|THE following morning Webster informed Dolores fully of his interview
with her brother and his confrères the night before, concealing from her
only the fact that he was financing the revolution and his reasons for
financing it. He was still depressed, and Dolores, observing his mood,
forbore to intrude upon it. Intuitively she realized that when a man
is worried and harassed by matters he cannot or dares hot divulge, he
dislikes being talked to, but prefers to be alone and wrestle with them
in silence. Accordingly she claimed the prerogative of her sex--a slight
headache--and retreated to her room, In the privacy of which she was
suddenly very much surprised to find herself weeping softly because John
Stuart Webster was unhappy and didn't deserve to be.
It was impossible, however, for Webster long to remain impervious to the
note of ridiculousness underlying the forthcoming tragic events. Here
was a little two-by-four poverty-stricken hot-bed of ignorance and
intrigue calling itself a republic, a little stretch of country no
larger than a couple of big western counties, about to indulge in the
national pastime of civil war and unable to do it except by grace of an
humble citizen of a sister republic!
Five thousand ignorant, ill-equipped, ill-drilled semi-brigands calling
themselves soldiers, entrusted with the task of enabling one of their
number to ride, horse and dog, over a million people!
How farcical! No wonder Ricardo, with his northern viewpoint, approached
his patriotic task with gayety, almost with contempt. And when Webster
recalled that the about-to-be-born provisional government had casually
borrowed from him the sum of forty thousand dollars in order to turn
the trick--borrowing it, forsooth, in much the same spirit as a commuter
boarding his train without the necessary fare hails a neighbour and
borrows ten cents--his natural optimism asserted itself and he chuckled
as in fancy he heard himself telling the story to Neddy Jerome and being
branded a liar for his pains.
“Well, I've had one comfort ever since I first saw that girl,” he
reflected philosophically. “While I've never been so unhappy in all my
life before, or had to tear my soul out by the roots so often, things
have been coming my way so fast from other directions that I haven't
had much opportunity to dwell on the matter. And for these compensating
offsets, good Lord, I thank thee.”
He was John Stuart Webster again when Dolores saw him next; during the
succeeding days his mood of cheerfulness and devil-may-care indifference
never left him. And throughout that period of marking time Dolores was
much in his society, a condition which he told himself was not to his
liking but which, nevertheless, he could not obviate without seeming
indifferent to her happiness. And to permit his friend's fiancee to
languish in loneliness and heart-break did not appear to John Stuart
Webster as the part of a true friend or a courtly gentleman--and he
remembered that she had once called him that.
They rode together in the cool of the morning; they drove together on
the Malecon in the cool of the evening; chaperoned by Don Juan Cafetéro
and a grinning Sobrantean, they went shark-fishing in Leber's launch;
they played dominoes together; they discussed, throughout the long,
lazy, quiet afternoons, when the remainder of their world retired for
the siesta, books, art, men, women, and things.
And not once, throughout those two weeks of camaraderie, did the
heart-racked Webster forget for a single instant that he was the new
friend, destined to become the old friend; never, to the girl's watchful
eyes, did he betray the slightest disposition to establish their
friendly relations on a closer basis.
Thus did the arrival of The Day find them. Toward sunset they rode out
together along the bay shore and noted far out to sea the smear of smoke
that marked the approach of La Estrellita--on schedule time. As they
jogged homeward in the dusk, her red and green side-lights were visible
as she crept into the harbour; above the sobbing murmur of the Caribbean
wavelets they heard the scream of her winches and the rattle of chain as
her anchor bit the bottom.
“You will go aboard her to-night,” Webster said very quietly to Dolores.
“And you?”
“I shall go aboard with you. I have arranged with Don Juan for him to
stay ashore and to come out in Leber's launch with the first reliable
news of the conflict. If Ricardo wins the city, he wins the revolution,
and you and I will then go ashore--to dine with him in the palace. If
he loses the city, he loses the revolution, and we will both do well to
remain aboard _La Estrellita_.”
“And in that event, what will become of my brother?”
