DICK LANDS IN MEXICO WITH A FAMILY.
Dr. Goode took pains to have a talk with Dick a few nights after his
unexpected increase of salary.
“I’m not going to congratulate you on your good fortune, Sumner,” he
said, “till I see whether it is a good thing for you or the opposite.
It may prove to be the worst thing that ever happened you, though I
hope not. It all depends upon yourself. You have made a brilliant
beginning, and I think you are sure to hold out if you keep yourself in
check.
“Above all things, don’t let the size of your head increase; don’t ‘get
a swelled head,’ as the boys say. Your falling into favor with the old
man is more accident than anything else.”
Dick had often heard that expression used before. The editor-in-chief
is generally called “the old man,” even when he happens to be one of
the youngest men in the office.
“It’s not because you are such a tremendous fellow that you have been
advanced in this way,” the doctor went on. “You have done good work,
but other men do good work too. Your refusing to take a bribe in
Saratoga I take no account of at all; that was a matter of course. I
should be sorry to think you could have done anything else. In the
ordinary course of events, after the good work you have done, you would
have been raised in a few months to perhaps twenty-five dollars a week,
and then a little higher after a year or so. But the old man has taken
a fancy to you and your work, and pushed you ahead with a jump. That
thing happens sometimes, and I am glad that it has happened to you.
But don’t take too much of the credit to yourself. It is luck, chance,
fate, providence, whatever you choose to call it; your own merit has
precious little to do with it.
“Though it has something, I’ll admit,” he continued, laying his hand,
as he had done before, on Dick’s knee. “The old man must have been
pleased with some of your articles, as we all were. But be careful of
yourself; more careful now than ever. You know what the prince’s smile
means to the courtier. Your position in the office is better than it
has been, for the prince is known to have smiled upon you. But hold
your horses.”
It did not take long for Dick to find that to be in favor with “the old
man” was to be in favor with everybody in the office. The office boys
kept fresh mucilage constantly in the bottle on his desk, and there are
few stronger signs of good standing in a newspaper office than that. He
was often given special work that was not scheduled on the assignment
list at all, with orders to report to the managing editor or the
editor-in-chief; and as this work seldom kept him late at night, he had
more time to enjoy the delights of the new flat. His clothes were as
good now as any reporter could desire, he carried a watch, the last of
his debt to Randall was paid, and he had a small bank account. Dick was
happy, not only because of these things, but because he was thoroughly
in love with his work, as every successful reporter must be.
“You don’t have to go out again to-night, do you, Dick?” his mother
asked as he lay comfortably stretched out on a sofa after the meal that
was the family’s supper, but Dick’s dinner.
“Yes, I must go back to the office,” he answered; “but I don’t know of
anything to keep me late to-night.”
“You’re working too hard, Dick,” his mother went on; “too hard and too
much at night. You’ve grown taller since you came to New York, but
you’re much thinner and paler. Where are those beautiful roses you used
to have in your cheeks?”
“Oh, bother the roses, mother,” Dick laughed; “they’ve washed off, I
suppose, like the printer’s ink I used to have on my hands. And I don’t
see why night work should hurt me. You know what Dr. Goode says: ‘It’s
not working at night that hurts a man, but playing at night.’ I don’t
do much playing by day or night. I get my pleasure out of my work, and
that pays better. I’ll run down to the office, and I’m pretty sure I
can be home by ten o’clock. Then I’ll have just the best night’s sleep
you ever saw, for I do feel a little tired.”
With this idea in his mind Dick went down to the office, and the city
editor’s greeting upset all his plans not only for that evening, but
for many evenings to come.
“Sumner,” Mr. Brown asked, “how soon can you be ready to sail for
Mexico?”
It was a blow to Dick in some respects and a pleasant surprise in
others; but he promptly answered:--
“I’m ready now, sir.”
“Well,” Mr. Brown said, smiling at Dick’s readiness to start for
anywhere at a moment’s notice, “there isn’t any steamer going just at
this minute; but there’s one at noon to-morrow that you can take. It is
one of Mr. Harding’s jobs, and he will give you instructions when he
comes in at nine o’clock. You are to interview President Diaz for him;
and we prefer to have you go by steamer rather than by rail, because
that will give you a chance to touch at Cuba and some other points and
write us some descriptive letters.”
“I will give you an order for money to cover your expenses,” Mr. Brown
continued, “and we can send your salary to your family while you are
away, if you like. You will be able to give us some good letters from
Cuba and Mexico.”
