THE UNWILLING TOURIST
Lang awoke with the pain of an aching head and a sick stomach. He was
in a bed that swayed beneath him; at first he fancied himself back on
the _Cavite_. He heard trampling and loud talking, and a lacerating
sound of discordant music.
He opened his eyes; there was a ceiling two feet above his head. He
tried to heave himself up, failed and sank back dizzy, but the glimpse
he got brought him immediately struggling up again, full of
stupefaction and bewilderment.
He was lying fully dressed in a dingy bunk, one of a double tier of
bunks that seemed to surround a rather large room. The low,
dirty-white ceiling was crossed by iron beams. In the imperfect light
he saw heads emerging from the berths, human figures moving, there was
much talk and tobacco smoke, and at the other end some one played
shrilly on a mouth organ.
Within six feet a ragged, brown-faced man was violently sick. The air
was foul. To Lang’s dizzy mind it seemed that he had descended into
Hades. He got somehow out of the bunk, his head swimming, incapable of
comprehending where he was or how he had got there.
A negro in a white jacket was sweeping up banana peels from the floor,
and Lang clutched his sleeve.
“What’s this place? Where am I?”
“Where you think you might be?” retorted the sweeper. “Ain’t you got
over your drunk yit? On board de _Lake Tahoe_, dat’s where you is.
Bound fer Seattle,” he continued, gratified by the sound of his own
voice. “Reckon you don’ remember comin’ on board. Had to carry you in;
you an’ yo’ friends, an’ I put you in your berth myself. It was shore
one peach you had. Dat bootleg rum ain’t no stuff to go to sea on.”
Lang stared at him, bewildered, his head too sore to think or
remember. The rough crowd in the cabin were beginning to look at him
and laugh. He caught sight of an iron stairway, struggled toward it,
made his way up.
A gust of divinely fresh air met him, and a blaze of sunshine. A
limitless blue sea sparkled. He was on a steamer’s forward deck, the
steerage deck. A score or two of ragged humanity, white and brown and
yellow, swarmed about him. He pushed past to the rail and stood
leaning on shaky legs, his head in his hands, trying to collect
himself.
Just aft and above him loomed the bridge, with uniformed officers on
watch. Also above him rose the first-class deck, where passengers
promenaded. A light breeze broke the ocean into long surges; the ship
rose and fell, and a long trail of smoke blew back toward the sun. Far
astern, in the brilliant light, he saw a faint shadow that must be a
distant shore.
The bracing air settled his nausea. His head cleared. He remembered
now—the dinner at the boarding house, the attack in the cab—and with a
gasp he plunged his hand under his shirt.
The money belt was gone. His watch was gone, too, and his pocketbook,
and everything that had been in his pockets, and now he noticed that
his clothes were torn in shreds and soiled as if he had been dragged
through mud.
Fool that he had been to carry that money about Panama. He had been
drugged, robbed, and put aboard this steamer, bound for—where had the
negro said? They must have paid his fare, too. They wanted to get rid
of him badly, but he was still so stupefied that for a little he could
not think why this should be. It came back to him all at once—Eva,
Morrison, the emeralds, the glacier. With the two thousand dollars of
the money belt Carroll had capital now. He would have a long start,
with Lang at sea for a week, perhaps more.
The fright and anger of this thought put energy into him. He would not
be beaten so. He had not come willingly aboard this ship; they would
have to put him ashore, somehow, he cared not how nor where.
Fortunately they were not many hours out.
He swayed away from the rail and found another steward in white.
“I’ve got to see the captain!” he exclaimed. “Or the purser. Take me
up to them. I didn’t take passage on this ship. There’s a—a mistake.”
“You can’t see none of dem officers,” the negro returned insolently.
“Dey’re busy. You go down below, man, an’ sleep it off.”
He shrank back from the furious glare that Lang gave him, and turned
away muttering. The surgeon looked up at the sacred upper decks, where
no steerage passengers might go. He walked aft, glanced round to see
that he was not watched, and climbed over the barrier cutting off the
steerage deck. Some one shouted angrily after him, but he made a rush
for the stairway leading above.
