. It filled him with a sense of buoyancy and freedom, with emotions too deep for words. Circumstances still shackled him, but once more he beheld wide horizons and felt the freshening trade wind brush his cheek, the wind that had blown so many stout ships across the Caribbean.

He was alive again, eager to follow wherever fickle fortune might beckon. If the odds should veer in his favor, would he want to go back to the monotonous trade of seafaring in a merchant steamer out of New York? It seemed incongruous, a world away. The Spanish Main had been cruel to him, but he had ceased to feel resentment. It had been a game of give-and-take. His was the winning score. The next turn of events was worth waiting for. Heads or tails?

The peaked straw hat of Palacio had long since bobbed down the hill and across the causeway to a gateway of the city wall. Gradually the violet shadows crept over the sward beside the melancholy pile of the convent. The goats raised their voices to notify the lonely watcher that something was wrong. It was time for them to trot in to shelter.

It was time also for Richard Cary to seek his own retreat before the dusk should make him stumble in the débris of the cellar. He was most loath to leave the open sky and the westering glow and the communion of the salt breeze. Laboriously he made his way to the darkened refuge in the earth and lighted a candle. The complaisant armadillo had sauntered off on some twilight errand of its own. Silly, but the solitary man wished he had the armadillo to talk to. Again immured, his spirits were overcast.

Out of doors, he had regained his large and placid indifference to whatever might impend. Now his nerves were tautening. The answer of Señor Ramon Bazán might be a file of Colombian soldiers hurrying up the hill. With a shrug, he thrust such fears aside. Win or lose, he must play his hand out. No more of that crazed torment which had bitten into his brain while he had crouched in the round watch-tower, whetting the machete on a rough stone.

Once while he had stood with Teresa Fernandez at the rail of the Tarragona, she had hummed a verse or two of a song called the Breton Sailor’s Litany, remembered from a voyage to Brest in her girlhood. He had learned it as well as he could, for the pleasure of hearing her murmur the words over and over again.

“Dieu puissant, notre père,

Qui commandez aux flots,

Écoutez la prière

Des pauvres matelots.”

It came back to him now, with the translation she had also taught him to say. He found peace and comfort in it, as if Teresa herself were bidding him to hold fast to his courage:

“God all powerful, our Father,

Thou Who commandest the sea,

Listen to the prayer

Of the poor mariners.”

The first significant sound to catch his listening ear was the excited bleating of the goats tethered almost over his head. Nothing else than the return of Palacio could make them so suddenly vocal. A delay while he found his lantern, and the weary messenger came stumbling through the cellar, shouting to ask if Ricardo was alive and well. It was hard to find out what news he brought. There was no word in writing from Señor Ramon Bazán, and Palacio’s long narrative was poured out in Spanish so tumultuous that it meant very little to his guest.

It had something to do with a pile of wood and a mule and a muchacho. This much was picked out of the jumble. In Palacio’s croaking accents was also a violent distrust of the manners, morals, and motives of the aged Señor Bazán. Having simmered down, he made it comprehensible that Ricardo was to make ready to go at once, pronto, into Cartagena by night. Means had been provided. Much distraught, Palacio toddled to his hut to find and offer a patched tarpaulin cape and a new peaked straw hat woven by himself. He had already washed and mended Cary’s tattered shirt and trousers.

Lack of a razor contributed to the general effect of a Robinson Crusoe as the fugitive emerged from his earthy abode. It was, indeed, a venture in the darkness. Quien sabe? The riddle of Señor Bazán’s intentions was still unsolved.

“Here goes,” said Richard Cary, looking about him in the starlight. “I’ll soon find out whether I am putting my head in a trap or not. Where do we go from here? Donde?”

Palacio whistled. A gray mule came sidling into the lantern’s glow. Leading it by the bridle was the Indian lad whom Cary recalled seeing in the patio of Uncle Ramon. There was no saddle. A sack was tied across the mule’s back.

“What kind of foolishness is this?” objected the passenger. “I see myself parading through Cartagena on the quarterdeck of a flop-eared mule. Oiga! The Colombian infantry could never miss a target like that.”

The Indian lad caught the drift of this tirade and grinned a reassurance. Palacio volubly insisted that it was muy bueno, so far as the mule was concerned. Again he chattered about the mysterious pile of wood. He had labored with it himself. He lifted imaginary sticks and groaned with both hands clapped to his back. Richard Cary subsided. He was in no position to quibble over details.

His companions hoisted him astride the mule. It was a very strong mule or its legs would have bent. Palacio limped as far as the garden patch. Another journey down the hill and back again was too much for him. He embraced his guest, his splendid son, and fervently commended him to God and Nuestra Señora de La Popa. If he weathered the stormy gale of circumstances, Richard Cary pledged himself somehow to repay this humble recluse with the heart of gold.

The sure-footed mule picked its way down the broken path, the lithe Indian lad chirruping in its ear. Beyond the foot of the hill, where a road swung inland from the harbor, the lad turned aside. At the edge of the jungle was hidden a ponderous, two-wheeled cart. It was heaped high with cordwood. Stakes at the sides prevented it from spilling. The muchacho nudged Cary to dismount. The mule was backed into the shafts and a brass-bound harness slung on its back.

“I suspected a nigger in the woodpile,” reflected the dubious Cary, “and now I know it. Just where do I fit into this load of wood? Hi, boy! What about it? Qué es esto?”

The lad motioned him to examine for himself. A false bottom had been laid in the body of the cart. Between the floor that rested upon the axle and the upper platform of boards was a space perhaps a foot and a half deep. Into this the bulk of Richard Cary was expected to insert itself. He thanked his stars that illness had reduced his flesh. It was the utter helplessness of being flattened in there, underneath the pile of wood, that made him flinch. It was too much like being nailed in a coffin. To be discovered and hauled out by the heels would be a fate too absurd to contemplate.

However, if there was a beggar alive who could not be a chooser, it was this same Richard Cary. He had to admire the ingenuity of the contrivance. A belated countryman hauling a load of firewood to the city in the cool of the night would pass unnoticed, whereas a curtained carriage might invite scrutiny. The stratagem was worthy of the wizened little man of the patio, with the grimace of a clown and the eye of an inquisitor.

Very unhappy, Richard Cary inched himself in beneath the load of wood, flat on his back. The Indian lad, who had a wit of his own, hung over the rear of the cart two bags stuffed with fodder for the mule. These concealed the protruding feet of the melancholy stowaway. It was one way to enter Cartagena, but hurtful to the pride of an adventurer who had waged one hand-to-hand conflict after another in escaping from these same walls. There were precedents among other bold men, however, as far back in history as the wooden horse of Troy.

The springless cart bumped and shook him infernally. He swore at the mule, in muffled accents, and even more earnestly at the crafty Señor Bazán. He could not be blamed for a petulant humor. After an hour or a week or a year, over streets that seemed to be paved with boulders, the load of wood turned into an alley and halted. The muchacho was in no haste to extricate his passenger. First the wood had to be thrown off and the false bottom knocked apart. The lad was unequal to the task of hauling his human cargo out by the legs.

Released, at length, from the ignominious cart, Richard Cary was a prey to renewed qualms. The rear wall of Señor Bazán’s house was darkly uncommunicative. It told nothing whatever. Presently, however, a door opened on a crack. The Indian lad hissed, “Rapido.” The Americano was to remove himself from the alley. He obeyed as rapido as the cramps in his legs permitted. His senses were set on a hair-trigger for whatever emergency might leap at him.

The door opened far enough to admit him. He brushed through, into a shadowy hall, and collided with the shrunken figure of Señor Bazán who yelped dismay and retreated as if afraid of being trodden upon like a bug. The uneasy visitor tottered after him, having a fancy for quarters more spacious than this dim, confined hall. It was like a pursuit during which Señor Bazán scurried into a large room which to Richard Cary’s unaccustomed vision seemed ablaze with lights. He stood and goggled like an owl.

Many shelves of books, a desk littered with papers and more books, heavy furniture of mahogany and stamped leather—this was evidently a library in which the aged uncle of Teresa spent much of his time.

He, too, blinked bewilderment. The ragged scarecrow of a Cary, with the stubbled beard, the blanched color, and the drawn features, was tragically unlike the ruddy young giant in the crisp white uniform with the gold shoulder bars who had towered beside the galleon bell in the moonlit patio. The contrast was deeper than this. Then he had been easy and smiling, the massive embodiment of good-nature. Now his jaw was set, the haggard eyes somberly alert, and his whole demeanor that of a man on guard against an ambuscade. Still absorbed in studying him, Señor Bazán said not a word, but dragged a chair forward and thrust it behind the visitor.

Cary could not have stood on his feet much longer. He dropped into the chair. As a gesture of good-will the old gentleman patted his shoulder and silently vanished to reappear with a tray of cold chicken, salad, bread and cheese, and a bottle of port. Then he cocked his head like a bird and said in English:

“Make yourself easy, my dear young friend. It has been the devil to pay for you since I had the pleasure of meeting you in my house. I have no soldiers hiding behind the curtains, and I have not informed the department of police. There is a hot bath and a soft bed for you, and my poor company to-morrow.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it that I am in safe water,” sighed Richard Cary, his scowl fading. “Comfort like this is worth any trouble that may break later. There was no reason why I should feel sure of a friendly welcome, sir. I am an outlaw, as you know. It was taking a blind chance.”

“ ‘Ver las orejas del lobo!’ ‘To see the ears of the wolf,’ ” gleefully quoted the old gentleman. “So this is the wolf’s den? First I must ask pardon for talking only Spanish when you called with Teresa. It was rude, a shabby trick. There is no better English scholar in Colombia than Ramon Bazán. That girl is so full of mischief that I thought she might lead you on to make fun of her venerable uncle. It would have amused me to listen. Where did I learn my English so well? It means nothing to Teresa—these things happened before she was born; but for several years I was the minister for my country in Washington and later in London. A withered old back-number now, with one foot in the grave, but Ramon Bazán was almost the president of Colombia. A revolution exploded under him. That was many years ago.”

A breast of chicken and a glass of port were not too diverting to prevent Richard Cary from paying keen attention. He surmised that Señor Bazán was eager to make a favorable impression, exerting himself to dispel the idea that he was a senile object of curiosity. He desired to awaken respect as well as gratitude. This might be laid to an old man’s childish vanity. At any rate, he had ceased to be merely grotesque.

There was no malice on the wrinkled, mobile features of the little old man in the flapping linen clothes. Furtive he was by nature, the beady black eyes glancing this way and that, the bald scalp twitching, but, for the present, at least, there was no harm in him. This was Richard Cary’s intuition. He also guessed that Señor Bazán was anxious to ingratiate himself. If there was a motive behind it, this could be left to divulge itself. The situation hinted of aspects unforeseen.

“You can sleep calmly to-night, Señor Cary,” said the host, with his twisted grin, “but many people in Cartagena would stay wide awake if they knew you were so near.”

“Am I as notorious as all that, sir? Of course I want to hear the news—”

“As they say, you stood this city on its head,” shrilly chuckled Ramon Bazán. “Revolutions have begun with less disturbance in some of our hot little republics of the Caribbean. Rumors flew about until your exploits were frightful. The children of Cartagena have never been so obedient to their parents. All they have to be told is that El Tigre Amarillo Grande, the Great Yellow Tiger, will catch them if they are naughty. It was this way—your dead body was not found, although you were on the edge of death when you escaped from the prison. You could not have fled far. This was why you were not looked for at La Popa. Therefore you were no man, but a wicked spirit from hell. The common people are very foolish and ignorant.”

“I never meant to upset the town when I came ashore that night,” said Cary, smiling in his turn. “You are good enough to shelter me and you ought to know the facts. It was just one thing after another. A gang of roughs tried to wipe me out. In self-defense I stretched two or three of them. My hunch was that Colonel Fajardo had put up the job. If I stayed in jail, he was bound to get me. And my ship was ready to sail. My duty was to join her. So I walked out of the prison, but was too late to get aboard the Tarragona. My head went wrong with fever. I don’t know how I climbed La Popa. Well, that’s the nubbin of the story.”

