“And now we’ve lost both the Gringo pigs,” Alvarez Torres lamented on
the beach as, with a slight freshening of the breeze and with booms
winged out to port and starboard, the _Angelique_ passed out of range of
their rifles.
“Almost would I give three bells to the cathedral,” Mariano Vercara è
Hijos proclaimed, “to have them within a hundred yards of this rifle.
And if I had will of all Gringos they would depart so fast that the
devil in hell would be compelled to study English.”
Alvarez Torres beat the saddle pommel with his hand in sheer impotence
of rage and disappointment.
“The Queen of my Dreams!” he almost wept. “She is gone and away, off
with the two Morgans. I saw her climb up the side of the schooner. And
there is the New York Regan. Once out of Chiriqui Lagoon, the schooner
may sail directly to New York. And the Francis pig will not have been
delayed a month, and the Senor Regan will remit no money.”
“They will not get out of Chiriqui Lagoon,” the Jefe said solemnly. “I
am no animal without reason. I am a man. I know they will not get out.
Have I not sworn eternal vengeance? The sun is setting, and the promise
is for a night of little wind. The sky tells it to one with half an eye.
Behold those trailing wisps of clouds. What wind may be, and little
enough of that, will come from the north-east. It will be a head beat to
the Chorrera Passage. They will not attempt it. That nigger captain
knows the lagoon like a book. He will try to make the long tack and go
out past Bocas del Toro, or through the Cartago Passage. Even so, we
will outwit him. I have brains, reason. Reason. Listen. It is a long
ride. We will make it—straight down the coast to Las Palmas. Captain
Rosaro is there with the _Dolores_.”
“The second-hand old tugboat?—that cannot get out of her own way?”
Torres queried.
“But this night of calm and morrow of calm she will capture the
_Angelique_,” the Jefe replied. “On, comrades! We will ride! Captain
Rosaro is my friend. Any favor is but mine to ask.”
At daylight, the worn-out men, on beaten horses, straggled through the
decaying village of Las Palmas and down to the decaying pier, where a
very decayed-looking tugboat, sadly in need of paint, welcomed their
eyes. Smoke rising from the stack advertised that steam was up, and the
Jefe was wearily elated.
“A happy morning, Senor Capitan Rosaro, and well met,” he greeted the
hard-bitten Spanish skipper, who was reclined on a coil of rope and who
sipped black coffee from a mug that rattled against his teeth.
“It would be a happier morning if the cursed fever had not laid its
chill upon me,” Captain Rosaro grunted sourly, the hand that held the
mug, the arm, and all his body shivering so violently as to spill the
hot liquid down his chin and into the black-and-gray thatch of hair that
covered his half-exposed chest. “Take that, you animal of hell!” he
cried, flinging mug and contents at a splinter of a half-breed boy,
evidently his servant, who had been unable to repress his glee.
“But the sun will rise and the fever will work its will and shortly
depart,” said the Jefe, politely ignoring the display of spleen. “And
you are finished here, and you are bound for Bocas del Toro, and we
shall go with you, all of us, on a rare adventure. We will pick up the
schooner _Angelique_, calm-bound all last night in the lagoon, and I
shall make many arrests, and all Panama will so ring with your courage
and ability, Capitan, that you will forget that the fever ever whispered
in you.”
“How much?” Capitan Rosaro demanded bluntly.
“Much?” the Jefe countered in surprise. “This is an affair of
government, good friend. And it is right on your way to Bocas del Toro.
It will not cost you an extra shovelful of coal.”
“Muchacho! More coffee!” the tug-skipper roared at the boy.
A pause fell, wherein Torres and the Jefe and all the draggled following
yearned for the piping hot coffee brought by the boy. Captain Rosaro
played the rim of the mug against his teeth like a rattling of
castanets, but managed to sip without spilling and so to burn his mouth.
A vacant-faced Swede, in filthy overalls, with a soiled cap on which
appeared “Engineer,” came up from below, lighted a pipe, and seemingly
went into a trance as he sat on the tug’s low rail.
“How much?” Captain Rosaro repeated.
“Let us get under way, dear friend,” said the Jefe. “And then, when the
fever-shock has departed, we will discuss the matter with reason, being
reasonable creatures ourselves and not animals.”
“How much?” Captain Rosaro repeated again. “I am never an animal. I
always am a creature of reason, whether the sun is up or not up, or
whether this thrice-accursed fever is upon me. How much?”