He heard some one running after him, but he almost made the top when a
deck hand seized his leg from behind. He kicked violently back,
releasing himself, heard an oath and tumble, and sprawled out on the
upper deck, to be grasped immediately by another deck hand.
He tore away, ripping his already torn sleeve entirely off. A couple
of ladies standing near cried out in alarm. The deck hand gripped him
again, shoving him toward the stair, tussling and squirming
desperately, and a group of passengers was running up, when the
stateroom door at the top of the stair opened suddenly and a
gold-laced officer emerged in an official rage.
“What the devil’s all this?”
Lang hoped for a second that it was the captain. At the next glance he
saw that it was even better. He recognized the officer with almost a
shriek of thanksgiving.
“Findlay!” he exclaimed wildly. “Thank the Lord! Don’t you know me?”
“No, I don’t!” the officer snapped. “What do you want?”
“Don’t you remember—last night—dinner—at Mrs. What’s-her-name’s place?
Morrison—I argued with you how—how the tropics aren’t healthy?”
“God bless me!” Findlay ejaculated. “The doctor! Healthy?” He exploded
into a roar of laughter. “Sure looks as if they ain’t healthy for
you!”
“I don’t know how I got on board,” Lang hurried on. “Give me five
minutes, Findlay. I must see the captain. I’ve got to be put ashore.”
“Come inside,” said Findlay, opening his cabin door. “I’ve got to go
on duty in ten minutes, but I’d rather be late than miss the juicy
sort of story you seem to have.”
He shut the door on the gathering group of passengers, and listened to
Lang’s tale with appreciation, and not without sympathy.
“Shanghaied, by gad!” he commented. “Hard luck, for a fact. Paid your
fare and took your last copper. I suppose you’ve got more money
somewhere?”
“Oh, yes, in my Mobile bank. But that isn’t the point. I’ve got to get
ashore. It’s a business matter; it may cause a huge loss——”
“Oh, that’s clean out of the question,” said Findlay, looking at him
with indulgent compassion. “The captain would have a fit if you
suggested such a thing to him. Why, we’re six hours out. I don’t doubt
it’s important, but then it’s important for our passengers to get
quickly to Seattle. Send a boat ashore? Impossible. No, you’ll just
make up your mind to go on to Seattle with us.”
“I can’t do that!” Lang muttered, appalled. What would the Morrisons
think of his disappearance?
“At least I must send a wireless to Panama,” he said quickly.
“Sorry. Our wireless is out of fix. We can receive, but we can’t send
till we get some new parts at Seattle.”
“Oh, Lord!” Lang groaned.
“Don’t worry. Your friends in Panama’ll know you’re all right. It’ll
only be a few days. I’ll introduce you to the purser and the doctor,
and we’ll get you out of the steerage and make you comfortable. I
guess your credit is good for that. You’ll like the old _Lake Tahoe_.”
Every moment was taking him farther from Panama, and Lang had to
submit. Findlay introduced him to the ship’s doctor, who happened to
have heard of Lang’s Boston record, and was proud to afford
hospitality to a distinguished confrère. Between him and the purser
they got together a miscellaneous outfit of fresh clothing for him,
and moved him up into the cabin, on credit, and even got him placed at
the captain’s table at dinner.
They did what they could for him, and there were pleasant people on
board, and the weather was fine, but Lang took no pleasure in any of
it. He counted the miles that the ship reeled off day by day, all too
slowly. Carroll and Louie must be well on their way to Chile now, he
felt certain. Morrison had been sure they could never hit on the
location of the emerald deposit, but Lang had thought of something
that made him much less certain of that.
It was summer now in Chile, and the glacier must be melting fast. The
whole pocket of emerald-bearing rock was likely to be melted out to
plain sight, even perhaps to be washed down into the gravel below the
ice wall. It could not have been very deep in the glacier, since part
of it had washed out already.
Carroll might find the whole treasure ready for the picking up.
Perhaps Morrison had thought of this. What would they think of his
disappearance? Would Eva still trust him? Would she doubt him? He was
afraid to think, and he walked the deck nightly for miles, so that
fatigue might bring sleep, and pass another night’s run.