“Five of the bravoné and three soldiers of the prison,” grinned Señor Bazán, ticking them off on his fingers. “Am I not a valiant old man to sit alone in the same house with El Tigre Amarillo Grande?”

“Not while a word in the telephone yonder would cook my goose,” grimly answered the prisoner of fortune. “Please tell me one thing. Did I kill any of those poor devils at the prison? I didn’t want to. They got in my way and I had to treat ’em rough.”

“By the mercy of God, the corporal whose neck you wrung had a little breath left in him. The two other soldiers are also alive. The five bravoné who were serenading the ladies that night? Two were found very dead. Another whose shoulder felt the iron bar died after four days, I am happy to say. That iron bar? My dear young man, crowds of people still gather to look at the window from which El Tigre pulled the iron bar like a straw in his hands.”

Richard Cary blushed. He was never a braggart nor had he aspired to a reputation like this. “Then I am a bigger fool than I thought I was, to come into Cartagena,” said he.

“An amusing fool,” replied Señor Bazán, with a whimsical twinkle. “How you expect to get out again is too much for my feeble old wits. Not in a Colombian sailing boat of any kind. Every sailor of Cartagena crosses himself when he hears the name of El Tigre Amarillo Grande. The muleteers and men of the river are carrying it back into the mountains. It will soon spread as far away as Bogotá.”

“Then why in the name of common sense did you fetch me in from La Popa?” was the blunt question.

“How could I refuse, Señor Cary, when you appealed to my hospitality, you a friend of my niece, the Señorita Fernandez?”

This answer was palpably evasive. Here was a riddle which only time and the crotchety impulses of Ramon Bazán could disclose. The puzzled young man was in no mind to confide that his love for Teresa had urged him to this blind adventure. Cross-currents were already visible. The uncle of Teresa had some design of his own in harboring the sailor refugee. The situation was cleared of immediate peril, however, and Richard Cary concluded that he was not to be betrayed. The rasping voice of Ramon Bazán awoke him from a reverie.

“You suspected Colonel Fajardo of plotting to kill you? Why?”

“Jealousy,” was the admission. “And I was warned that he had a bad record.”

“Jealousy, Señor Cary?” twittered the old gentleman, highly diverted. “And the woman was that spitfire of a Teresa! I had my suspicions, but it is not politic to wag the tongue too much in Cartagena. As it turned out, this Colonel Fajardo convicted himself.”

“The deuce he did,” cried Richard Cary. “Then my conscience is clear from start to finish. What do you mean? How did he convict himself?”

“He fled next day—disappeared like smoke. Afraid because you were not dead? Perhaps. Afraid of a plot he had hatched while half-drunk? The fact is that he was seen for the last time on the wharf before the Tarragona sailed. Yes, he ran away somewhere, and so confessed himself a guilty man.”

“He was that kind,” said Cary. “The blackguard invited me to sit and drink with him in a café a little while before his gunmen attacked me. So he lost his nerve and decided to make himself scarce. How did he get away?”

“Possibly in the Tarragona. There was some talk that he might have bribed one of the crew to hide him for the short trip to Porto Colombia or Santa Marta. But he has not been seen in those ports. I have inquired of friends. He is very well known on this coast as a colonel of the army before he was appointed Comandante of the Port. There it is! Colonel Fajardo has most thoroughly disappeared. I regret you did not hit him with the terrible iron bar.”

“I shall always regret it,” said Richard Cary. “Doesn’t that make it more hopeful for me to climb out of this infernal scrape, Señor Bazán?”

“Not very much. You are charged with murder, assault, breaking prison, and the good God knows what else! And you are El Tigre Amarillo Grande! The Fruit Company’s agent has shown no interest in your behalf. That would be most useful.”

“Captain Sterry may have turned in a bad report in New York, sir. He was biased—there was a personal difference—a grudge of his. He signed on another second mate, I presume, and I was thrown in the discard.”

“Then you will have no employment as an officer, even if you are lucky enough to get away from Cartagena, Señor Cary?”

“It sounds ridiculous to look that far ahead,” lazily answered the prisoner who found it hard to stay awake. “At present I seem to be cast for the part of El Tigre, and it doesn’t appeal to me at all.”

Señor Bazán scolded himself for exhausting a guest already weak and in distress of mind. He took the young man by the arm and tried to steady him as they crossed the patio and entered a bedroom. The bath was near at hand.

“Pajamas to-morrow, Ricardo,” said the host. “The woman in my kitchen is sewing them together. She will also make some white clothes. There are none big enough in the shops. If I visit a tailor he will pass it around as a joke that Ramon Bazán must have El Tigre Amarillo in his house. Bolt your door, if it pleases you. The window has strong iron bars and nobody in Cartagena can pull them out to molest you. There are worse friends to have than old Ramon Bazán. That Teresa has called me a funny old guy to my face. You mustn’t believe all she tells you.”

The old gentleman went fluttering off in his hurried fashion as if shadows were forever chasing him. Richard Cary was awake for a long time. Sounds in the street disturbed him. Once he fancied he heard the distant voices of men singing and the melodious tinkle of a guitar. Again it was the pit-pat-pat of feet on the pavement outside the window. When sleep came to him, his dreams were unhappy.

CHAPTER XI

SPANISH TREASURE!

A different man in fresh white pajamas and straw slippers, Richard Cary idled in a shady corner of the patio. A razor had reaped the heavy stubble clean. Not in the least resembling the Yellow Tiger that gobbled naughty children, he looked amiable enough to purr. His status in this household was even more perplexing than at his arrival. Señor Bazán seemed to be afraid of his disfavor. Afraid? It should have been the other way about. It was for the helpless fugitive to exert himself, by every means in his power, to win and hold the regard of the eccentric old gentleman who held his life in the hollow of his hand.

Every precaution was taken to guard the secret of his presence in this house. The outer doors were kept locked. The only servants were the Indian lad and a fat black woman in the kitchen. These two mortally feared the wrath of Señor Bazán, and were close-mouthed by habit. He had taught them the doctrine of assiduously minding their own business. Moreover, it was a thing far more perilous to risk the vengeance of El Tigre Amarillo should they drop even a whisper outside the house. How calm and harmless he seemed, but imagine him in one of those rages! It was common report that no bullet could slay him.

Señor Bazán endeavored to display his very best behavior. The flighty fits of temper were restrained and he was thoughtful of the small courtesies. As Teresa had said, he was a very old man, brittle and easily tired. At times the wheezing spells almost choked him. Quite often he dozed off with a book in his lap. Otherwise he was diabolically wide awake.

More like himself every day, Richard Cary knew that inaction would soon fret him beyond endurance. In the New Hampshire farmhouse at home he could sit and look at the fire through long lazy spells, but this senseless confinement was very different. He was living and waiting for the arrival of the Tarragona. After that? Ramon Bazán insisted that it was impossible to flee this hostile coast, nor did he offer the smallest hint of willingness to coöperate in any attempt. Why, then, had Richard Cary been fetched into Cartagena? It was a question that pursued itself in a tedious circle.

With all the leisure in the world to mull it over, Cary found solace in the briar pipe with the amber bit which was the sole possession left him. Through his tempestuous escapades it had stayed in a trousers pocket. A pipe with a charmed life, he thought, and a precious reminder of Teresa Fernandez and their last glimpse of each other.

Now he laid it on the stone flagging beside his canvas chair, and the little brown monkey came frisking over from the trellis. It snatched the pipe in a tiny black paw and was about to stick it in his mouth when Cary interfered. He laughed at the indignant little beast which squeaked profane opinions of a man who would deny a petted monkey a morning pipe. The puckered countenance, the spiteful grimace, the gusty temper, were absurdly like Señor Bazán when things displeased him. At one moment the Spanish gentleman of culture and manners, in the next he might be a chattering, scolding tyrant with no manners whatever.

Crack-brained? So Teresa had expressed herself, but her relations with her uncle appeared to be uncertain, an intermittent feud, and she was not apt to give the devil his due. As a rule, Richard Cary’s verdicts were slowly formulated and uncolored by prejudice. In this instance he felt more and more convinced that there was some unseen method in the madness of Señor Ramon Bazán. He had enticed El Tigre Amarillo Grande into a comfortable cage and proposed to keep him there.

Meanwhile the wizened keeper of the tiger was frequently leaving the house on some affairs of his own. He went jogging off in a hired carriage and was not seen again for hours. He brought back American magazines and tobacco, phonograph records, delicacies from the market, anything to amuse the restless Ricardo, who chafed under the increasing burden of obligation. Nothing was said to explain why Señor Bazán should spend so much time away from his house. Secretiveness enwrapped him. He moved like an industrious conspirator.

On the day before the Tarragona was due in port, Richard Cary took occasion to say:

“You have been a wonderfully kind friend to me, Señor Bazán, and I don’t deserve it. Now that I am getting fit to take care of myself, I must plan to get away somehow. I have been waiting for the arrival of the ship, to see the Señorita Fernandez again—”

Uncle Ramon bounced from his chair and wildly waved his hands as he cried:

“It was that girl all the time! The devil fly away with her! But I must let you see her or there will be another commotion with an iron bar. All right, Ricardo. Teresa is sure to come to my house to ask if anything was heard about you after the steamer sailed away with her. How can I keep you from seeing that girl? You have an infatuation.”

“I shall take no chances,” was the dogged reply. “She might be kept on board. I’ll write her a letter and you will send it down to the ship or carry it yourself.”

This ripped the temper of Señor Bazán to shreds. He slapped his bald pate and his false teeth clicked as he vociferated:

“Writing letters is a trick of———— idiots. It would make me as big a fool as you are to let a letter go out of my house, a letter you had written to a sweetheart. What happens to me if Cartagena finds out I am hiding you here? Bah! That girl has turned your brain into a rotten egg.”

Taken aback by this tantrum, Cary was strongly inclined to twist the old gentleman’s neck. It was not really essential, however, to write a letter. Soothingly he suggested:

“Then you will promise to let her know that she must come to the house while she is in port. Without fail? She will guess that something is in the wind.”

“Yes, I will do that much,” grumbled Uncle Ramon. “I have to keep you quiet. I will drive down to the ship and bring Teresa back with me. What if the chief steward or somebody forbids her to go ashore?”

“She will come anyhow, unless I am all wrong about her,” said Cary.

“God knows what is in the heart of a girl like that,” spitefully retorted her uncle.

“One thing more, Señor Bazán. The chief engineer of the ship, Mr. McClement, is a friend of mine. I wish to get word to him, too. He can be trusted absolutely. If you will slip a word to Teresa, she will arrange it so that he can drop in for a chat after dark. McClement is a man who will help you find some way to get me off your hands. And I am anxious to let him know that I am alive and didn’t desert the ship.”

“Why not invite the whole damned crew of the Tarragona to parade to my house with a band of music?” shouted the disgusted uncle. “Forget this pest of a chief engineer. It is enough to let that girl into the house. How do I know what mischief it will make? She is the kind that talks in her sleep.”

Richard Cary felt wretchedly ashamed of his own futility. Sulkily he surrendered. Teresa could later confide in the chief engineer, but it was a sore blow to be deprived of his canny wisdom and aid in this extremity. The Yellow Tiger had ceased to purr. He had not been rescued, but kidnaped. He did not propose to spend much more of his life shut up in this madhouse.

He was pacing up and down next day, counting the hours. The clothes made by the handy black woman in the kitchen, white shirt and trousers, were by no means an atrocious fit. He was quite spick-and-span, a young man waiting for his sweetheart. It was late in the afternoon when the wind brought to the open courtyard the distant, vibrant blasts of a steamer’s whistle. It was the Tarragona blowing for the wharf. He could have told that whistle from a hundred other ships. Never would he forget it, not after hearing her blow the three long blasts of departure when he had tottered up the ramp to the round watch-tower on the city wall.

Earlier in the day, Ramon Bazán had vanished on one of his shrouded errands, promising to go to the wharf as soon as the steamer should be reported. Cary grew more and more impatient. Soon he looked to see Teresa come flying in, slender, graceful, ardent to respond to his fond greeting. Then she would turn her attention to the wicked old uncle who was making a jail of his house and holding her Ricardo against his will. It would be a lively scene.