“Well, let us start, and for how much?” the Jefe conceded wearily.
“Fifty dollars gold,” was the prompt answer.
“You are starting anyway, are you not, Capitan?” Torres queried softly.
“Fifty——gold, as I have said.”
The Jefe Politico threw up his hands with a hopeless gesture and turned
on his heel to depart.
“Yet you swore eternal vengeance for the crime committed on your jail,”
Torres reminded him.
“But not if it costs fifty dollars,” the Jefe snapped back, out of the
corner of his eye watching the shivering captain for some sign of
relenting.
“Fifty gold,” said the Captain, as he finished draining the mug and with
shaking fingers strove to roll a cigarette. He nodded his head in the
direction of the Swede, and added, “and five gold extra for my engineer.
It is our custom.”
Torres stepped closer to the Jefe and whispered:
“I will pay for the tug myself and charge the Gringo Regan a hundred,
and you and I will divide the difference. We lose nothing. We shall
make. For this Regan pig instructed me well not to mind expense.”
As the sun slipped brazenly above the eastern horizon, one gendarme went
back into Las Palmas with the jaded horses, the rest of the party
descended to the deck of the tug, the Swede dived down into the
engine-room, and Captain Rosaro, shaking off his chill in the sun’s
beneficent rays, ordered the deck-hands to cast off the lines, and put
one of them at the wheel in the pilot-house.
* * * * *
And the same day-dawn found the _Angelique_, after a night of almost
perfect calm, off the mainland from which she had failed to get away,
although she had made sufficient northing to be midway between San
Antonio and the passages of Bocas del Toro and Cartago. These two
passages to the open sea still lay twenty-five miles away, and the
schooner truly slept on the mirror surface of the placid lagoon. Too
stuffy below for sleep in the steaming tropics, the deck was littered
with the sleepers. On top the small house of the cabin, in solitary
state, lay Leoncia. On the narrow runways of deck on either side lay her
brothers and her father. Aft, between the cabin companionway and the
wheel, side by side, Francis’ arm across Henry’s shoulder, as if still
protecting him, were the two Morgans. On one side of the wheel, sitting,
with arms on knees and head on arms, the negro-Indian skipper slept, and
just as precisely postured, on the other side of the wheel, slept the
helmsman, who was none other than Percival, the black Kingston negro.
The waist of the schooner was strewn with the bodies of the mixed-breed
seamen, while for’ard, on the tiny forecastlehead, prone, his face
buried upon his folded arms, slept the lookout.
Leoncia, in her high place on the cabin-top, awoke first. Propping her
head on her hand, the elbow resting on a bit of the poncho on which she
lay, she looked down past one side of the hood of the companionway upon
the two young men. She yearned over them, who were so alike, and knew
love for both of them, remembered the kisses of Henry on her mouth,
thrilled till the blush of her own thoughts mantled her cheek at memory
of the kisses of Francis, and was puzzled and amazed that she should
have it in her to love two men at the one time. As she had already
learned of herself, she would follow Henry to the end of the world and
Francis even farther. And she could not understand such wantonness of
inclination.
Fleeing from her own thoughts, which frightened her, she stretched out
her arm and dangled the end of her silken scarf to a tickling of
Francis’ nose, who, after restless movements, still in the heaviness of
sleep, struck with his hand at what he must have thought to be a
mosquito or a fly, and hit Henry on the chest. So it was Henry who was
first awakened. He sat up with such abruptness as to awaken Francis.
“Good morning, merry kinsman,” Francis greeted. “Why such violence?”
“Morning, morning, and the morning’s morning, comrade,” Henry muttered.
“Such was the violence of your sleep that it was you who awakened me
with a buffet on my breast. I thought it was the hangman, for this is
the morning they planned to kink my neck.” He yawned, stretched his
arms, gazed out over the rail at the sleeping sea, and nudged Francis to
observance of the sleeping skipper and helmsman.
They looked so bonny, the pair of Morgans, Leoncia thought; and at the
same time wondered why the English word had arisen unsummoned in her
mind rather than a Spanish equivalent. Was it because her heart went out
so generously to the two Gringos that she must needs think of them in
their language instead of her own?
To escape the perplexity of her thoughts, she dangled the scarf again,
was discovered, and laughingly confessed that it was she who had caused
their violence of waking.