Dick was sure of that. Summer had changed to fall, and fall was rapidly
turning into winter; and to visit the tropics in winter, to go out of
the cold and slush of New York into a region of eternal summer, was
something that he had dreamed of, but hardly hoped ever to realize.
“President Diaz speaks English fluently,” Mr. Harding told him when
he arrived, “so you will have no trouble on that score. Of course the
language of the country is Spanish. Here is a letter of introduction to
the American minister in Mexico that will open the way for you.”
The good night’s sleep that Dick had arranged to have did not come.
A large part of the night was spent in packing and making ready, and
when at length he got to bed he had too many things to think of to fall
asleep.
“Remember that you are all we have, Dick,” his mother sobbed when she
bade him good-by in the morning; “don’t be rash, for I do not see what
we should do if anything should happen to you.”
“It’s hardly more than a picnic, mother,” he replied as gayly as he
could. “In four or five weeks I’ll be with you again; and won’t I have
great stories to tell you about what I’ve seen!”
Florrie and Darling went to the wharf with him, and their waving
handkerchiefs were the last impression that Dick had of New York as
the steamship Alameda drew out from her pier and crept down the Hudson
River.
The upper and lower bays, the Narrows, the Quarantine islands, the
forts, and big summer hotels along shore were all familiar sights to
him, but life aboard ship was like being in a new world. It was his
first ocean voyage, and he was prepared to enjoy every novelty and make
the most of it.
It was a surprise to him that the ship was more Spanish than English.
The officers all spoke English and so did four or five of the
passengers; but the waiters spoke Spanish, the bills of fare were
printed in both Spanish and English, the cooking was Spanish, and in
the cabins and staterooms were posted notices from which he learned his
first Spanish sentence:--
_Aquí no se permite fumar_--“Smoking is not permitted here.”
It was a necessary warning, for nine tenths of the passengers were
Cubans, dark-skinned little fellows with cigarettes forever between
their lips.
All these things Dick noticed before the ship passed Sandy Hook, for
after that there was an unpleasant period of two days when he lay in
his berth seasick and forlorn. When he appeared on deck again the
steamer was below Hatteras, and a school of porpoises were playing
antics in front of the bow.
“Going to Havana, señor?” he was asked as he stood leaning over the
forward rail watching the graceful movements of the fish; and looking
up he saw that the speaker was a tall young Spaniard, perhaps two or
three years older than himself, handsomely dressed, but with a look in
his face that Dick did not particularly like.
“Yes,” he replied; “to Havana first, then on to Vera Cruz and Mexico.”
“Good!” the Spaniard exclaimed. “I too am going to Mexico; we shall be
friends. It is my native city--Mexico--and I am going home.”
Dick brought his interviewing powers to bear, and in five minutes he
learned that the Mexican was Señor don Manuel de Comacho, a lieutenant
in the Mexican navy, who had been spending a year in Paris, and who was
now going home with his young wife and an infant two or three months
old.
“But we are not in favor there now,” Comacho laughed; “my father was
Secretary of the Treasury before Diaz became President, but now he is
out. Perhaps I may get into trouble by going back.”
“You are very free in telling your affairs to a stranger,” Dick
thought; but he answered pleasantly, glad to have some English-speaking
person to talk to. At the dinner table he was surprised to find the
lieutenant’s wife as fair as a lily; a pretty young woman enough but
proud, particularly of her complexion, for in Mexico a white skin is
thought the perfection of beauty. She spoke nothing but Spanish,
however, so Dick could only bow when he was introduced.
“To-morrow we shall be in Havana,” Comacho said. “We might go about the
city together. I shall be a useful guide,” he added, laughing, “for you
speak no Spanish, and you would lose yourself.”
Dick ridiculed the idea of his losing himself anywhere, but it
suited him very well to go ashore with some one who knew the place.
Forty-eight hours the Alameda was to lie there before continuing her
voyage across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz.
It was just as the sun was rising that the vessel steamed into Havana
harbor, saluting with her brass cannon as she passed the Morro Castle.
The scene filled Dick with rapture, as it does every one who is not
too familiar with it. The pink and blue and yellow houses of the
city, the fleet of vessels at anchor, the church bells ringing with a
tone so different from the bells at home; the fort on one side of the
entrance and the oldtime castle on the other; and better than all, to
Dick’s mind, a man on the opposite shore leading a flock of sheep down
to the water to bathe, with a long crook in his hand, just like the
biblical shepherds. It was fairyland under a hot sun; and by the time
that he and Comacho had visited neighboring sugar estates and tobacco
plantations, and had seen the great Tacon Theatre, and eaten cooling
ices in the Café da Louvre, and driven through the Prado, Dick declared
that he had enough to write about for six months.
