XV

The steamer "Santiago," carrying "passengers, bullion, and coffee," was

headed to pass Porto Rico by midnight, when she would be free of land

until she anchored at the quarantine station of the green hills of

Staten Island. She had not yet shaken off the contamination of the

earth; a soft inland breeze still tantalized her with odors of tree and

soil, the smell of the fresh coat of paint that had followed her

coaling rose from her sides, and the odor of spilt coffee-grains that

hung around the hatches had yet to be blown away by a jealous ocean

breeze, or washed by a welcoming cross sea.

The captain stopped at the open entrance of the Social Hall. "If any of

you ladies want to take your last look at Olancho you've got to come

now," he said. "We'll lose the Valencia light in the next quarter

hour."

Miss Langham and King looked up from their novels and smiled, and Miss

Langham shook her head. "I've taken three final farewells of Olancho

already," she said: "before we went down to dinner, and when the sun

set, and when the moon rose. I have no more sentiment left to draw on.

Do you want to go?" she asked.

"I'm very comfortable, thank you," King said, and returned to the

consideration of his novel.

But Clay and Hope arose at the captain's suggestion with suspicious

alacrity, and stepped out upon the empty deck, and into the

encompassing darkness, with a little sigh of relief.

Alice Langham looked after them somewhat wistfully and bit the edges of

her book. She sat for some time with her brows knitted, glancing

occasionally and critically toward King and up with unseeing eyes at

the swinging lamps of the saloon. He caught her looking at him once

when he raised his eyes as he turned a page, and smiled back at her,

and she nodded pleasantly and bent her head over her reading. She

assured herself that after all King understood her and she him, and

that if they never rose to certain heights, they never sank below a

high level of mutual esteem, and that perhaps was the best in the end.

King had placed his yacht at the disposal of Madame Alvarez, and she

had sailed to Colon, where she could change to the steamers for Lisbon,

while he accompanied the Langhams and the wedding party to New York.

Clay recognized that the time had now arrived in his life when he could

graduate from the position of manager-director and become the

engineering expert, and that his services in Olancho were no longer

needed.

With Rojas in power Mr. Langham had nothing further to fear from the

Government, and with Kirkland in charge and young Langham returning

after a few months' absence to resume his work, he felt himself free to

enjoy his holiday.

They had taken the first steamer out, and the combined efforts of all

had been necessary to prevail upon MacWilliams to accompany them; and

even now the fact that he was to act as Clay's best man and, as Langham

assured him cheerfully, was to wear a frock coat and see his name in

all the papers, brought on such sudden panics of fear that the

fast-fading coast line filled his soul with regret, and a wilful desire

to jump overboard and swim back.

Clay and Hope stopped at the door of the chief engineer's cabin and

said they had come to pay him a visit. The chief had but just come

from the depths where the contamination of the earth was most evident

in the condition of his stokers; but his chin was now cleanly shaven,

and his pipe was drawing as well as his engine fires, and he had

wrapped himself in an old P. & O. white duck jacket to show what he had

been before he sank to the level of a coasting steamer. They admired

the clerk-like neatness of the report he had just finished, and in

return he promised them the fastest run on record, and showed them the

portrait of his wife, and of their tiny cottage on the Isle of Wight,

and his jade idols from Corea, and carved cocoanut gourds from Brazil,

and a picture from the "Graphic" of Lord Salisbury, tacked to the

partition and looking delightedly down between two highly colored

lithographs of Miss Ellen Terry and the Princess May.

Then they called upon the captain, and Clay asked him why captains

always hung so much lace about their beds when they invariably slept on

a red velvet sofa with their boots on, and the captain ordered his

Chinese steward to mix them a queer drink and offered them the choice

of a six months' accumulation of paper novels, and free admittance to

his bridge at all hours. And then they passed on to the door of the

smoking-room and beckoned MacWilliams to come out and join them. His

manner as he did so bristled with importance, and he drew them eagerly

to the rail.

"I've just been having a chat with Captain Burke," he said, in an

undertone. "He's been telling Langham and me about a new game that's

better than running railroads. He says there's a country called

Macedonia that's got a native prince who wants to be free from Turkey,

and the Turks won't let him, and Burke says if we'll each put up a

thousand dollars, he'll guarantee to get the prince free in six months.

He's made an estimate of the cost and submitted it to the Russian

Embassy at Washington, and he says they will help him secretly, and he

knows a man who has just patented a new rifle, and who will supply him

with a thousand of them for the sake of the advertisement. He says

it's a mountainous country, and all you have to do is to stand on the

passes and roll rocks down on the Turks as they come in. It sounds

easy, doesn't it?"

"Then you're thinking of turning professional filibuster yourself?"

said Clay.

"Well, I don't know. It sounds more interesting than engineering.