A carriage was heard to stop in front of the house. The young man dared not show himself, but retreated to his room, as caution had taught him to do. He was chagrined at being found in such a plight. He was like a stranded hulk. But if Teresa still loved him, nothing was impossible to attempt and to achieve.

Uncle Ramon Bazán came teetering in alone, very much put out and wheezing maledictions. Richard Cary advanced from the threshold of his room, grievously disappointed, but expecting to hear that Teresa had been delayed until evening. Her uncle made no effort to break the news gently.

“My trip to the Tarragona was for nothing. I lost my breath climbing on board that ship and there was no Teresa at all.”

“She was not in the ship?” blurted Cary. “What’s the answer to that? What did the chief steward say?”

“That pig of a Swiss said she had left the ship in New York. He didn’t know why. A good stewardess, he called her, when she was not chasing herself about something else.”

“And no word to explain why she wanted to quit or where she went?” implored the lover.

“Not one word, Ricardo,” said Ramon, his bald head cocked sagaciously. “These infernal girls! They can make a Yellow Tiger look like a sick house-cat. But why should I laugh? There were such girls when Ramon Bazán was a gay caballero—Good God, how long ago it was—and he was never afraid to see the ears of the wolf if the prize was an embrace and a kiss. Teresa, though, she was never a girl to be a fool with the men. Not a coquette, I will say that much for the jade. She was fond of you, Ricardo. My old eyes told me that.”

Richard Cary stood massive and composed. The uncle’s tirade was the sound of empty words. They buzzed without biting. He could not believe that Teresa was faithless or forgetful, fleeting though the romance had been. Sadly mystified, he was not one to be dragged adrift by an ill wind. His convictions were stanch. Such was his native temperament. Because Teresa had found some reason for leaving the ship in New York, it did not mean that she had forsaken him. He would find her some day and then it could be explained.

“I am badly disappointed, sir,” he said to her uncle. The boyish smile was wistful as he added: “I couldn’t see beyond to-day. Never mind. Teresa Fernandez is wise enough to steer her own course. Now, my dear Señor Bazán, I am finished with Cartagena. I’m head over heels in debt to you for all your kindness, but I must be on my way. I never fell in a hole that I couldn’t pull myself out of somehow. If you will help me, I shall be more grateful than ever.”

It was not mere bravado. The time had come to force the hand of the benevolent old despot. The reply to this ultimatum was a sardonic chuckle. The mirth increased until it ended in spasms of coughing. Cary pounded the brittle Uncle Ramon on the back and almost broke him in two. It was exasperating to listen to him. He wiped his eyes, adjusted his teeth, and motioned the young man into the library. There the exhausted Señor Bazán curled up in a chair like a goblin and began to elucidate himself as follows:

“To laugh at a broken-hearted lover is abominable, Ricardo. I reproach myself and implore you to forgive a funny old guy. It is selfish of me to feel so pleased, but I hope to make you understand. That girl was in the way. To me she was an obstacle. I could do nothing with you until her ship came in. And then I was afraid of her entangling you against me. With a man and girl, everything must be talked over together. ‘Will I do this?’ ‘Should I do that?’ ‘What does she say?’ I tell you, dear Ricardo, the women spoil more bold men than they ever make heroes of. For the present we are happily rid of Teresa. You will be fool enough to follow her later, but that is none of the funeral of Ramon Bazán.”

Richard Cary thrust his grieved disappointment into the background. Here was promise of reading the riddle of his detention. The old man had never been so ablaze with excitement as now. He caught his breath and volubly continued:

“It filled my mind when I first saw you, Ricardo—you were the man I had been looking for—the man I had to have. And then I lost you, the worst luck that ever was. When that lame fellow, Palacio, came down from La Popa with your letter, I tell you I rejoiced myself. You were crazy to find that Teresa, I could see it between the words, but it was the best of fortune for Ramon Bazán. Since you have been in my house, Ricardo, I have watched you, to measure you up, and I was right as could be, on that very first night. You are the man I want. Not so many bats in my cabeza as the saucy Teresa has told me to my face! When you know what I want you for, you will not sigh and look sad and talk about bursting out of Cartagena. You will be glad of the day when you came to live with Ramon Bazán.”

“Show me any road out and I will swamp you with my blessings,” exclaimed Cary, immensely diverted. “I knew you had something up your sleeve, but there I stuck. Now, for the Lord’s sake, please get down to brass tacks. Then I can tell you whether I’ll take it or leave it.”

“Come over to my desk,” cried Señor Bazán, as agile as the little brown monkey. “Now sit down and listen. You do that very well. It is a virtue worth its weight in pure gold. I have observed it in you. Have you read much about Spanish treasure? Have the legends fascinated you?”

Richard Cary jumped from his chair. The words had wrenched him out of his solid composure. All he could say was, like a deep-voiced echo: “Spanish treasure? Has it fascinated me? How did you happen to hit the mark like that?”

This quick vehemence startled Señor Bazán. It was unexpected. This new Richard Cary, aroused and masterful, was, indeed, like having a great yellow tiger in the house.

“Ah, ha, Ricardo, you smell the trail? You have dreamed of finding Spanish treasure? This is better than I hoped for. It might be a captain that sailed with El Draque as you stand there with eyes on fire.”

“With Drake?” exclaimed Richard Cary, his arms folded across his mighty chest. “Aye, Señor Bazán, there was treasure for the men that sailed these seas with Frankie Drake. Here at Cartagena, though it was like pulling teeth to make the fat Spanish merchants give up their gold.”

Señor Bazán was a trifle dazed. This amazing young man whom he had handled so carefully, with such solicitude to gain his good-will and gratitude, was fairly running away with him. He did not have to be coaxed or persuaded. This was already obvious.

“Dead stuff?” laughed Cary. “You have it in the books on your shelves. But I enjoy talking about it—how Drake and his seamen used their long pikes in carrying the barricadas in the streets after they made a breach in the wall. It was merry work while it lasted. Six hundred Englishmen to take the strongest town in the West Indies! There was a swarm of Indian bowmen with poisoned arrows that played the mischief with them. The town had to yield after Master Carlisle, the lieutenant-general, slew the chief ensign-bearer of the Spaniards with his own hand. They fought as pretty a duel with swords as ever a man saw. And all for what? After Drake and his men took their pleasure in sacking and spoiling the town and setting fire to a great part of it, the ransom they obtained was no more than a hundred and ten thousand ducats. A beggarly adventure that laid a hundred and fifty lads on their backs with wounds and fever.”

Señor Bazán sucked in his breath with a greedy sound. He was squirming in his chair. Here was a topic he could never tire of. His heart’s desire was revealed.

Richard Cary pleasantly rambled on, yarning of Spanish treasure like a sociable Elizabethan mariner in a waterside taproom. He was carried away by his own enthusiasm. The way was cleared for the cherished secret of Ramon Bazán. Ricardo was in a mood to respond and sympathize. He would not scoff at an old man’s dearest ambition that had long possessed him, body and soul, that had vivified old age and decrepitude with the magic of youth’s illusions.

Señor Bazán was careful to lock the library door before seating himself at the desk. From a drawer he withdrew a folded document much crumpled and soiled. His fingers fumbled with it. He was pitifully agitated. Cary stood leaning over the desk. He foresaw the nature of the document. Ramon Bazán delayed unfolding it. The habit of secrecy was not easily broken. He preferred first to explain what was more or less known to the picaresque race of modern treasure-seekers. It happened to be new to Richard Cary’s ears. He drank it in with gusto, while humming in his brain was an old sea chantey:

“Why, I’ve seen less lucky fellows pay for liquor with doubloons,

And for ’baccy with ozellas, gold mohurs, and ducatoons!

Bring home! Heave and rally, my very famous men!”

Still clutching his precious document, old Ramon Bazán chose Lima for the beginning of his long-winded narrative. During the last days of Spanish rule on the west coast, this capital of Peru had been the lordliest city of the vast domains won by the conquistadores and ruled by the Viceroys. Founded by Francisco Pizarro, it was for centuries the seat of government in South America. The Viceregal court was maintained in magnificent state, and the Archbishop of Lima was the most powerful prelate of the continent.

Here the religious orders were centered and to Lima the Inquisition was removed from Cartagena. Of the incredible amount of gold and silver taken from the mines of the Incas, much remained in Lima to pile up fortunes for the grandees and officials, or to be fashioned into massive adornments for the palaces, residences, churches, and for the great cathedral which stands to-day to proclaim the grandeur that was Spain’s. To Cartagena its walls, to Lima its cathedral, runs the saying.

When Bolivar the Liberator had succeeded in driving the Spanish out of Venezuela and had also set up the free republic of Colombia, the ruling classes of Peru took alarm, which increased to panic as soon as it was known that the revolutionary forces were organizing to march south and assault Lima itself. There was great running to and fro among the wealthy Spanish merchants, the holders of political offices under the Viceroy, and the gilded aristocracy which had ruffled it with riches won by the swords of their two-fisted ancestors. It was feared that the rebels of Bolivar and San Martin would loot the city and confiscate the treasure, both public and private, which consisted of bullion, plate, jewels, and coined gold.

The people of Lima, hoping to send their private fortunes safe home to Spain before the plundering invaders should make a clean sweep, put their valuables on board all manner of sailing vessels which chanced to be in harbor. A fugitive fleet of merchantmen steered away from the coast of Peru, the holds filled with gold and silver, the cabins crammed with officials of the Church and State and other residents of rank and station. In the same manner was sent to sea the treasure of the great cathedral of Lima, all its jeweled chalices, monstrances, and vestments, the weighty gold candlesticks and shrines, the vast store of precious furniture and ornaments which had made this one of the richest religious edifices in the world.

There had not been so much dazzling booty afloat since the galleon fleets were in their heydey. Gone, however, were the dauntless buccaneers and gentlemen adventurers who had singed the beard of the King of Spain in the wake of Francis Drake. The best of them had sailed and fought and plundered for glory as well as gain, for revenge as much as for doubloons. Their successors as sea rovers were pirates of low degree, wretches of a sordid commercialism who preyed on honest merchant skippers of all flags and had little taste for fighting at close quarters. The older race of sea rogues had been wolves; these later pirates were jackals.

Many a one of these gentry got wind of the fabulous treasure which had been sent afloat from Lima and there is no doubt that much of it failed to reach Spain. While in some instances these fleeing merchantmen were boarded and scuttled by pirate craft, in others the lust of gold was too strong for the seamen to whom the rare cargoes had been entrusted. They rose and took the treasure away from their hapless passengers whose bodies fed the fishes.

Among these treacherous mariners, and the most conspicuous of them, was one Captain Thompson, of the British trading brig Mary Dear. He received on board in the harbor of Lima as much as six million dollars’ worth of gold and silver. The black-hearted Captain Thompson led his crew in killing the Spanish owners once the brig was out at sea. Instead of sailing south around Cape Horn, they steered northward in the Pacific and made a landing on lonely Cocos Island.

There the booty was carried ashore and buried until such time as these villains could safely plan distribution and escape. Wisely preferring to stay at sea, Captain Thompson joined the crew of a well-known pirate, Benito Bonito, who also had bloodied his hands with this Spanish treasure. He had captured a rich galleon off the coast of Peru and two other vessels bearing riches sent from Lima. On Cocos Island, at the advice of Captain Thompson, he buried some of his treasure, in a sandstone cave in the face of a cliff. Then he laid kegs of powder upon a ledge close by and blew great fragments of the cliff to cover the cave. In another excavation he placed gold ingots, seven hundred and thirty-three of them. They were ten inches long and four inches wide and three inches thick. With them were twoscore gold-hilted swords inlaid with jewels.

The records of the British Admiralty show that Benito Bonito’s ship was captured by H.M.S. Espiègle which was cruising in the Pacific. Rather than be hanged in chains, this affluent pirate gallantly blew out his brains. At this time Captain Thompson was no longer sailing in company with him and so saved his own wicked skin. One rumor had it that he was garroted in Havana, under another name, with eleven of his old crew of the brig Mary Dear. Other curious stories indicated that he flitted in obscurity from port to port, in mortal terror of Spanish vengeance and never daring to disclose the secret of Cocos Island. . .