Three hours later, breakfast of coffee and fruit over, she found herself
at the wheel taking her first lesson of steering and of the compass
under Francis’ tuition. The _Angelique_, under a crisp little breeze
which had hauled around well to north’ard, was for the moment heeling it
through the water at a six-knot clip. Henry, swaying on the weather side
of the after-deck and searching the sea through the binoculars, was
striving to be all unconcerned at the lesson, although secretly he was
mutinous with himself for not having first thought of himself
introducing her to the binnacle and the wheel. Yet he resolutely
refrained from looking around or from even stealing a corner-of-the-eye
glance at the other two.
But Captain Trefethen, with the keen cruelty of Indian curiosity and the
impudence of a negro subject of King George, knew no such delicacy. He
stared openly and missed nothing of the chemic drawing together of his
charterer and the pretty Spanish girl. When they leaned over the wheel
to look into the binnacle, they leaned toward each other and Leoncia’s
hair touched Francis’ cheek. And the three of them, themselves and the
breed skipper, knew the thrill induced by such contact. But the man and
woman knew immediately what the breed skipper did not know, and what
they knew was embarrassment. Their eyes lifted to each other in a flash
of mutual startlement, and drooped away and down guiltily. Francis
talked very fast and loud enough for half the schooner to hear, as he
explained the lubber’s point of the compass. But Captain Trefethen
grinned.
A rising puff of breeze made Francis put the wheel up. His hand to the
spoke rested on her hand already upon it. Again they thrilled, and again
the skipper grinned.
Leoncia’s eyes lifted to Francis’, then dropped in confusion. She
slipped her hand out from under and terminated the lesson by walking
slowly away with a fine assumption of casualness, as if the wheel and
the binnacle no longer interested her. But she had left Francis afire
with what he knew was lawlessness and treason as he glanced at Henry’s
shoulder and profile and hoped he had not seen what had occurred.
Leoncia, apparently gazing off across the lagoon to the jungle-clad
shore, was seeing nothing as she thoughtfully turned her engagement ring
around and around on her finger.
But Henry, turning to tell them of the smudge of smoke he had discovered
on the horizon, had inadvertently seen. And the negro-Indian captain had
seen him see. So the captain lurched close to him, the cruelty of the
Indian dictating the impudence of the negro, as he said in a low voice:
“Ah, be not downcast, sir. The senorita is generously hearted. There is
room for both you gallant gentlemen in her heart.”
And the next fraction of a second he learned the inevitable and
invariable lesson that white men must have their privacy of intimate
things; for he lay on his back, the back of his head sore from contact
with the deck, the front of his head, between the eyes, sore from
contact with the knuckles of Henry Morgan’s right hand.
But the Indian in the skipper was up and raging as he sprang to his
feet, knife in hand. Juan, the pale-yellow mixed breed, leaped to the
side of his skipper flourishing another knife, while several of the
nearer sailors joined in forming a semi-circle of attack on Henry, who,
with a quick step back and an upward slap of his hand, under the
pin-rail, caused an iron belaying pin to leap out and up into the air.
Catching it in mid-flight, he was prepared to defend himself. Francis,
abandoning the wheel and drawing his automatic as he sprang, was through
the circle and by the side of Henry.
“What did he say?” Francis demanded of his kinsman.
“I’ll say what I said,” the breed skipper threatened, the negro side of
him dominant as he built for a compromise of blackmail. “I said——”
“Hold on, skipper!” Henry interrupted. “I’m sorry I struck you. Hold
your hush. Put a stopper on your jaw. Saw wood. Forget. I’m sorry I
struck you. I....” Henry Morgan could not help the pause in speech
during which he swallowed his gorge rising at what he was about to say.
And it was because of Leoncia, and because she was looking on and
listening, that he said it. “I ... I apologize, skipper.”
“It is an injury,” Captain Trefethen stated aggrievedly. “It is a
physical damage. No man can perpetrate a physical damage on a subject of
King George’s, God bless him, without furnishing a money requital.”
At this crass statement of the terms of the blackmail, Henry was for
forgetting himself and for leaping upon the creature. But, restrained by
Francis’ hand on his shoulder, he struggled to self-control, made a
noise like hearty laughter, dipped into his pocket for two ten-dollar
gold-pieces, and, as if they stung him, thrust them into Captain
Trefethen’s palm.