“I do not know; I forgot to ask him, but if he survives, I imagine he'll
have sense enough to know he's whipped and will retreat on San Bruno,
fighting a rear-guard action, embark aboard the steamer that brought his
men there, and escape.”
“But he has so few men,” she quavered.
“Two hundred of them are white soldiers of fortune--and you must
remember how Walker manhandled Nicaragua with that number of men.”
“I'm worried about Mother Jenks.”
“I have asked Mother Jenks to dine with us at seven-thirty this evening,
and have ordered a carriage to call for her. When she comes I'll tell
her everything; then, if she wishes to stay ashore, let her. She's been
through more than one such fracas and doesn't mind them at all, I dare
say.”
And in this Webster was right. Mother Jenks listened in profound
silence, nodding her approval, as Webster related to her the story of
the advent in the country of Ricardo Ruey and his plans, but without
revealing the identity of Andrew Bowers.
At the conclusion of his recital the old publican merely said: “Gor'
bli' me!”
After a silence she added: “My sainted 'Enery used to s'y the proper
hodds for a white man in a bally row o' this nature was forty to one.
'The spiggoty,' says 'e, shoots from 'is 'ip, but the wisitin' brother's
spent 'is 'prenticeship at the butts some-w'ere or other an' 'as
bloomin' well learned to sight an' 'old his breath 'arf in an' 'arf out
when 'e pulls. Gor', but how my sainted 'Enery would henjoy bein' 'ere
this night to 'elp with the guns.” She sighed.
“How about a little bottle of wine to drink peace to your sainted Henry
and luck to The Cause?” Webster suggested.
“That's wot I calls talkin',” Mother Jenks responded promptly, and
Webster, gazing reflectively at the old lady's beard, wondered why she
had not been born a man.
Dolores, fearful for her benefactor's safety, urged Mother Jenks to
accompany them out aboard _La Estrellita_, but the old dame indignantly
refused, and when pressed for a reason gave it with the utmost
frankness: “They'll be tykin' Sarros, an' when they tyke 'im they'll
back him ag'in the same wall he backed my sainted 'Enery and your father
against, my dear. I've a notion that your father's son 'll let Mrs.
Colonel 'Enery Jenks come to the party.”
At ten o'clock Webster accompanied Mother Jenks home in the carriage,
which he dismissed at El Buen Amigo--with instructions to return to the
hotel while he continued afoot down the Calle San Rosario to the
bay, where Leber's huge corrugated-iron warehouse loomed darkly above
high-water mark. If there was light within, it was not visible, but
Webster, pausing and listening at one corner of the great structure,
could hear the confused murmur of many voices, with an occasional hearty
oath in English rising above the murmur.
He slipped along in the deep shadow of the warehouse wall and out on the
end of the little dock, where he satisfied himself that Leber's launch
was at its moorings; then he went back to the warehouse and whistled
softly, whereupon a man crawled out from under the structure and
approached him. It was Don Juan Cafetéro.
“They're all inside,” he whispered and laid finger on lip. “A lad came
down at eight o'clock, took Leber's launch an' wint out to the steamer
afther thim. They got in half an hour ago, an' divil a sowl the wiser
save meself.”
“Thank you, John. Now that I know the coast is clear and the launch
ready, I'll go back to the hotel for Miss Ruey.”
“Very well, sor,” Don Juan replied, and crawled back under the
warehouse.
Half an hour later the sound of hoofbeats warned him of the approach
of Webster and Dolores in a carriage, and he came forth, loaded in the
launch such baggage as they had been enabled to bring, and held the
gunwale of the boat while his passengers stepped aboard.
While Don Juan cast off the painter, Webster primed the motor and turned
it over; with a snort it started, and under Webster's guidance the
launch backed swiftly out into the bay, where Don Juan lighted the
side-lights and riding-light, and loafed off into the darkness.
About a half a mile off shore Webster throttled down the motor until
the launch barely made steerage way. “It would never do to go aboard the
steamer _before_ the fracas started ashore,” he explained to Dolores.