CHAPTER XII

RICARDO WRITES A LETTER

Such was the narrative as old Ramon Bazán poured it forth with various impassioned digressions which included cursing the souls of Captain Thompson and Benito Bonito. Excitement made him pepper it with Spanish phrases that had to be translated. The effort sorely taxed his vitality. As Richard Cary said to himself, it was like a boiling kettle. The lid had blown off.

Artfully the climax had been withheld. With the gloating affection of a miser in a melodrama, Señor Bazán spread his creased, soiled document upon the desk. He guarded it with both hands as if Cary might snatch it and bolt for the street. A chart, as the young man had anticipated—a ragged island roughly sketched—the depths of water marked in fathoms—shore elevations shown by fuzzy scratches like caterpillars—sundry crosses and arrows and notations in figures. Here and there the penmanship was almost illegible. Time had faded the ink. Dirt had smudged the sheet of yellowed paper ripped out of some old canvas-backed log-book which might have belonged in the doomed Mary Dear. Ramon Bazán poised a skinny finger over a symbol inked between two hills and piped exultantly:

“Six million dollars in gold and silver and jewels, Ricardo. And here is the cave where Benito Bonito hid the ingots.”

Cary picked up a reading-glass and studied the sheet of paper with the eye of a professional navigator. The chart was the handiwork of a seaman, this he speedily concluded. The compass bearings were properly marked, the anchorage for a vessel noted with particular care, and a channel between the reefs indicated by heavier lines of a pen. The rest of the chart was cryptic, impossible to make head or tail of without prolonged examination. It was interesting but not convincing to Richard Cary who had heard of similar treasure charts. Seafaring men gossiped about them. They turned up every now and again, in the possession of credulous dreamers who swore them to be authentic.

There were excellent reasons, however, for avoiding skepticism in discussing this prodigious marvel with Señor Bazán. Here was Richard Cary’s chance to put the walls of Cartagena behind him, his one tangible hope of salvation. And he was not a man to hang back from seeking Spanish treasure as his next gamble with destiny.

“WHERE IS THIS COCOS ISLAND?”

“Where is this Cocos Island?” he asked.

“Only two hundred miles from the coast of Costa Rica,” instantly answered Ramon. “You see, it is a short voyage through the Canal and into the Pacific. You will not have to climb a tree, like El Draque, to look at the great South Sea. You are wondering why I should have so much faith in this chart? I am easily fooled? Well, then, it will cost a great deal of money to pay for a ship and a crew to go to Cocos Island and dig up the treasure. Nobody ever saw Ramon Bazán spend a dollar unless he knew what he was doing. They call him the stingiest old tight-fist in Cartagena. To get ahead of him you must rise before the cock crows.”

“Yes, it will cost you a good many thousands,” agreed Cary. “Do you mind telling me why you feel you have a sure thing in this treasure chart?”

“It is fair to ask me that question, Ricardo. When did the Mary Dear sail away from Lima? One hundred years ago, and a little bit more. One hundred and three years ago. This chart was given to me by my father. He lived and died in Cartagena, and he was eighty-six years old when he died in this house. It was always mañana with him, and he had business that tied him to the grindstone. He had dreams of going to Cocos Island. Figure it for yourself, Ricardo. This chart came to him just one hundred years ago. Will you laugh at me if I say this chart was given to him by Captain Thompson himself?”

“In Cartagena I believe anything and everything,” gravely acquiesced Richard Cary. “You couldn’t make me bat an eye to save you. The fever downed this Captain Thompson, I presume, while he was dodging under cover, and your father befriended him. That is how it should work out.”

“Exactly that! Truth is funnier than fiction,” cried Ramon Bazán, bobbing up from the desk. “My father had the kindest heart in the world. This stranger was dumped on the beach from a Mexican privateer which came in for fresh water. The man was ill and almost dead. My father took him into this house. He died in the room where you now sleep, Ricardo. A merchant captain, he said, whose ship had been wrecked off the Isle of Pines. Just before he died he told the truth, which is a proper thing to do, Ricardo. One should always make his peace with God. Then it was that my father received the chart and learned the whole story of Captain Thompson and the Mary Dear and the partnership with the pirate Benito Bonito.”

“I’m in no position to pick flaws in it,” said Cary. “I could tell you wilder ones than that. And you actually have a ship in mind to sail for Cocos Island and you want me to take her there?”

Ramon Bazán seemed to have some sudden difficulty with his articulation. He opened his mouth. His eyes bulged. His gestures were aimless as he faltered in a high key:

“The ship will be ready—the ship will be—will be—will be—”

His voice died in his throat. His face was contorted in a spasm of agony. He toppled across the desk, his hands drumming against it.

Richard Cary stood dumbfounded. This was the devil of a new complication! The possible consequences raced through his mind. Ramon Bazán dead in his library—El Tigre Amarillo Grande hiding in the house—a fatal snarl of circumstances from which there could be no possible release! Fantastically it occurred to him that the old man could not die in this tragic manner because the galleon bell had not intoned its ghostly forewarning.

Delaying only an instant, Cary ran to the kitchen shouting for the black woman who might know what should be done. She took it calmly, waddling into the library, making the terrified young man understand that Papa Ramon was subject to such seizures. In a small cabinet she found a vial and shook out two capsules. These she rammed between the suffering man’s lips and crushed them against his teeth. Like a miracle, the acute anguish subsided. It was his heart, mucho malo.

The corpulent negress picked him up in her arms like a baby and laid him upon the bed in his room. With a menacing finger under Cary’s nose, she dared to berate him. Topics of conversation more soothing were necessary to the welfare of the fragile old Papa Bazán.

Shunted aside, Richard Cary retired to a wicker divan in a cool corner and smoked his pipe while he took account of stock. He was nervous. Said he to himself:

“Big as I am and hard to jolt, I can stand just about so much. Here is one bet that I did overlook. Why didn’t the old boy tell me he had a balky heart? Supposing his clock stops before he gets me out of this jam? Whew!”

After some time, he tiptoed into the stricken man’s room. It was delightful beyond words to find him propped up with pillows and sipping a stiff glass of rum and lime-juice. He was a forlorn little object, more shriveled and brittle than ever, but his eye was brightening again and he mustered a shadowy grin. Soothingly Cary suggested:

“Thinking it over, sir, you ought to turn this business of the voyage over to me as soon as you can. You don’t want to pop off before we even sight Cocos Island. I agree to go, of course. Now where is your ship and what is she like? I am competent to take hold.”

“Thank you, Ricardo,” murmured Papa Bazán, with a long pull at the rum. “It was too much excitement. Sit down, if you please. We can talk quietly, like two pigeons. I knew you would agree to go with me, whether you wanted to or not. I had you by the hair of the head. But unless I have won your confidence, unless you go willingly, you can desert the ship at Colon and then where am I? I am bright enough to see that far.”

“I promise to stand by,” said Cary. “In the first place, it is a matter of honor. Perhaps you did kidnap me to serve your own ends, but that doesn’t lighten my obligation. I have no intention of getting out from under it. You have made a pampered guest of me, and now you offer me the one chance of oozing out of Cartagena with a whole skin. In the next place, I’m eager to go to Cocos Island with you. We’ll see the thing through. And there’s that.”

“Then I am a well man, as spry as a tarantula,” sputtered Ramon Bazán. “Have you a master’s license, Ricardo? It will concern the insurance on my steamer. I can’t afford to risk heavy loss. All the money I can scrape together will be in this voyage.”

“Yes, I hold a master’s ticket. And I’m fed up with twiddling my thumbs, so let’s go to it. What do you say?”

“But I can’t turn the ship over to you until she is ready to go to sea, at the very last minute,” lamented the owner. “You will have to be sneaked on board at night and hidden until the steamer is ready to sail, or the Colombians in the crew will jump over the side. One look at El Tigre Grande and—adios! Ten hundred things have I had on my hands to arrange, and do you wonder at my bad heart kicking a flip-flop?”

“I shall pray for your health, believe me,” devoutly returned the nervous young mariner. “Now about this steamer—”

“She is very awful to look at,” was the frank admission. “A German tramp that was interned four years at Cartagena! I bought her cheap, Ricardo. Rusty and afflicted with heart disease and other things, she will not sink if the weather is kind. But you yourself could never make the mistake of thinking she was the Tarragona. I have found a crew for my shabby harlot of a Valkyrie. Not such men as you will love, Ricardo, for I must take what I find. They must hear not a whisper of Cocos Island. It is a trading voyage to the west coast. The ship will clear for Buenaventura, a Pacific port of Colombia.”

“We’ll drive that condemned old crock along somehow,” cheerfully responded Richard Cary. “When do we sail?”

“A few days more, my captain. A little coal to put in and boiler tubes to be plugged. Coal is cheaper at Balboa. We can fill the bunkers there. As Heaven hears my voice, Ricardo, unless we find the treasure this voyage will ruin poor old Ramon Bazán.”

The interview had taken a turn that was not good for a damaged heart. The owner of the Valkyrie was growing excited. Cary thought it best to let the details rest. The old gentleman’s health interested him enormously. It was like carrying a basket of eggs along a very rough road.

The breakable Papa Bazán insisted on getting into his clothes next morning and seemed little the worse for wear. It was quite apparent that he had not been running around in aimless circles while preparing for his romantic voyage. He was amazingly capable of getting what he wanted, and without the eternal delays of his native clime. Those who now did business with him found his pertinacity as vexing as the itch.

The Valkyrie was a small vessel, of nine hundred tons, which had flown the German flag in the coasting trade of Colombia and Venezuela until gripped by the greedy hand of war. Corroded and blistering, a sad orphan of the sea, she had slumbered at an anchor chain in the lagoon of Cartagena until rashly purchased by Ramon Bazán after a season of dickering and bickering to make a New England horse-trader jealous. When he found how much repair work was unavoidable, his heart almost stopped forever. What made it beat again was the stimulus, more potent than capsules, of the six millions of treasure of the brig Mary Dear, besides those seven hundred and thirty-three gold ingots piled in the cave by the arithmetical Benito Bonito.

A west coast trading venture to make his old age something more than dry rot and stagnation, publicly explained Ramon Bazán. A whim of this erratic old codger, the Cartagena merchants found it mirthful. A guardian should interpose before he squandered all his money. A few critics argued to the contrary. In his prime Ramon Bazán had been famous for shrewdness. Who could tell? He might have something up his sleeve. The problem of raking a crew together caused more speculation. Cartagena was a languid seaport. Most of the commerce had been diverted to Porto Colombia. The American beach-combers who drifted in from the Canal Zone were more or less of a nuisance. It was one of these that Ramon Bazán had put in charge of his ship as chief officer while fitting for sea. A captain would join the Valkyrie later, he vouchsafed.

“What do you know about this chief officer, Señor Bazán?” asked Richard Cary.

“If I knew more I should like him less,” was the peevish reply. “He calls himself Captain Bradley Duff. Rough and tough, eh? He commanded ships, to hear him say so, but I think he lost his ticket somewhere. He had a job with the North American Mining Company at Calamar for a little while. A large, important man, Ricardo, with blossoms on his nose, and a very red face—his belly is round and his feet are flat. He has a big voice and a whiskey breath. But he knows a ship, and he can’t graft very much because I pay all the bills. He asks why he is not made captain of the Valkyrie? You will understand why when you know him, Ricardo.”

“I don’t have to know him, thank you. You can find a frowsy Captain Bradley Duff in almost any port. They make a loud noise and throw a chesty front. Is your chief engineer the same kind?”

“No. I was lucky to find him. A long, thin boy, younger than you, Ricardo, and with manners courteous to an old man. He wandered to Colombia from Boston because he had the loose foot. You know. To take a look at the tropics. Nothing wrong with him. He was an assistant engineer in steamers between Boston and Norfolk. Down this way he was in charge of the ice plant at Barranquilla until his foot felt loose again. For two weeks he has been sweating with the engines of the Valkyrie, always cheerful, and he says he will hammer seven knots out of the old contraption or blow her to the middle of next week. Contraption? He made me laugh. The Valkyrie is just that.”