“Cheap at the price,” he could not help muttering aloud.
“It is a good price,” the skipper averred. “Twenty gold is always a good
price for a sore head. I am yours to command, sir. You are a sure-enough
gentleman. You may hit me any time for the price.”
“Me, sir, me!” the Kingston black named Percival volunteered with broad
and prideless chucklings of subservience. “Take a swat at me, sir, for
the same price, any time, now. And you may swat me as often as you
please to pay....”
But the episode was destined to terminate at that instant, for at that
instant a sailor called from amidships:
“Smoke! A steamer-smoke dead aft!”
The passage of an hour determined the nature and import of the smoke,
for the _Angelique_, falling into a calm, was overhauled with such
rapidity that the tugboat _Dolores_, at half a mile distance through the
binoculars, was seen fairly to bristle with armed men crowded on her
tiny for’ard deck. Both Henry and Francis could recognize the faces of
the Jefe Politico and of several of the gendarmes.
Old Enrico Solano’s nostrils began to dilate, as, with his four sons who
were aboard, he stationed them aft with him and prepared for the battle.
Leoncia, divided between Henry and Francis, was secretly distracted,
though outwardly she joined in laughter at the unkemptness of the little
tug, and in glee at a flaw of wind that tilted the _Angelique’s_ port
rail flush to the water and foamed her along at a nine-knot clip.
But weather and wind were erratic. The face of the lagoon was vexed with
squalls and alternate streaks of calm.
“We cannot escape, sir, I regret to inform you,” Captain Trefethen
informed Francis. “If the wind would hold, sir, yes. But the wind
baffles and breaks. We are crowded down upon the mainland. We are
cornered, sir, and as good as captured.”
Henry, who had been studying the near shore through the glasses, lowered
them and looked at Francis.
“Shout!” cried the latter. “You have a scheme. It’s sticking out all
over you. Name it.”
“Right there are the two _Tigres_ islands,” Henry elucidated. “They
guard the narrow entrance to Juchitan Inlet, which is called El Tigre.
Oh, it has the teeth of a tiger, believe me. On either side of them,
between them and the shore, it is too shoal to float a whaleboat unless
you know the winding channels, which I do know. But between them is deep
water, though the El Tigre Passage is so pinched that there is no room
to come about. A schooner can only run it with the wind abaft or abeam.
Now, the wind favors. We will run it. Which is only half my scheme——”
“And if the wind baffles or fails, sir—and the tide of the inlet runs
out and in like a race, as I well know—my beautiful schooner will go on
the rocks,” Captain Trefethen protested.
“For which, if it happens, I will pay you full value,” Francis assured
him shortly and brushed him aside. “—And now, Henry, what’s the other
half of your scheme?”
“I’m ashamed to tell you,” Henry laughed. “But it will be provocative of
more Spanish swearing than has been heard in Chiriqui Lagoon since old
Sir Henry sacked San Antonio and Bocas del Toro. You just watch.”
Leoncia clapped her hands, as with sparkling eyes she cried:
“It must be good, Henry. I can see it by your face. You must tell _me_.”
And, aside, his arm around her to steady her on the reeling deck, Henry
whispered closely in her ear, while Francis, to hide his perturbation at
the sight of them, made shift through the binoculars to study the faces
on the pursuing tug. Captain Trefethen grinned maliciously and exchanged
significant glances with the pale-yellow sailor.
“Now, skipper,” said Henry, returning. “We’re just opposite El Tigre.
Put up your helm and run for the passage. Also, and pronto, I want a
coil of half-inch, old, soft, manila rope, plenty of rope-yarns and sail
twine, that case of beer from the lazarette, that five-gallon kerosene
can that was emptied last night, and the coffee-pot from the galley.”
“But I am distrained to remark to your attention that that rope is worth
good money, sir,” Captain Trefethen complained, as Henry set to work on
the heterogeneous gear.
“You will be paid,” Francis hushed him.
“And the coffee-pot—it is almost new.”
“You will be paid.”
The skipper sighed and surrendered, although he sighed again at Henry’s
next act, which was to uncork the bottles and begin emptying the beer
out into the scuppers.
“Please, sir,” begged Percival. “If you must empty the beer please empty
it into me.”