“But I do not see you taking any notes,” said Comacho; for Dick had
told him that he was a newspaper man.
“No,” Dick answered, “I never take notes. They only bother me.
Sometimes a name or a date I put down, but nothing more. A thing that
makes an impression upon me I never forget; a thing that makes no
impression is not worth writing about.”
Comacho’s affairs were soon to make an impression upon Dick that he
little suspected. The Alameda dropped anchor several days later in the
roadstead of Vera Cruz, a mile or more from shore and just to the south
of the great Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, and the health officer of the
port came out with several assistants in a handsome boat. The officer
made his inspection and was rowed away, and five minutes later Dick
found Comacho seated upon the grating at the stern, his face buried in
his hands weeping bitterly.
It was new to Dick to see a man shed tears, though he remembered that
in Saratoga his throat had become rather lumpy while he was talking to
Mr. Clair. But he had traveled with the young Mexican and eaten with
him and met his wife, so he felt that he owed him some allegiance.
“Why, what’s the matter, old fellow?” he asked, laying his hand kindly
on Comacho’s shoulder. “What are you crying for?”
“Oh, I’m in great trouble, Sumner,” the lieutenant answered. “A friend
of mine who came out in the doctor’s boat tells me that I am suspected
of carrying dispatches from my father to enemies of the government who
have gone abroad, and that I am to be arrested as soon as I go ashore.”
“Is that all!” Dick exclaimed. “Why, that’s nothing to cry over, man.
If they can’t prove anything against you, they’ll have to let you go
again.”
“Ah, it is not here as it is in your country!” the lieutenant sobbed.
“If they get me in jail once, they may keep me there for years. Oh! oh!
oh!”
“Say, now you stop this!” Dick commanded; he was becoming disgusted
at the spectacle. “You are an officer in the navy, and you have a
family aboard the ship to take care of, and you ought to be ashamed of
yourself to sit down and cry. If you brace up and act like a man, I’ll
try to help you out of the scrape.”
“Oh, you can’t, you can’t!” Comacho replied; “you are only a stranger
here, and you can do nothing.” But he took out his handkerchief and
tried to dry his eyes.
“Can’t I?” Dick asked. “Well, here’s the first thing. If you have any
contraband papers with you, go down to your stateroom and read them and
burn them.”
[Illustration: “WHAT’S THE MATTER, OLD FELLOW?”]
“I have none--not one,” Comacho answered.
“Very well. Now where will they arrest you?”
“At the Custom House mole. We all have to take small boats from the
ship to the shore and land at the Custom House mole, and the minute I
land there they will arrest me.”
“Then don’t land at the Custom House mole!” Dick exclaimed. “Pay one of
the boatmen to land you up or down the coast; anywhere but at the mole.”
“They wouldn’t dare do it,” Comacho answered. “It would be as much as
their heads were worth.”
Dick took a turn across the deck with his hands in his pockets, deep in
thought.
“How long have you been out of the country?” he asked a moment later.
“More than a year and a half.”
“Then you must have changed in appearance!” Dick exclaimed; “you can’t
look just the same as you did. Why not disguise yourself as much as you
can, and you go ashore alone and try to pass the officers undetected;
and I will follow later with your wife and baggage.”
“I believe I could do that!” Comacho answered, his face brightening.
“I have raised a little beard since I went away and I am stouter. I
think I can slip past the officers into the city, and in the city my
father’s friends will help me.”
“You can take my big ulster and steamer cap; they will nearly cover you
up,” Dick said. “Besides, they will expect to see you with a wife and
child; your going alone will help to fool them.”
“And you will bring my wife and baby ashore? and the baggage, the six
trunks? O señor, señor, you know not how much you do for me! Take them
to the Hotel Veracruzana, and this evening bring them to the railway
station. The train starts for Mexico city at nine, and I will meet you
in the station--unless, indeed, I am in prison.”
Under the influence of Dick’s energy the Mexican was becoming quite
bold. The tears were gone now, and in the big ulster and peaked steamer
cap his own mother would hardly have recognized him.
“You must explain everything to your wife,” Dick cautioned him, “for
you know she cannot understand me. And impress it upon her that she is
not to say one word to anybody till I have her safely landed in the
hotel.”