For Richard Cary it was a game of blind-man’s buff, with such random echoes as these to make him call it a choice between being shot in Cartagena or drowned in a coffin of a ship. It was a mad world and daily growing madder. However, he liked it, and would not have exchanged lots with the spruce Captain Jordan Sterry and the immaculate Tarragona punctually running her lawful schedule.

One thing troubled him, and one thing only. He could not bear to go surging off into this uncertain escapade without sending some word to Teresa Fernandez. Wherever she might be, a letter would probably be forwarded if addressed in care of the Union Fruit Company’s offices in New York. He could not disclose his plans, but he could ask her to wait for him. So straitly was he fettered by circumstances that he felt bound to say to Señor Bazán:

“It is your secret, this voyage to Cocos Island. I have no idea of giving it away, but I must write Teresa before we sail. There is no harm in telling her that I have found a good berth in a ship in the west coast trade for two or three months. She knows how dull shipping is at home. I disappeared from the Tarragona, you remember, and I want her to understand that it wasn’t my fault.”

“Write her that much, then,” cried her waspish uncle, “but no more, on your honor, Ricardo. Fill that girl with all the beautiful lies you like about love and separations, but not one word about the Valkyrie and Ramon Bazán. By my soul and breeches, we must keep Teresa quiet. Nobody knows what she will do next. Put your letter on the desk with my letters. I will take them to the post-office when I go out to-morrow.”

For a young man naturally candid and unversed in evasions, it was a mortally difficult letter to write. He hated the web of secrecy which had inexorably enmeshed him. Besides this, he was writing his first love letter, and to a girl who had vanished from his ken, beyond horizons of her own. The situation was intricate, wretchedly confused. For the time he had given hostages to fortune and was not his own free man. To tell the whole truth, to explain to Teresa that, for love of her, he had sought a hiding-place in Cartagena with a price on his head and was now off for a fling at pirate’s gold to pour into her lap, this would have satisfied the normal impulses of a young man who desired to stand well in the eyes of his sweetheart.

With a sigh and a frown, and a smile now and then, he finished the task. The letter he laid on the desk of Uncle Ramon Bazán, as instructed. It was gone next morning, he was particular to notice, when the owner of the Valkyrie hastily departed in a carriage to pursue his harassing affairs.

What Richard Cary did not know was that his letter was not among those which Señor Bazán had casually tucked in a pocket after observing that all of them bore stamps. He may have inferred that the young man had changed his mind. At any rate, it was a detail which soon slipped from an aged and heavily laden mind. All the letters found on the desk were deposited at the post-office and this was the end of the transaction for Ramon Bazán.

The perversity of fate had assumed the guise of a little brown monkey of morbidly inquisitive habits. Early in the morning he had strayed in from the patio. The library was forbidden hunting-ground and therefore alluring. No doubt he was searching for Cary’s briar pipe as the especial quest. From a chair he had easily hopped to the top of the flat desk. The pile of letters ready for mailing arrested his errant fancy. First he shuffled them as though playing solitaire. Then he selected an envelope at random. It crackled as he squeezed it.

The stamp in the corner caught his eye. A paw with sharp nails peeled off a corner of the stamp. He tasted it. The flavor was agreeable. Some sound in the hall just then disturbed his pastime. He tucked the one letter under his arm and took it along for leisurely investigation. It might be worth chewing for more of that pleasant flavor.

Lightly the little brown monkey frisked from the library and galloped across the patio. In a far corner were two large tubs, painted green, which held young date palms. Behind them was a secluded nook where the astute monkey had often hidden such objects as appealed to his fickle fancy.

Into this snug retreat he retired with the crackling envelope. Gravely intent, he tore the envelope open. He crammed a piece of it into his cheek. The taste was disappointing. He was angry. He had been hoaxed. He chattered profanely. With a grimace he tore the sheets of paper into strips. Then he tore the strips into very little bits of paper. They fluttered down behind the green tubs.

The brown monkey looked pleased. He raked the bits of paper together and tossed them in air. They floated down like petals of the white flowers when he shook a bush in the patio. Some of them stuck to his hairy hide. Very carefully he picked them off. He scooped another handful of these bits of paper and flung them up.

Soon tiring of this frolic, he swept all the bits of paper into a wide crack of the masonry wall behind the tubs. He had learned to be discreet. It was unwise to leave any traces of a foray into that forbidden library. Once it had resulted in a little brown monkey with a very sore head. Papa Bazán had used the flat of a brass paper-cutter.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MASTER TAKES COMMAND

It was the opinion of Señor Bazán that the bell of the galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario should be mounted on the deck of his own vessel. The ancient bell had once sounded the watches from the forecastle-head of another treasure ship in these same seas. Also, it possessed a legendary virtue which was not to be overlooked, that of ringing its ghostly warning when fatal disaster impended. From what he could learn of the rusty relic of a tramp steamer, Richard Cary felt inclined to endorse the old man’s whimsy. It would be handy to know in advance when the Valkyrie intended plunging to the bottom of the Caribbean or the Pacific.

“I am too wise to believe all kinds of nonsense, Ricardo, like the ignorant people of Cartagena,” said Papa Ramon, “but this bell of the galleon—how can I doubt it? And there is no bell on the Valkyrie, so I save some good dollars. These Colombian thieves stole the brass fittings while my steamer was empty and anchored during the war. And the galleon bell had the blessing of the Holy Church and the favor of Our Lady of Rosario so we make no mistake in carrying it on our voyage.”

Richard Cary reflected, quite logically, that it was no more fantastical than pinning one’s faith and fortune to a pirate’s chart of Cocos Island. The whole thing might be unreal, but it had the texture of consistency. Like a satisfactory fairy tale, the improbable and the absurd were made entirely plausible. The twentieth century had very little to do with it.

And so the chief engineer of the Valkyrie sent two of his native helpers with a mule-cart. They unbolted the heavy bronze bell from the weather-darkened frame of Spanish oak. It clanged as they bore it out of the patio, a mellow note that throbbed and lingered like a phantom voice. A carpenter was instructed to set up another frame, on the roof of the forward deck-house.

The residence of Señor Bazán was to remain closed during his absence. This he had announced to the black woman in the kitchen and the faithful Indian lad. It was uncertain when their master would return. Two months’ wages in advance he was generous enough to pay them, although it made him wince, and they could enjoy a vacation among their own people. They would be notified when to reopen the house. The señor who lived next door had consented to receive the green parrot and the little brown monkey. The key also would be left with him.

His energy phenomenally sufficient for his needs, Ramon Bazán made the final arrangements for departure. Richard Cary admired the tenacious sagacity with which one obstacle after another was ridden over. He himself felt more and more like a big, useless lump of a man, to have to sit and look on. Give him a ship under his feet and he would be quit of this foolish trance.

He wondered how the old man proposed to set him aboard the Valkyrie and hide him there until the harbor was astern. It was a nut to crack. He forbore to ask too many questions. They annoyed Papa Ramon. He was his own strategist. An uncannily strong finish he was making of it. The adventure was like a magic draught of the elixir of youth. It enabled him to hold decrepitude at arm’s length, for a little while to grin in the face of the old devil of death that had so often jumped out at him from the dark.

The journey from the house to the quay was boldly and simply contrived. At eleven o’clock at night, the muchacho waited in the alley with a one-horse carriage. The top had been raised. Richard Cary was directed to double himself on the rear seat. He slid down as far as possible with his knees almost up to his chin. Around and over him were piled the personal luggage, rolls of blankets, canvas bags filled with clothing, folded hammocks, two or three valises, until they filled the back of the carriage to the roof.

Señor Bazán conspicuously hunched himself in front with the driver. This was the factor of safety. The old man was the passport through the streets of Cartagena where he was as well known as the Church of San Pedro Clavér and almost as much of an antiquity. Cary perceived this. Alone he had been hemmed in and helpless. Before the carriage rolled out of the alley, Ramon Bazán turned to say very softly:

“Hold out your hand, Ricardo. Here is a pistol I forgot to give you. If anything trips our plans, I don’t want you to be caught like a rat. Never mind me. You just shoot your way out if you can. Run for La Popa. The lame Palacio may help you to flee to the coast or the mountains. I sent him money yesterday as a gift from you. It was your wish.”

“Bless your heart, that would leave you a fine chance to square yourself with the police,” gratefully replied Cary. “If I have to leg it I’ll put you in my pocket. We have to see this thing through together. Cast off, muchacho, and full speed ahead.”

The carriage rattled through the silent, galleried streets and provoked no curiosity until it approached a gateway in the city wall. A police officer in a white uniform was strolling out of a wine-shop. In the light from the windows the carriage attracted his attention. It was moving too rapidly, the horse at a gallop. Even a young Indian driver had nerves. They were feeling the strain. He was anxious to get through that gateway. It had been much less trying to haul El Tigre Amarillo Grande into Cartagena under a load of wood than to haul him out again in a hired carriage.

The lieutenant of police jumped from the curb and raised his sword as a peremptory signal to halt. The despairing muchacho, a slave to a military uniform, laid back on the reins and jerked the horse to its haunches. The carriage stopped so abruptly that Richard Cary bounced beneath his mountain of luggage. He knew that something had gone askew. He made elbow room to free the heavy pistol. Then he heard the petulant voice of Ramon Bazán upbraiding the officer. It was asinine to meddle with the owner of a ship in haste to go aboard and enjoy a few hours of sleep, a ship which was to sail at dawn.

The lieutenant was a young man of polished manners who now recognized this abusive old gentleman. He was about to offer a laughing apology, with a caution to drive with more care, when Ramon Bazán swayed forward, a hand plucking at his breast. He stuttered something in a queer, frightened little voice.

Richard Cary heard and comprehended. In a flash he saw the library and a frail figure toppled across the desk, face contorted, eyes bulging. Before he could toss the luggage aside, oblivious of his own predicament, the quick-witted muchacho had thrown an arm around the drooping old man to hold him in the carriage. A twitch of the reins, a chirrup, and the horse was in motion. It broke into a quick trot.

The lieutenant of police stared for a moment and strolled homeward from the wine-shop. Señor Bazán was getting quite feeble, he said to himself. Silly of him to be bothering with a ship. Greedy to make more money even if it killed him!

The frightened driver steered the horse through the gateway in the wall, one arm still supporting the flaccid, silent shape of his master. In the wide, open space between the wall and the quay, the lad halted the carriage and wailed a “mucho malo.” Richard Cary instantly crawled out and lifted poor Ramon from the front seat. The muchacho threw a roll of blankets and a canvas sack on the ground. They laid the stricken man down very gently.

Cary put a finger on his pulse. It was not stilled, but the beat was faint and slow. The one hope was to search his pockets for the precious vial. Thank God, it had not been forgotten! The lad held a small flash-lamp while Cary pried open Ramon’s jaw and crushed two capsules in his mouth.

They waited a few minutes. The excruciating pain was eased. The sufferer was able to whisper a few words. Ricardo was to carry him to the beach near the quay where a boat would be found. There was to be no turning back. It was a command.

Some of the luggage was shifted to the front of the carriage. This made room in the rear so that Cary could sit and hold the old gentleman in his arms. Thus they came to the deep sand at the edge of the deserted beach. The Indian lad indicated the skiff which, earlier in the night, he had placed in readiness for the stealthy embarkation. Then he stood waiting for orders. First they made a bed on the sand for Ramon Bazán. He was too weak to lift his head. Cary mercifully refrained from questions concerning the plan of action. It had been withheld from him. Childish vanity and secretiveness had made it enjoyable to lead the big Ricardo by the nose.

It was not in the mind of Ricardo, however, to let the voyage be delayed or thwarted. He would use his own wits. He tried to conjecture just how the crafty Papa Bazán had expected to turn the trick of smuggling El Tigre Amarillo Grande on board. It was something very deceptive and complicated, no doubt.

“I am not in his class when it comes to hocus-pocus,” said the dubitating young man. “He was going off to the ship first, I imagine, leaving me on the beach until he could signal with a flash-light. Most of the crew must be ashore, for a last night in port. Well, it’s up to me to play it alone. And I did hope to get clear of Cartagena without any more rough stuff. My reputation can’t stand it.”