No further beer was wasted, and the crew swiftly laid the empty bottles
beside Henry. At intervals of six feet he fastened the recorked bottles
to the half-inch line. Also, he cut off two-fathom lengths of the line
and attached them like streamers between the beer bottles. The
coffee-pot and two empty coffee tins were likewise added among the
bottles. To one end of the main-line he made fast the kerosene can, to
the other end the empty beer-case, and looked up to Francis, who
replied:
“Oh, I got you five minutes ago. El Tigre must be narrow, or else the
tug will go around that stuff.”
“El Tigre is just that narrow,” was the response. “There’s one place
where the channel isn’t forty feet between the shoals. If the skipper
misses our trap, he’ll go around, aground. Say, they’ll be able to wade
ashore from the tug if that happens.—Come on, now, we’ll get the stuff
aft and ready to toss out. You take starboard and I’ll take port, and
when I give the word you shoot that beer case out to the side as far as
you can.”
Though the wind eased down, the _Angelique_, square before it, managed
to make five knots, while the _Dolores_, doing six, slowly overhauled
her. As the rifles began to speak from the _Dolores_, the skipper, under
the direction of Henry and Francis, built up on the schooner’s stern a
low barricade of sacks of potatoes and onions, of old sails, and of
hawser coils. Crouching low in the shelter of this, the helmsman,
managed to steer. Leoncia refused to go below as the firing became more
continuous, but compromised by lying down behind the cabin-house. The
rest of the sailors sought similar shelter in nooks and corners, while
the Solano men, lying aft, returned the fire of the tug.
Henry and Francis, in their chosen positions and waiting until the
narrowness of El Tigre was reached, took a hand in the free and easy
battle.
“My congratulations, sir,” Captain Trefethen said to Francis, the Indian
of him compelling him to raise his head to peer across the rail, the
negro of him flattening his body down until almost it seemed to bore
into the deck. “That was Captain Rosaro himself that was steering, and
the way he jumped and grabbed his hand would lead one to conclude that
you had very adequately put a bullet through it. That Captain Rosaro is
a very hot-tempered hombre, sir. I can almost hear him blaspheming now.”
“Stand ready for the word, Francis,” Henry said, laying down his rifle
and carefully studying the low shores of the islands of El Tigre on
either side of them. “We’re almost ready. Take your time when I give the
word, and at ‘three’ let her go.”
The tug was two hundred yards away and overtaking fast, when Henry gave
the word. He and Francis stood up, and at “three” made their fling. To
either side can and beer-case flew, dragging behind them through the air
the beaded rope of pots and cans and bottles and rope-streamers.
In their interest, Henry and Francis remained standing in order to watch
the maw of their trap as denoted by the spread of miscellaneous objects
on the surface of their troubled wake. A fusillade of rifle shots from
the tug made them drop back flat to the deck; but, peering over the
rail, they saw the tug’s forefoot press the floated rope down and under.
A minute later they saw the tug slow down to a stop.
“Some mess wrapped around that propeller,” Francis applauded. “Henry,
salute.”
“Now, if the wind holds ...” said Henry modestly.
The _Angelique_ sailed on, leaving the motionless tug to grow smaller in
the distance, but not so small that they could not see her drift
helplessly onto the shoal, and see men going over the side and wading
about.
“We just must sing our little song,” Henry cried jubilantly, starting up
the stave of “Back to Back Against the Mainmast.”
“Which is all very nice, sir,” Captain Trefethen interrupted at the
conclusion of the first chorus, his eyes glistening and his shoulders
still jiggling to the rhythm of the song. “But the wind has ceased, sir.
We are becalmed. How are we to get out of Juchitan Inlet without wind?
The _Dolores_ is not wrecked. She is merely delayed. Some nigger will go
down and clear her propeller, and then she has us right where she wants
us.”
“It’s not so far to shore,” Henry adjudged with a measuring eye as he
turned to Enrico.
“What kind of a shore have they got ashore here, Senor Solano?” he
queried. “Maya Indians and haciendados—which?”
“Haciendados and Mayas, both,” Enrico answered. “But I know the country
well. If the schooner is not safe, we should be safe ashore. We can get
horses and saddles and beef and corn. The Cordilleras are beyond. What
more should we want?”
“But Leoncia?” Francis asked solicitously.
“Was born in the saddle, and in the saddle there are few Americanos she
would not weary,” came Enrico’s answer. “It would be well, with your
acquiescence, to swing out the long boat in case the _Dolores_ appears
upon us.”