In a minute more Comacho was in one of the small boats, under a curved
canvas awning like the cover of a prairie wagon, on his way to the
mole. Anxiously Dick watched and saw him land, saw him ascend the
stone steps, and saw him go under the big stone arch that leads from
the Custom House into the city. He had passed the officers without
recognition, and was safely landed in Vera Cruz.
Up to this time Dick had thought very little about himself in the
matter. Comacho had been his companion for ten or eleven days, and when
he was in trouble Dick was glad to help him. But the comical position
in which he had put himself began to make itself evident when the
Mexican’s trunks were hoisted out of the hold.
“It’s one of the funniest things I ever saw--this part of it,” he said
to himself, while the baggage was coming up. “Here’s a young reporter
leaves New York a single man, and remains single all the way to Vera
Cruz, with just the one trunk he started with. Then he lands at Vera
Cruz with rather a pretty wife to whom he can’t say a word because he
doesn’t understand her language, and a dear, sweet, little baby that
he doesn’t even know the name of, and six more strapping big trunks.
I wonder whether I’m going to have adventures like this all through
Mexico? I’m beginning well, at any rate.
“There’s a more serious side to it, too; but I am going into that with
my eyes open. I am going ashore with the wife and child of a man who
is wanted by the government, and I may easily be mistaken for him and
be arrested. But that would be too good to be true. Wouldn’t the New
York boys be jealous if I should walk right into a Mexican prison
the minute I landed? The story of the arrest would be worth at least
two columns, and the court proceedings ought to make at least two
fine articles. Then there might be some English-speaking prisoners in
the jail who could tell me a lot of capital stories, and after a few
days the American minister would have me out with great éclat, and my
liberation would make another article. But that’s too good luck even to
think about.”
It required the largest of the rowboats to carry Dick’s party and their
trunks ashore, and when they landed at the mole the boatmen shouldered
the trunks and took them to the open gallery in which they were to be
examined by the Custom House officers.
Dick opened his own trunk first to give Señora Comacho time to get
out her keys, and the inspector gave its contents hardly more than a
glance. But the Mexican lady did not understand, and Dick explained
to her, by holding up the key of his own trunk, that he must have her
keys. He began to unlock her trunks when she produced them, but the
inspector stopped him.
“Oh, it’s all right, is it?” Dick said. What the inspector said was all
Greek to him, but he understood the meaning of the motions the man made
toward the big gate. “Don’t care to look at them, don’t you? That’s
because they belong to a good-looking young lady. You Custom House
fellows are all alike, whether you speak English or Spanish.”
They were at liberty now to take their trunks to the hotel, but how to
get them there was more than Dick could see. He wanted a dray; but he
could see the street through the broad arch, and there was no wheeled
vehicle in sight. He did not know, of course, that all such carrying is
done on porters’ shoulders in Vera Cruz. When he stepped through the
arch to look up and down the street a dozen porters followed him back
to the trunks.
“These porters will carry your trunks to the hotel,” said the
inspector, not in so many words, but by pointing first to the porters,
then to the trunks.
Those little porters! Some of them looked like boys of twelve or
fourteen. All were bare-headed and bare-legged, and their tawny little
legs did not look strong enough to carry much of a load.
“Si! si!” said Dick. He had learned that much Spanish on the steamer.
“Hotel Veracruzana.”
The undersized porters shouldered the heavy trunks with ease and filed
out into the street, seven of them, one after another, Dick and Señora
Comacho, the latter with the baby in her arms, bringing up the rear.
“This _is_ rich!” Dick exclaimed as they marched solemnly up the
hot street. “What wouldn’t I give to have Dr. Goode and Jack Randall
see this procession; and mother and Florrie, too. But I think some of
them would be wanting to know where I got this wife and baby.
“This the hotel?” he wondered, when the porters turned into a sombre
stone building with a display of canned goods on the shelves inside.
“Why, this is a grocery store.”
But a moment later he took it to be a cigar store, then a barroom, then
a restaurant. It was the hotel office nevertheless, and the lady with
the baby remained standing by the door while Dick went up to the clerk
to negotiate.
Such a hotel office he had never seen before. It was a large room,
certainly fifty or sixty feet square, with a counter running partly
across near the front, and shelves back of the counter filled with cans
and bottles, and all the rear part of the room occupied with chairs and
marble-topped tables.
The clerk was full of smiles, as a matter of course. No words were
needed to tell him what was wanted. Here was a family just arrived
by the steamer, and they desired accommodations. He summoned a
copper-colored boy to show them to their room, and bowed profoundly.