Having finished this brief debate with himself, the brawny seafarer moved with an alert and easy confidence. He helped the muchacho stow the luggage in the skiff. Then they made a comfortable nest for Señor Bazán who manifested no more than a glimmering interest in this, the supreme exploit of his life. Richard Cary was made to feel forgetful of himself. Once at sea, Papa Ramon might rally and live to enchant himself with the pirate’s chart amid the volcanic cliffs of Cocos Island. He deserved to win.

With the Indian lad in the stern of the skiff, Cary picked up the oars and drove ahead. A few hundred yards out in the dusky harbor floated the Valkyrie, an uncouth blotch against the stars. Here and there a light gleamed from a round port or a deck-house window. Cary aimed the skiff to come up under the steamer’s stern, as the course least likely to be detected. As soon as he was close aboard he used an oar as a paddle. The skiff stole under the overhang and then slid along the vessel’s side until it nudged the steeply slanting gangway steps.

Cary made fast with a turn of line and motioned the lad to stay where he was. Then he gathered Ramon Bazán from the blankets and deftly doubled him over his shoulder. It was like carrying a helpless infant. With one hand free, Cary awkwardly footed it up the steps, steadied by a shifting grip of the side-rope. It made him puff, but the fatigue amounted to nothing.

Quietly he stepped on the deck, which was unlighted. No one hailed him. It was wisdom to look about and find his bearings. The impromptu capture of a seagoing steamer had not been contemplated in his darkest hours as a fugitive. It required some care.

The first thought was to deposit Ramon Bazán in a place where he might rest undisturbed. The living quarters would be forward of the saloon. Presumably they included a vacant room for the owner and another for the captain. On tiptoe Cary bore his burden along the deck. He found a darkened passage and entered it. The pocket flash-lamp showed him his own room, identified by a desk and the rolls of charts in the racks overhead.

This was good enough. He rolled Ramon Bazán into the bunk, after removing his coat and shoes. The old man mustered breath to thank him and then fell asleep. At a guess, he was no worse off than when he had been bowled over in his library.

Closing the door, Captain Richard Cary returned to the deck. For so heavy a man his tread was light and quick. He ran down the gangway steps and bade the muchacho fetch up the luggage and leave it on deck. Then he was to shove off in the skiff and go back to his horse and carriage on the beach.

Captain Cary climbed on board again and stood listening. He heard, down below, the clatter of a shovel, the pulsations of a pump, and the hiss of a leaky steam-pipe. This was heartening. He would take the vessel to sea with daylight enough to find the channel. Pilot be hanged! There were marks and buoys enough.

In the crew’s quarters, up in the bows, two or three men were quarreling over a game of cards, or it sounded like that. They could be left to their own devices. The saloon was lighted, the door open. A husky voice was bawling to the steward.

Richard Cary had to stoop to enter the small saloon. At the table sat his chief officer, Bradley Duff, and a plump, flashy young man with kinky hair and a flattened nose. An elderly mulatto in a dirty apron just then emerged from the pantry with a tray.

The late supper was interrupted, but not rudely. “Big Dick” Cary intruded his soothing presence with the air of a man who disliked violence. He received no greetings, for the reason that the three men in the saloon had suddenly forgotten what speech was for. They were as dumb as three oysters.

The blustering Bradley Duff blew a long breath through his ragged mustache. The kinky-haired young man in the pink silk shirt showed the whites of his eyes and slid lower in his chair. He seemed to be ebbing under the table. The glasses on the steward’s tray jingled together. His feet were riveted to the floor.

The large, pleasant-featured visitor could not help smiling as he said:

“Good-evening, Mister Duff. I am Captain Cary, master of this ship.”

The spell was broken. The plump young man slid lower as he murmured, “Madre de Dios! Está El Tigre Amarillo!” The steward wrenched his feet from the floor. They would have retreated swiftly to the pantry, but Captain Cary crooked a finger at him. He obeyed and joined the others at the table.

Mr. Bradley Duff had not slid down in his chair. His mottled cheeks were puffed out. His pimpled nose was redder, if that were possible. He was a beefy, truculent figure, a man who had been valorous in his prime, before some hidden flaw had broken him. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he hoarsely burst out:

“Like hell you are the master of this ship, you big buckaroo! I know who you are—the guy that busted loose and fooled the town into thinking he was a bad hombre. I’m no kid to be scared by a bogeyman. You make me laugh. Master, my eye! You’ve gone clean bughouse. Wait till the owner comes off to-night. He’ll throw a fit. I am waiting for his pet skipper.”

“The owner is on board,” said Cary, “but he is to be left alone until I say so. He is a sick man. We shall get under way at four-thirty, Mr. Duff. What’s the word from the chief engineer?”

“You bumped into old Ramon Bazán on the beach and knocked him on the head, that’s what you did,” retorted the inflamed Mr. Duff. “You are addled if you figure on putting this stuff over on me. If you don’t want to be thrown overboard, beat it. What I ought to do is put you in irons and turn you over to the police. I’ll go see if Ramon Bazán is really aboard and what you did to him. If you turn out to be just a harmless boob of a lunatic, I don’t want to be too rough with you.”

“Stay right here in the saloon, Mr. Duff, and please keep your hands on the table. If you swell up any more, you’ll break a blood vessel and then I am shy a chief officer. You will have to brace up to-morrow. You keep a rotten lookout and the ship is slack and filthy. How many men are ashore?”

“None of your bloody business,” was the savage reply. “Here, I’ve stood enough silly play-acting from you.”

Pot-bellied beach-comber though he was, Bradley Duff refused to strike his colors. He was honest in his belief that this was an unlawful invasion. There were men enough on board if he could get word to them. And at any minute a boat-load was due to arrive from the wharf. He kicked his plump companion as a signal for action. One of them might succeed in breaking for the deck to summon help.

Snatching a bottle from the tray, Mr. Duff hurled it with a mighty swing of his thick arm. Cary ducked his head. A miss was as good as a mile. To his sincere regret, he was in for a disturbance.

Before the enraged Mr. Duff could fling another bottle, Cary jumped forward and tapped him over the head with the butt of the heavy pistol. Too bad, but it had to be done! The blow was not meant to be deadly. It was enough to put the unlucky chief officer to sleep.

A pink silk shirt was streaking it for the saloon door. Captain Cary thrust out a foot and the plump young man fell. He rebounded like a ball. Catching him on the rebound, Cary called to the elderly steward:

“Do you talk English? What’s your name?”

“Rufus Pilley, sah. I’se a British subjec’ f’um Jamaica, if you please, Cap’n, an’ I stands on mah rights to be treated right. You don’t have to blam me with no pistol. At yo’ service, sah.”

“Bully for you, Rufus. Your views are sound. Who is this hot sport that I hold in my hands? Does he belong on board?”

“Th’ secon’ mate, Mr. Panchito, Cap’n, sah. You done scared him till he’s green as a lizard.”

“Lock him up, Rufus. The pantry will do. Step lively.”

Mr. Panchito offered no resistance. It was a thing to be thankful for that the Yellow Tiger had spared his life. Having tucked him away, Captain Cary exclaimed:

“Now, Rufus Pilley, help me lug Mr. Duff to his room. He will wake up with a headache. Sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.”

“Thank you, sah. When you gits done an’ finished with disciplinin’ the crew, kin I serve you a tasty suppah, Cap’n? It looks like it’s hungry wuk a-conquerin’ all hands like th’ way you started off.”

“You are a sensible man,” grinned Cary. “We’ll get on well.”

They left Mr. Duff in his room. He displayed no interest. Cary looked in at Señor Ramon Bazán. It was like being in charge of an infirmary. The aged treasure-seeker was awake. He demanded a nip of rum and lime-juice. It was an auspicious symptom. Rufus Pilley, very sympathetic, volunteered as a nurse for the night. He trotted off to mix the drink.

“I was afraid you were fighting, Ricardo,” said Papa Ramon. “If you will bring the chief officer here, I can explain it so he will understand you are the captain.”

“Oh, Mr. Duff is quiet enough,” was the careless reply. “He has just turned in. You heard something smash? Mr. Duff dropped a bottle. You turn over and go to sleep again as soon as the steward brings the toddy. We are off for Cocos Island in the morning, with a westward ho and a rumbelow!”

“I am a very happy old man, Ricardo. Yes, I will sleep like a child. The ship is safe with you.”

With two officers mutinous and the crew yet to deal with, Captain Cary was not as happy as Señor Bazán. He went into the wheel-house and found the voice tube to the engine-room.

“Is this the chief?” he asked.

“Yes. Who the dickens are you?”

“The master, Captain Cary. Come to the saloon right away, if you please.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Can you kick her out of harbor at daybreak?”

“She can do that much, Captain Cary. Come down here later and I’ll make you weep.”

It was the tired voice of a Yankee from down east, rare music to Richard Cary’s ears. Presently the youthful chief engineer came dragging his lank frame into the saloon. A greasy cap was pulled over a shock of brown hair. The boiler suit was black with oil and coal dust. His face was besmirched like a burnt-cork minstrel. The white teeth gleamed in the smile of a rover who could not be daunted by life’s rough roads. He was a tropical tramp because he liked it.

“You look to me as if old Daddy Bazán knew where to find the right skipper,” said he, reaching for the water pitcher. “This is one pie-eyed voyage to the west coast, believe me. My name is Charlie Burnham, sir, and it takes a good deal to give me the yips or I’d be raving right now.”

“Burnham?” said Cary. “You sound like a letter from home. There are lots of Burnhams in my New Hampshire village of Fairfield.”

“Cousins of mine, I guess. Shucks, I was raised in Tobey Center, only thirty miles from Fairfield. I’m a hick from a rock-ribbed farm. It was the darned chores that made me run away, cows to milk and wood to chop and snow to shovel, and stone walls to break your back.”

“Shake hands on that,” grinned Captain Cary. “Is there such a place as New Hampshire on the map?”

“Gosh, you wouldn’t think so. It was never like this. Say, there can’t be two men like you on this coast. You must be the bird who got mad and cleaned up Cartagena a while ago. You sure did make yourself hard to find. This looks like a nice get-away for you. I’m not butting in on your affairs, am I?”

“Not a bit, Charlie Burnham. I’m the bird. Now tell me about this unholy old hooker. What have you got for a black gang?”

“Two assistants. That’s what they signed on as. Colombians. Eight nigger firemen and a couple of oilers. I can cuss in Spanish so we’re doing pretty well. Short-handed, but I couldn’t scrape up another damn man.”

“What about the deck force? Did Mr. Duff have any better luck?”

“Half a dozen black-and-tans, Indians and such. I guess I can steal one or two of ’em at a pinch.”

Charlie Burnham gulped another glass of water and fished a cigarette from a damp packet. He was eyeing the tall, fair-haired skipper with a certain grave concern. Cary noticed the change of manner and missed the brave twinkle. Something worried his valiant Yankee engineer.

“What’s on your mind, Charlie?” he asked. “You can’t be getting cold feet. It’s a great life if you keep calm. I’ll be glad to help you handle your crowd.”

“Oh, I can ride those ginks, Captain Cary. I got wise to their curves when I was running the ice plant at Barranquilla. But look here, I don’t want to be a false alarm, so don’t kid me. You may have a lively time getting this ship away. For one thing, this rummy of a chief officer has made no hit with me.”

“I made a hit with him,” gravely replied Cary, “but it may not last long. What else is in your noddle?”

“A dozen of these men are ashore, Captain Cary, and most of ’em will be pickled when they come off to-night. They were having a pow-wow on deck yesterday. It meant nothing in my young life, but it popped into my mind just now. It was this crazy dope about El Tigre Amarillo—they swore he was still hiding in Cartagena—and the main gazabo of the police had offered a thousand dollars reward for the outlaw, dead or alive. One of the firemen had a poster and was reading it to the bunch. They got all jazzed up over it. You know how they go up in the air. Every mother’s son of ’em was all set to grab El Tigre with his bare hands and get the thousand dollars.”

“Flattering, I call it,” said Cary. “I hadn’t heard about the reward. They will try to cash in before we sail, Charlie?”