He would have been even still more perturbed if he could have known
that Eva Morrison, growing uneasy, had finally telephoned the Hotel
Tivoli late the following afternoon. She was informed that Doctor Lang
had sent a messenger for his baggage, canceled his room, and had, they
thought, left for South America by a steamer very early that morning.
It struck her like a thunderbolt. Morrison, when she told him, swore a
single, tremendous oath.
“I did think that man was to be trusted,” he said. “Now, sick or well,
we take the Tuesday boat for Valparaiso.”
Arriving at last in longed-for Seattle, Lang had a telegram filed for
Panama within fifteen minutes of landing. Naturally, he received no
reply, but while waiting, he had Findlay introduce him at a bank which
arranged to transfer his Mobile account by wire.
When he had purchased some new clothes and paid the difference between
steerage and first-class fare on the _Lake Tahoe_ he had about
thirteen hundred dollars left. It was his whole earthly capital, and
he was risking it on a rather long shot.
Hope of a reply to his telegram faded with the hours. There was a
steamer leaving the next day but one from San Francisco for Panama,
and he booked his passage. This boat carried an efficient wireless,
and after a couple of days out he could not refrain from sending a
second message to Morrison, which remained unanswered like the first.
Days of tedious, feverish waiting followed. But it was a relief to be
going in the right direction at any rate, and at last he was landed
again at the Canal entrance.
From the wharf he telephoned at once to Mrs. Leeman’s house and that
lady herself answered him. Doctor Morrison and his daughter had gone.
They had sailed a week ago, or about that—somewhere to South America,
she thought. Valparaiso, perhaps, or Callao. Doctor Morrison was
better, but had been much upset about something.
Lang had no difficulty in guessing what had upset him. He walked back
to the landing stage, and gazed out across the sunny water, full of
indecision.
“Do you know when there will be a steamer for Valparaiso?” he asked a
khaki-clad Zone policeman.
“Well, there’s one right now,” returned the officer, in a strong Texas
accent. “She’s out yander. But you’ll have to look right smart to get
her, for she sails in about an hour.”
Lang owned no baggage but a single suit case, and he was aboard her
and interviewing the purser within twenty minutes. Fortunately there
were plenty of empty staterooms, and in less than two hours after
entering Panama he was sailing out of it again. He had spent crowded
moments there, but it seemed a place that he was destined to see
little of.
Then followed a repetition of the wearisome and suspense-laden delay
of the other two voyages. It was longer this time. The passengers grew
excited over crossing the equator, but Lang condemned this
geographical boundary. He did not care to go ashore at Callao or at
Iquique or anywhere else. He tried to give his mind to the acquisition
of Spanish, having borrowed a phrase book from the barber, but the
words would not stick in his mind, and he could not bring himself to
talk with the Spanish portion of the ship’s company.
From the equator the climate tapered off to cooler, to spring.
Sometimes, far away to the east, he caught a glimpse of a white, sharp
point in the sky—one of the snow peaks of the Andes piercing the
clouds. It tormented him with the vision of that Chilean ice barrier,
the glacier gate, which he might never see opened. Carroll would
surely be first at that icy bar, but Lang promised himself to be not
far behind, and at the thought of possible collision, of bloodshed,
even, he had nothing but a thrill of fierce expectation that was
almost pleasure. This time he would know how to defend himself, and
attack in his turn.
Mist and rain veiled the wide harbor of Valparaiso as the steamer
swung into it. Only by glimpses he saw the crescent of the lower town
along the shore, and the shelving terraces on which the city climbs to
the hills. Rain drove over the wet docks; tugs churned in the mist,
blowing acrid coal smoke over the dripping, misty hulls of the moored
ships.
The barelegged _roto_ stevedores swarmed along the wharves as he was
put ashore. There was a terrific uproar of wheels on the muddy
cobbles, and a tumult of harsh Chilean Spanish when he emerged from
the customs with his suit case, and fell among the cab drivers. He
could not understand a single word of their fierce ejaculations, but
he surrendered to what looked the best of them, and was driven away to
a hotel whose name he did not know.