“That would indicate a guilty knowledge of coming events, and in the
event of disaster to the rebel arms it is just possible Senor Sarros
might have pull enough, if he hears of our flight six hours in advance
of hostilities, to take us off the steamer and ask us to explain. So
we'll just cruise slowly around and listen; the attack will come just
before dawn; then shortly thereafter we can scurry out to the steamer
and be welcomed aboard for the sake of the news we bring.”
She did not answer, and Webster knew her thoughts were out where the
arc-lights on the outskirts of Buenaventura met the open country--out
where the brother she could scarcely remember and whom, until a month
previous, she had believed dead, would shortly muster his not too
numerous followers.
In the darkness Webster could hear the click of her beads as she prayed;
on the turtle deck forward.
Don Juan Cafetéro sprawled, thinking perchance of his unlovely past and
wondering what effect the events shortly to transpire ashore would have
on his future. He wished Webster would relent and offer him a drink some
time within the next twenty-four hours. In times of excitement like the
present a man needs a drop to brace him up.
Five times the launch slipped lazily down the harbour along the
straggling two mile water-front; five times it loafed back. The moon,
which was in the first quarter, sank. For the hundredth time Don Juan
Cafetéro chanted dolorously “The Death of Sarsfield” and the tuneful
glories of the late O'Donnel Abu--and then to Webster's alert ear there
floated across the still waters the sound of a gentle purring--the music
of an auto-truck. He set the launch in toward Leber's little dock, and
presently they saw the door of Leber's warehouse open. Men with lanterns
streamed forth, lighting the way for others who bore between them heavy
burdens.
“They're emplacing the machine guns in the motor-truck,” he whispered to
Dolores. “We will not have to wait long now. It's nearly four o'clock.”
Again they backed out into the bay until they could see far out over the
sleeping city to the hills beyond in the west. Presently along the side
of those hills the headlight of a locomotive crept, dropping swiftly
down grade until it disappeared in the lowlands.
A half-hour passed; then to the south of the city a rocket flared
skyward; almost instantly another flared from the west, followed
presently by a murmur, scarcely audible, as of a muffled snare
drum, punctuated presently by a louder, sharper, insistent
_puck-puch-puch-puch_ that, had Webster but known it, was the bark of
a Maxim-Vickers rapid-fire gun throwing a stream of shells into the
cantonments of the government troops on the fringe of the city.
Webster's pulse quickened. He was possessed of that feeling which
actuates a small boy to follow the fire-engines. “There goes the
'tillery to the south, sor,” Don Juan called, and even as he spoke, a
shell burst gloriously over the government palace, the white walls of
which were already looming over the remainder of the city, now faintly
visible in the approaching dawn.
“That was to awaken our friend Sarros,” Webster cried. “I'll bet a
buffalo nickel that woke the old horsethief up. There's another--and
another.” The uproar swelled, the noise gradually drifting around the
city from west to south, forming, seemingly, a semicircle of sound. “The
government troops are up and doing now,” Webster observed, and speeded
up his motor. “I think it high time we played the part of frightened
refugees. When that machine-gun company with its infantry escort starts
up through the city from Leber's warehouse it may encounter early
opposition--and I've heard that Mauser bullets kill at three miles. Some
strays may drop out here in the bay.”
He speeded the launch toward _La Estrellita_, and as the craft scraped
in alongside the great steamer's companion landing, her skipper ran
down the ladder to greet them and inquire eagerly of the trend of events
ashore.
“We left in a hurry the instant it started,” Webster explained. “As
Americans, we didn't figure we had any interest in that scrap, either
way.” He handed Dolores out on the landing stage, tossed their baggage
after her and followed; Don Juan took the wheel, and the launch slid out
and left them there.
At the head of the companion ladder Webster paused and turned for
another look at Buenaventura. To the west three great fires now threw
a lurid light skyward, mocking an equally lurid light to the east, that
marked the approach of daylight. He smiled. “Those are the cantonment
barracks burning,” he whispered to Dolores. “Ricardo is keeping his
word. He's driving the rats back into their own holes.”