“It may be a flivver, sir, but I thought I ought to tip you off. They won’t have the nerve unless they see a chance to rush you in a mob.”

“Then I must keep them from getting their heads together,” said Cary. “And my two deck officers are of no use to me. That is unfortunate.”

“I’ll say so,” replied the chief engineer, “but I’ll do my best to make that thousand dollars hard to collect. Sorry I must go below, sir. Be sure to give me a call when the party begins.”

CHAPTER XIV

SHAKING A CREW TOGETHER

The master of the Valkyrie prowled on deck for some time. The two or three men in the forecastle had ceased their noise and were presumably in their bunks. The steamer was quiet. Cary regretted that he had been compelled to tap Mr. Duff on the head, but there had been no other way out of it. Quick action had been demanded or the dandyish second mate, Mr. Panchito, might have escaped from the saloon to raise an alarm.

First impressions of Mr. Bradley Duff had been more favorable than expected. He amounted to more than a rum-eaten shell of a man. There had been no cowardice in his violent rebellion. His sense of the fitness of things had been outraged, that a chief officer left in charge of a ship should be challenged by a crazy vagabond with no credentials.

On shore Mr. Duff might be a blatant ruin. To such men, however, the sea is often the breath of salvation, and its austere traditions have power to restore, for the time, the habits of courage and fidelity.

To Richard Cary the whole adventure had taken a disagreeable slant. The flavor was spoiled. He was out of the frying-pan into the fire. The tidings of that thousand-dollar reward stuck in his throat. It hadn’t occurred to him that this Colombian crew might regard him as a treasure to be hunted with murderous enthusiasm. The shoe was very much on the wrong foot. If Señor Bazán was aware of this excessively awkward aspect, he was not letting it fret him. His confidence in the colossal Ricardo who plucked iron bars from windows and walked out of prisons was either sublime or senile.

Could anything be attempted during the night? It would be easy enough to stay under cover until after the boat-load of firemen and sailors had returned from the town. But this would not get the steamer to sea unless—unless—yes, there was a fighting chance.

Richard Cary walked the deck, trying to fit together this detail and that. He had no fatuous intentions of storming through the ship and crushing mutiny single-handed. The chief engineer, willing as he was, ought to be left below with his invalid machinery. And any disturbance on board would be certain to attract attention on shore.

While Captain Cary, with deliberate scrutiny, was weighing and testing his plans, he heard the splash of oars and the cadenced thump of thole-pins. The ship’s boat presently bumped alongside with much loud mirth and gusty argument. Cary withdrew to the wheel-house where he could watch them go forward to their quarters. They lingered in a noisy group, evidently surprised at finding no officer on watch. What was to be done with the boat? Should they hoist it to the davits or leave it in the water? One of the mates ought to be somewhere about to give orders. However, these returning mariners were weary after much liquor and dancing with the girls. They forgot the boat and stumbled forward, weaving this way and that, arms around one another, singing sentimentally.

Richard Cary counted them as well as he could. A dozen or so! Charlie Burnham must have kept a couple more on watch in the fire-room. The two or three already in the forecastle accounted for the lot. There was this to be said for this scratch crew of Colombians. They had not run wild ashore. It had been a harmless spree.

Cary went to the gangway and turned the boat adrift. It was a needless hazard to leave it tied alongside. There should be no scrambling out of the ship in the morning to arouse the police of Cartagena. One hornet’s nest was enough. Next he stole into the chief officer’s room and flashed the light on him. Alas, Mr. Duff was indisposed to be an active partner. He slumbered heavily, his crimsoned nose trumpeting like a bugle. His gray hair was slightly clotted, but the pistol butt had no more than scratched it. The effect had been more soporific than serious.

Shaking his shoulder failed to stir him, although he grunted and muttered a very profane desire to be let alone. This was disappointing. Captain Cary turned his steps to the room which harbored Señor Ramon Bazán. The steward nodded in a chair. He put a finger to his lips and whispered:

“Sleepin’ like he was rocked in a cradle, Cap’n. What kin I do foh you, sah?”

“Produce that supper you promised me, Rufus. I shall be kept up all night.”

“Right away, sah. I didn’t hear you blam no more people,” hopefully observed the steward as he ambled aft. “Th’ reason I has lived a long while an’ kep’ mah health is, ’cause I abstained mahself from fool questions. But what does you aim to do wid th’ second mate, Mr. Panchito? You done lock him in mah pantry. How kin I find suppah foh you, Cap’n?”

“Sure enough, Rufus. How careless of me! What is your opinion of Mr. Panchito?”

“He ain’t so worse, sah, tho’ dese Colombia yaller men don’t class with us Jamaica folks, in mah jedgment. Mr. Panchito was in th’ Colombia navy till th’ navy filled up an’ sunk one night, right smack in dis yere harbor, Cap’n. It got tired of stayin’ afloat. Th’ one gunboat was all the Colombia navy done was, so Mr. Panchito had to go git him another job. Um-m-m, when you come bulgin’ in to-night he was so skeered his hair mighty near unkinked. It was jes’ like a nightmare bustin’ in on him—wid all dis say-so ’bout El Diablo prancin’ an’ ravin’ through Cartagena.”

“That sounds better,” heartily exclaimed the skipper. “You have seen the owner of the vessel, Señor Bazán, and you know I am the lawful master. Can you talk to Mr. Panchito in his own lingo?”

“Yes, Cap’n. I was two years in a gen’leman’s house in Cartagena, an’ then he ups an’ dies on me.”

“Then make Mr. Panchito savvey that I am easy to get along with if he jumps lively.”

Mr. Panchito was released from the pantry, anticipating sudden death. Nothing like this had ever happened in the navy of Colombia. When invited to sit at table with a good-humored El Diablo who smiled often, he plucked up spirit and found his own voice. In his heart was dismay at the thought of losing this position as second mate, with its excellent wages, and he was anxious to do anything in his power to hold it. To annoy this giant of a captain was to be rapped on the cabeza with a pistol butt. Mr. Panchito had not the remotest idea of collecting any thousand-dollar reward.

After a refreshing supper, Captain Cary and Mr. Panchito went arm-in-arm to the wheel-house. The chief engineer sent up the information that the first assistant, two firemen, and an oiler were on watch, to keep steam in readiness for morning.

“Hold them down there, Charlie,” was the order. “Have you got a gun?”

“A sort of a one. All right, sir, I’ll hold ’em here. What’s the big idea?”

“Fetch me a hammer and spikes and some short pieces of scantling. I won’t need the rest of the crew in the morning. Can you manage to shove her as far as the Boca Chica?”

“Sure! I sling a mean shovel myself. Nail ’em up? That’s a corker.”

Soon Captain Cary went forward, with Mr. Panchito, to reconnoiter. A wooden house with large windows had been built, at Mr. Duff’s suggestion, to give the crew lodgings more livable in the tropics than the noisome kennels under the deck of the vessel’s bow. These were so leaky that rough weather would flood them, and they were foully dark. It had been cheaper to build a shelter than to make the necessary repairs.

Mr. Panchito was eager to assist the captain’s hasty carpentry by discouraging with a pistol any attempts to break out. The doors had hasps and padlocks, but these could not withstand much battering from within. Richard Cary spiked them fast with swift, powerful blows of a machinist’s hammer. The noise awoke the dozen sailors and firemen. For the moment they imagined the mate was pounding to call all hands on deck. They tumbled from the bunks, crowded to the doors, and couldn’t push them open.

Caramba! There was a commotion in this stout wooden coop. Bare toes could not kick through obstinate doors. The terrific hammering dinned at them. It was like being inside a bass drum. Fearfully they flew for the windows.

And now the rotund Mr. Panchito exhibited a frenzied agility. He bounded from one window to another, flourishing the pistol, pushing a head back, belaboring a wriggling pair of shoulders. It was like a multiplied jack-in-the-box. He caught one limber fellow by the leg as he dived for the deck. Into the window he stuffed him by main strength. Mr. Panchito was magnificent. As a second mate he was already deserving encomiums.

Laughter made Richard Cary miss a spike as often as he hit it. He too had to gallop round and round the wooden structure which seemed to have a hundred windows and as many frantic men trying to spill out of them. Never had he heard the Spanish language so molten that it actually threatened to set a building on fire. As fast as he rammed a man inside, he slapped a piece of board across a window and whacked the spikes into it.

Mr. Panchito was running himself to death. He sounded like a whistling buoy. There was no leisure for him while those infernal heads were popping out, and El Diablo was at his heels. One by one the windows were made secure enough to check the eruption. Then Captain Cary had time to spike more boards across the windows. Even if the captives should pull the bunks to pieces for battering-rams, they were safely caged for the present. In their own tongue Mr. Panchito informed them through the cracks that if they cared to live longer it was essential to be as still as mice and to beseech the goodness of God on their sinful knees.

“Mucho bueno, Capitan Cary,” exclaimed this excellent second mate whose pink shirt stuck wetly to his skin.

“One hundred per cent bueno,” was the hearty verdict. “If the Colombian navy hadn’t dropped out from under you, it would have been Admiral Panchito some day.”

“Si, señor. Now ees what?”

“Now is what? That is as bright a remark as I ever had put up to me, Mr. Panchito.” (Cary held up two fingers.) “Dos hombres! Just the two of us. We must make the old steamboat, el vapor, vamoose from Cartagena.”

“Dos hombres? Si, señor,” instantly agreed the second mate to whom nothing was now incredible.

They adjourned to the saloon where the steward was waiting with food and drink.

“Seems like I heard yo’ conquerin’ somebody else, Cap’n Cary.”

“You did, Rufus. Now I’ve knocked off. I forgot to ask you—is there a cook to be accounted for?”

“Yes, sah. He come aboard with th’ men an’ is sleepin’ it off.”

“Please turn him out for an early breakfast. Does he have to be conquered?”

“Not him. I showed one nigger who was boss yestiddy. Um-m-m, I’se his speshul brand of Yellow Tiger.”

“Then we are all checked up,” said Cary. “Now, Mr. Panchito, you can siesta yourself on those cushions for an hour or two. I’ll be on deck.”

Dawn had no more than touched Cartagena with rosy fingers when Mr. Panchito was lifted from the cushions and stood upon his feet. Captain Cary was holding a steaming cup of coffee under his nose. The second mate rubbed his kinky head with both hands, yawned, and sighed a long “Si, señor.” Gently but firmly he was led forward and escorted into the wheel-house. Did he know the channel out through the lagoon? To Cary’s gestures he nodded confident assent. Through the voice tube the chief engineer assured them that she could flop her propeller over if nobody spoke harshly to her. Leaving Mr. Panchito propped against the steering-wheel, Cary ran to the bow to handle the anchor winch himself.

He opened the valves and grasped the lever. Steam hissed from rusty connections, but the piston began to chug back and forth. Anxiously he threw the winch into gear. With a frightful clamor the drum very slowly revolved, dragging in the links of the cable. If the winch didn’t fly into fragments or pull itself out of the deck, the anchor would have to break out of the mud.

A series of protesting shrieks from the laboring winch, a dead stop, another effort, and it was taking hold in grim earnest. The cable was coming home link by link. Cary jumped to look overside. The huge ring of the anchor came surging out of the water. The Valkyrie was free. Her master let the winch revolve until the anchor hung flat against the bow. This was good enough. It could be stowed later.

He waved his hand to Mr. Panchito who had drooped himself over a window ledge of the wheel-house. The pink shirt moved over to the steering-wheel. The whistle of the Valkyrie blew no farewell to the port of Cartagena. It would have been a foolish waste of steam.

The steamer sluggishly gathered headway, riding light in ballast. It was odd to see her heading for sea without any visible crew. Two hombres were in the wheel-house. Not a soul moved on deck.

Safely she avoided the shoals and made the wide circuit to swing into the narrow fairway of the Boca Chica between the mouldering, grass-grown forts. By now Captain Richard Cary was pacing the bridge in solitary grandeur. His brow was serene with contentment. The ship was heaving under his feet as she felt the swell of the wide Caribbean. He was gazing ahead.