“Yes, but hold on here!” Dick exclaimed as the truth flashed upon him.
“This is not a family, you know; this is parts of two families. We’ve
come in sections. The lady wants a room, and so do I; but we want them
separate.”
The clerk raised his eyebrows in astonishment at Dick’s rapid English.
“Two rooms,” said Dick; “two--two;” and he held up two fingers.
“Dos?” said the clerk. He understood the word two, and repeated it in
Spanish.
“Wait till I bring the lady,” Dick answered. “I can’t tell her what
I want to say,” he added under his breath; “but she ought to see for
herself, and explain it.”
And so she did. A few rapid sentences exchanged between the lady and
the clerk, with many gesticulations, set everything straight. Señora
Comacho and her child were led away in one direction, and Dick was
escorted in another to a room scarcely smaller than his flat in New
York.
“They’re determined to make a family man of me,” he said as he glanced
about the room; “and it would take a good-sized family to occupy this
room properly. Four big beds, four washstands, four rocking-chairs,
brick floor, and enough windows for a whole house.”
By the middle of the afternoon he had seen most of the sights of
Vera Cruz, including the great hospitals that once were monasteries,
and the Alameda, the Trianon, and the ugly black buzzards that clean
the streets, and was sure that he had material for one or two good
articles. He must, he knew, escort his fair charge down to dinner; and
he had returned to the hotel for that purpose and was trying to devise
a way of sending a message to her, when the lady herself appeared.
She seemed to be much excited about something, and the moment she saw
Dick she gave an exclamation of surprise and beckoned him to follow her
up the stairs.
Dick stood for a moment undecided.
“This is awkward,” he thought. “Next wife I have shall speak English,
sure; then I’ll know what I’m about.”
But the lady continued to beckon, and there was nothing Dick could do
but follow. He followed her to the door of her room; and there in the
room, placidly smoking cigarettes, sat the lieutenant, Señor don Manuel
de Comacho.
“O Comacho, this is very reckless!” Dick exclaimed, stepping in and
hastily closing the door.
“Oh, no,” Comacho replied with a look of the most intense cunning in
his face; “I fooled them nicely. I came in the back way.”
Dick hardly knew whether to laugh or be angry. After all his trouble
in the morning, all his well-laid plans, the Mexican had deliberately
walked into the hotel and flattered himself for his shrewdness because
he came in by the backdoor.
“You are too brave,” Dick said, certain that the lieutenant could not
appreciate the sarcasm; “you Mexicans do not seem to know what fear
is. If your whole navy is officered by men like you, Comacho, it is
invincible.”
“A Mexican knows no fear, Sumner,” the lieutenant answered proudly;
and as Dick made a mental picture of this particular Mexican sitting
on the grating shedding seas of tears because he was in fear of being
arrested, he found it necessary to step to the window to admire the
scenery.
Brave as he was, the lieutenant would not run the risk of going down
the public room to dinner; he meekly held the baby, while Dick and the
señora dined, and food was afterward sent up to him.
By a quarter before nine in the evening Dick and his companions were
in the railway station, Comacho still disguised in the big ulster
and the steamer cap. The railroad is operated on the English plan,
with compartment cars, each compartment large enough to hold eight
persons, with a door on each side. The train stood beside a platform,
with the station lights burning brightly on one side and nothing but
intense darkness on the other. The party seated themselves in their
compartment, and in three minutes more the train would have been under
way and Comacho out of present danger, when they heard the tramp,
tramp, tramp! of a squad of men marching down the platform.
“I’m gone!” Comacho exclaimed; and instantly buried his face in his
hands and began to weep.
Before Dick could reply, the squad of six men, with an officer at
their head, halted near the compartment door, and the officer stepped
up to the door, and seeing a lady inside, removed his hat.
He pressed a paper, an official-looking document, into Comacho’s hands,
said something in Spanish, and politely stepped aside to give his
prisoner an opportunity to speak to his wife.
“Oh, I’m arrested! I’m arrested!” Comacho wailed; and he frantically
wrung his hands, while great tears coursed down his cheeks.
“You ought to be!” Dick declared, thoroughly disgusted at the fellow’s
cowardice. “You blubbering baby, you ought to be hanged! But you’re not
gone yet, if you have the heart of a mouse. Do you see that door on the
opposite side of the car? I don’t know where it leads to, but you do.
Open that door, if you’re a man, and disappear in the darkness.”