Burke says I beat him on his last fight, and he'd like to have me with

him in the next one--sort of young-blood-in-the-firm idea--and he

calculates that we can go about setting people free and upsetting

governments for some time to come. He says there is always something

to fight about if you look for it. And I must say the condition of

those poor Macedonians does appeal to me. Think of them all alone down

there bullied by that Sultan of Turkey, and wanting to be free and

independent. That's not right. You, as an American citizen, ought to

be the last person in the world to throw cold water on an undertaking

like that. In the name of Liberty now?"

"I don't object; set them free, of course," laughed Clay. "But how long

have you entertained this feeling for the enslaved Macedonians, Mac?"

"Well, I never heard of them until a quarter of an hour ago, but they

oughtn't to suffer through my ignorance."

"Certainly not. Let me know when you're going to do it, and Hope and I

will run over and look on. I should like to see you and Burke and the

Prince of Macedonia rolling rocks down on the Turkish Empire."

Hope and Clay passed on up the deck laughing, and MacWilliams looked

after them with a fond and paternal smile. The lamp in the wheelhouse

threw a broad belt of light across the forward deck as they passed

through it into the darkness of the bow, where the lonely lookout

turned and stared at them suspiciously, and then resumed his stern

watch over the great waters.

They leaned upon the rail and breathed the soft air which the rush of

the steamer threw in their faces, and studied in silence the stars that

lay so low upon the horizon line that they looked like the harbor

lights of a great city.

"Do you see that long line of lamps off our port bow?" asked Clay.

Hope nodded.

"Those are the electric lights along the ocean drive at Long Branch and

up the Rumson Road, and those two stars a little higher up are fixed to

the mast-heads of the Scotland Lightship. And that mass of light that

you think is the Milky Way, is the glare of the New York street lamps

thrown up against the sky."

"Are we so near as that?" said Hope, smiling. "And what lies over

there?" she asked, pointing to the east.

"Over there is the coast of Africa. Don't you see the lighthouse on

Cape Bon? If it wasn't for Gibraltar being in the way, I could show

you the harbor lights of Bizerta, and the terraces of Algiers shining

like a café chantant in the night."

"Algiers," sighed Hope, "where you were a soldier of Africa, and rode

across the deserts. Will you take me there?"

"There, of course, but to Gibraltar first, where we will drive along

the Alameda by moonlight. I drove there once coming home from a mess

dinner with the Colonel. The drive lies between broad white

balustrades, and the moon shone down on us between the leaves of the

Spanish bayonet. It was like an Italian garden. But he did not see

it, and he would talk to me about the Watkins range finder on the lower

ramparts, and he puffed on a huge cigar. I tried to imagine I was

there on my honeymoon, but the end of his cigar would light up and I

would see his white mustache and the glow on his red jacket, so I vowed

I would go over that drive again with the proper person. And we won't

talk of range finders, will we?

"There to the North is Paris; your Paris, and my Paris, with London

only eight hours away. If you look very closely, you can see the

thousands of hansom cab lamps flashing across the asphalt, and the open

theatres, and the fairy lamps in the gardens back of the houses in

Mayfair, where they are giving dances in your honor, in honor of the

beautiful American bride, whom every one wants to meet. And you will

wear the finest tiara we can get on Bond Street, but no one will look

at it; they will only look at you. And I will feel very miserable and

tease you to come home."

Hope put her hand in his, and he held her finger-tips to his lips for

an instant and closed his other hand upon hers.

"And after that?" asked Hope.

"After that we will go to work again, and take long journeys to Mexico

and Peru or wherever they want me, and I will sit in judgment on the

work other chaps have done. And when we get back to our car at night,

or to the section house, for it will be very rough sometimes,"--Hope

pressed his hand gently in answer,--"I will tell you privately how very

differently your husband would have done it, and you, knowing all about

it, will say that had it been left to me, I would certainly have

accomplished it in a vastly superior manner."

"Well, so you would," said Hope, calmly.

"That's what I said you'd say," laughed Clay. "Dearest," he begged,

"promise me something. Promise me that you are going to be very happy."

Hope raised her eyes and looked up at him in silence, and had the man

in the wheelhouse been watching the stars, as he should have been, no

one but the two foolish young people on the bow of the boat would have

known her answer.

The ship's bell sounded eight times, and Hope moved slightly.

"So late as that," she sighed. "Come. We must be going back."

A great wave struck the ship's side a friendly slap, and the wind

caught up the spray and tossed it in their eyes, and blew a strand of

her hair loose so that it fell across Clay's face, and they laughed

happily together as she drew it back and he took her hand again to

steady her progress across the slanting deck.

As they passed hand in hand out of the shadow into the light from the

wheelhouse, the lookout in the bow counted the strokes of the bell to

himself, and then turned and shouted back his measured cry to the

bridge above them. His voice seemed to be a part of the murmuring sea

and the welcoming winds.

"Listen," said Clay.

"Eight bells," the voice sang from the darkness. "The for'ard light's

shining bright--and all's well."