“ ‘Now ees what?’ ” he said to himself. A rumbling cough made him whirl about. Mr. Bradley Duff was clinging to a stanchion with one hand. The other tenderly caressed his scalp. On his puffy features was written a bitter resentment. The night’s rest had not sweetened his temper. Cary was quick to offer amends.

“I hated to have to do it, Mr. Duff. Señor Bazán was near dying in my room, and I didn’t dare jolt him with any more excitement. You refused to listen to me—”

“I went in and saw the old gentleman just now,” grumpily replied the chief officer. “He set me straight about you. I didn’t air my troubles. He has chirked up quite a bit. But what was the sense in all the hush stuff? Why didn’t the old coot tell me you were coming aboard to take command? Do you think I’d ’a’ blabbed it ashore? It was nothing to me if a big Yankee sailorman had enjoyed beating up the town.”

“You wouldn’t have blabbed when you were sober,” said Cary. “It was the Colombian crew that made Señor Bazán nervous. They had some foolish notions about me.”

“And so you boxed up the crew, Captain Cary? That is a new one on me. And now you will have to turn ’em loose. How about that?”

“Not a thing to worry about, if you feel like turning to, Mr. Duff,” was the cheery assurance.

This compliment so astonished Mr. Duff that he blew his mustache like a walrus. He tried, with no great success, to push his chest out and pull his stomach in. His bleary eye brightened as he ripped out:

“Hell’s bells, young man, we’ll show ’em who runs this ship. Of course they may refuse duty and try to make you put back. Seems to me I heard some mention of a thousand dollars reward for you. It went in one ear and out the other. I never needed money bad enough to dirty my hands by crimping a fellow Yank in a foreign port. You’ll take my word for that.”

“I believe you, Mr. Duff. Then I will release the men and set the watches, if they behave themselves.”

“One moment, Captain Cary,” growled the beach-comber. “You bent a gun over my crust last night, and I’m willing to forget that, which is very handsome of me. But you insulted me professionally and I feel hurt. You called it a filthy ship. Let me tell you, I was commanding smart vessels when you were a clumsy pup. You don’t know what I have had to contend with in this blistered old scow that ought to be scrapped. The owner hollers murder when you ask him for paint. Now you back me up and I’ll make this ship so clean you can eat off her decks. You can’t tell me one bloody word about a chief officer’s job.”

“I apologize,” smiled Cary. “It was unfair of me. I snapped it out before I thought. Go to it. Between us we’ll shake the crew down.”

The swag-bellied Mr. Duff was pacified. He looked almost pleasant. His professional instincts had been not dead but dormant. Presently he trudged forward to pull the spikes from the doors of the forecastle house. The men came piling out, hungry and hostile. Mr. Duff’s fist smote the first one under the chin. The others took the hint. They were not so rampant.

On the bridge they happened to descry the figure of a very tall and broad young man with a thatch of yellow hair that shone in the sun like spun gold. In every way he was a most unusual young man. He was looking at them with steady, untroubled eyes, as if they were no more than so many noisy insects.

This was a great surprise. The young man could be none other than the dreaded Tigre Amarillo whose capture they had so gayly discussed for the fun of spending an imaginary fortune. Last night, when the boards had been mysteriously nailed on the windows, there had been frightened surmises—the man with the hammer had been ever so much bigger and more powerful than Mr. Duff—but they had later agreed that they were drunk and their vision was untrustworthy.

Swiftly now their startled minds were adjusting themselves. Their emotions were easy to read. Sixteen men in all, if they could unite—the ship was still within sight of the Boca Chica—if they couldn’t manage to take her all the way back to Cartagena they could anchor inside and send a boat once they had gotten the upper hand of the three Americanos. The second mate and the assistant engineers were Colombians. They would be glad to aid the cause of justice. This yellow-haired monster of a man had been guilty of crimes to make one shudder.

Captain Richard Cary saw them hesitate and crowd together. He jumped down the iron ladder and shoved into the group. A knife flashed. He slapped the hand that held it. The sailor clasped a benumbed wrist. The chief officer was bravely collaring them. It was no more than a flurry. They were given no time to organize and act cohesively.

“Hustle ’em along, Mr. Duff,” said Cary. “Breakfast be hanged! Send the firemen below. Put your sailors at work. Keep all hands moving. Give me a good man to relieve the second mate at the wheel. We are too short-handed to stave any of them up. So be as easy as you can.”

“Here is a quartermaster, sir,” panted Mr. Duff, jerking his thumb at a chunky fellow with a boil on his neck.

“Aye, I’ll just take him along,” said the skipper.

With this he grasped the quartermaster around the waist, deftly flipped him head down and heels up and, thus reversed, tucked him under one arm. Encumbered in this manner, Captain Cary strode for the wheel-house where he stood his spluttering quartermaster right end up and cuffed him erect. He was shown the course on the compass card in the binnacle. He gripped the spokes with the most zealous sincerity. He had no other thought in the world than to steer an absolutely correct course. Neither to the right nor left did he glance.

The steamer’s speed increased to five knots. The chief engineer, still at his post, called through the tube:

“All the firemen came tumbling down at once, Captain Cary. They are awful sore about no breakfast. This bunch of mine would sooner eat than fight.”

“I’ll send grub and coffee down, Charlie. Can you stand by two or three hours longer? Things are smoothing out.”

“Sure I can. These engines interest me. I just sit and wonder what makes ’em go. Come down when you get a minute.”

“Right-o, Charlie boy. It looks like a happy voyage, even if we did get off to a bum start.”

Soon Mr. Duff lumbered to the bridge to report:

“I am going to feed my animals directly, sir. They are washing down with the hose and scrubbing for their lives. A smart ship, by the time we slide into the Pacific! The second mate refused to go off watch. He bounces after the men and damns their eyes if they turn their heads to spit. The only moment Mr. Panchito took off was to shift into a purple silk shirt and a necktie with yellow spots.”

The routine set in motion, Richard Cary went in to visit the invalid Señor Ramon Bazán. He was sitting up in bed. Joyously he piped:

“A life on the ocean wave, Ricardo! I am a man ten years younger. And the ship has sailed with no trouble at all. How is my fine ship and my great captain?”

“Not a care in the world,” was the genial reply. “Everybody earning his wages and the course set for the Isthmus.”

“Bend your ear down, Ricardo mine. Softly now. There is no whisper of our secret plans? They know nothing about the treasure chart and Cocos Island?”

“Not a suspicion, Papa Ramon. To Buenaventura for orders and thence with cargo.”

“What kind of a crew is it to trust when we find the six million dollars and the gold ingots? This is the only thing that has worried me, Ricardo. I could do no better for a crew in Cartagena. This chief officer, Bradley Duff. Will he be a bad egg?”

“Right as can be. You can’t always judge a man by his looks and manners. As for the crew, there will be no trouble with them.”

“El Draque has come again to the Spanish Main,” said Ramon Bazán, fondly regarding his commander. “Remember now! The treasure chart is wrapped in the rubber cloth, under my shirt, Ricardo. Now take me into my own room and you get yourself all settled comfortably in here where you belong.”

To the Valkyrie came a breathing spell. Outwardly she was an unlovely little ocean tramp which had seen much better days, plodding along the Colombian coast on some humdrum errand to earn a pittance by begging cargoes from port to port. Her discolored sides rolled to the regular impulses of the sea and the propeller blades flailed the water into foam. A banner of black smoke trailed from the shabby funnel and spread behind her in a dirty smudge.

The early morning weather had been kind to these argonauts. During the forenoon, however, Mr. Duff cocked a knowing eye at the barometer and sniffed the warm breeze. It was damper than he liked. His feet pained him more than usual. His broken arches had warned him of more than one sudden gale of wind and rain. He mentioned his misgivings to Captain Cary who received them with respect. They set about doing what they could to make things secure, swinging the boats inboard and lashing them, covering hatches, attending to odds and ends neglected in the haste of departure.

Even while they toiled, the sky grew overcast and the sea lost its sparkle. The wind veered this way and that before it began to blow strongly out of the east. It threatened to blow much harder. The crew realized that the Valkyrie was ill-prepared to endure furious weather. They laid aside all ideas of plotting mutiny. It was more essential to save themselves from drowning.

By noon the steamer was wallowing in a gray waste of raging water. She rolled with a sickening motion as if about to turn bottom up. The seas broke solid on her decks and poured through smashed skylights, through the leaky joints of deadlights, through weather-cracked doors. When pounded and submerged like this, the ship was not much tighter than a basket.

Leaving Mr. Duff on the bridge, Richard Cary went down to the engine-room. He found a red-eyed, haggard Charlie Burnham hanging to the throttle valve with both hands to ease her or to jam ahead when the indicator bell whirred like an alarm clock. Water was slashing over the greasy floor plates. The first assistant was up to his waist in the filth of the bilge, trying to clear the pumps of the loose coal which had choked the suction pipe. He was a small man limp with seasickness and bruises. When he stooped over to try to claw the coal away and free the suction strainer, the water boiled over his head as the ship rolled far down.

Cary crawled over and pulled him out of the bilge. Here was a job for a man of more height and strength. He plunged in himself and was working with the energy of a dredge when Charlie Burnham slid across the floor to yell in his ear:

“The pumps are drawing a little, sir. You can clear it if anybody can. If you don’t, it’s good-night. We’ve got to keep the water down or it will put out the fires.”

Cary wiped the floating grease from his eyes and grunted:

“I’ll do my best to clear it, Charlie, if I have to stand on my head. How is she steaming?”

“Like a dizzy old miracle. Better than she knows how. It’s lucky I held all the firemen below. They are working short shifts, but it’s banging ’em around something awful.”

Twenty minutes later, Captain Cary hauled himself out of the bilge. The pumps were sturdily pulling water, and the flood in the engine-room had been checked. He went into the stokehold. Half-naked men were staggering and tumbling to and fro in a fog of steam from the hot ashes and salt water. Red coals spilled out when a furnace door was opened. Frequently the wretched toilers lost their footing and were flung headlong. Arms were seared with burns, bodies contused.

When the captain of the ship suddenly loomed among them, they cowered from him, dropping slice-bars, letting coal fall from their shovels. Their nerves were already rasped to breaking. They were disheartened men dumbly struggling for survival against the obliterating ocean. Instead of striking and cursing them, this mighty captain was smiling like a friend. He snatched a shovel from a half-dead fireman with a bleeding shoulder and pushed him out of the way. The shovel ate into a pile of coal on the floor and swiftly fed it into a furnace door.

The captain poised himself against the wild rolling of the ship and shot the coal into that furnace like three or four men. He was all grease and grime like themselves. He was El Diablo of a stoker, setting them an example to wonder at. The word passed that he had been in the bilges, making the pumps suck to save the fires. This was a new kind of captain. It restored their hope and made them oblivious of hurts and fatigue.

For some time the captain plied the shovel or raked the fires with a long slice-bar. They had heard of his prowess with an iron bar. It was the truth. He handled this heavy bar like a straw. They watched him with the eager excitement of children. The ship was safe with such a captain. He could do anything. It was certain that he would preserve their lives.

When, at length, the captain desisted from stoking like a giant, he shouted a few words of Spanish at them. They were all muchos buenos hombres, and viva el vapor! It was a little storm, nothing to worry brave sailors of Colombia. They grinned and clapped their hands together. He was not a yellow tiger, but El Capitan Grande.

When, at length, he climbed to the bridge, the sea seemed less violent and the sky not so somber. Mr. Duff was planted beside the engine-room indicator, jockeying the ship as best he could to ward off the blows of the toppling combers. His red face was streaked with salt. A sou’wester was jammed on his gray pow. The wind whipped his oilskin coat out behind him. At a glance he was competent, a man restored to his element.

“All right, Mr. Duff,” said Cary. “We have seen the worst of it. Go below and ease your feet. You may as well snooze till I call you. There was nothing I could do up here. I left the ship in good hands.”

“Thank you for that,” beamed the chief officer. “It shook the ship up some, but, by Judas, it’s worth the damage. It shook this flighty crew together. I don’t anticipate much more trouble with them.”

“Neither do I, Mr. Duff. This gale has blown some of the nonsense out of their heads. I think we can make it a contented ship.”