THE ANGER OF COLONEL FAJARDO
The steamer sighted Cartagena in the rosy mists of dawn. It seemed to
rise from the sea and float like a mirage. It was a mass of towers,
domes, and battlements, of stone houses tinted pink and yellow with
tiled roofs that gleamed and wavered. The surf broke against the wall of
enduring masonry which marched around this ancient city of the
_conquistadores_, a mighty wall broken here and there by massive
gateways and bastions.
Defiantly facing the sea, secure of itself, this proud stronghold of
Cartagena de Indias had been increasingly fortified until it had become
impregnable to the foes who, in the very early days, had harried and
plundered it. These walls and escarpments, the flanking towers and the
guardian forts looming from the nearby hills and forelands, had cost the
kings of Spain untold millions drained from the fabulous mines of
Potosi. They had been determined to make this Caribbean seaport the
Gibraltar of the New World.
The _Tarragona_ changed her course and moved to the southward of the
city, past the tall palms clustered on the hot, white beaches. What
appeared to be a wide entrance to the harbor was soon revealed, but the
breakers frothed against a barrier that ran athwart it like a reef. On
the chart this reef was a curiously straight line, as if laid down with
a ruler. Richard Cary was shading his eyes with his hand when the chief
officer remarked:
“If the Colombians had any get-up and gumption they would blow a hole in
that submerged wall and open the old ship channel. It was built across
there, God knows how long ago, to keep the buccaneers out. Some building
job, that! There must be almost a mile of it.”
“Yes, it was put there after the Englishmen sailed in past the forts and
sacked the town,” quickly exclaimed Cary. “It wasn’t there when Drake
took Cartagena. He used this Boca Grande.”
It was necessary for the _Tarragona_ to proceed seven miles to the
southward and enter the narrow passage of the Boca Chica, tortuous and
difficult, and then to make her way through the reaches of a blue
lagoon. She passed between the outermost forts, gray and grass-grown,
but still resisting the slow processes of decay. On the port side was
the Castillo de San Fernando with its crenelated walls and deep
embrasures in which rested dismounted brass carronades. In the lee of
the lofty water-gate rode a Colombian trading schooner. A few Indian
canoes were drawn up on the beach.
On the starboard side, the Castillo de San Juan jutted from the sea like
a huge rock. Patches of verdure had found root in the crumbling
counterscarps. Flowering vines wreathed the round sentry boxes.
Steaming slowly through the placid lagoon, the _Tarragona_ found a
circuitous path to Cartagena. The wharf, the corrugated iron cargo
sheds, the railway tracks, were ugly and modern. Looking away from them,
however, one saw only the stately seaport of the vanished centuries.
Behind its ramparts the galleried streets and shaded plazas drowsed
through the heat of the day until the breeze came sweeping from the sea
with the setting sun.
The _Tarragona_ had much freight to discharge before resuming the voyage
to Santa Marta and filling her holds with bananas. Richard Cary had to
be an efficient second mate with his mind on the job while the
clattering winches plucked the rope slings filled with cases, bales, and
casks from the open hatches. At the noon hour he found leisure to loaf
under an awning.
Teresa Fernandez found him there. She had something to say. One of her
swift and supple gestures indicated a swarthy Colombian in a handsome
military uniform who reclined in a steamer chair on the promenade deck.
He was gaunt, grizzled, and harsh-featured. Just now his eyes were
closed. His hands were comfortably clasped across his belt. He was
enjoying a brief siesta after a bountiful luncheon in the saloon as the
guest of the ship.
“You see that fellow?” exclaimed Teresa, with a shrug that betokened
disfavor. “All his brass buttons and medals? He is the _Comandante_ of
the Port, Colonel Fajardo. The boss of the custom-house police and
things like that. What do you think of him?”
“Is he a friend of yours?” Dick Cary cautiously parried.
“Last voyage that Colonel Fajardo asked me to marry him,” candidly
answered Teresa. “Yes, that fellow told me he was in love with me. He is
not as old as he looks, unless he is a big liar. Forty-two years old he
says.”
Cary glowered at the somnolent _Comandante_ of the Port. In a way, this
was startling news. Next he fixed a questioning eye on the charming
Teresa whose demeanor hinted that, as a suitor, the colonel had not been
finally disposed of on that last voyage. She flashed a brilliant smile,
furtively caressed Cary’s hand, and deigned to explain:
“It was just like this, Ricardo. This Colonel Fajardo is a very
important man in Cartagena. The Fruit Company must treat him nice and
pat him on the back or he will make trouble for the ships. He can find
something wrong with the papers and delay the sailings or maybe a poor
sailor is caught smuggling some cigarettes ashore. You see, I am in the
Company’s employ and I must not make this Colonel Fajardo mad with me.
It is best to be _diplomatique_, to jolly him along, you understand?”
“It sounds well enough,” growled Richard Cary, by no means appeased,
“but what about _this_ voyage? Has that buzzard proposed to you again?”
“Oh, yes, as soon as he came aboard this morning. He was waiting, very
impatient. He had told me he had plenty of money and a very good house.
His pay is not much, you know, except what he can steal. I asked my
uncle in Cartagena to find out about this Colonel Fajardo. My uncle he
cannot come down to the ship to-day, but he sends me a letter. This fine
_Comandante_ is a false alarm, Ricardo. He has spent all his money on
women and his house is mortgaged up to the neck. He is no good at all.
Bah! Why should I marry that fellow, even if I am a poor girl that has
to go to sea and work very hard?”
“Have you told him so?” sternly demanded Dick Cary. Her nonchalance
rather staggered him.
“Yea, I could not string him along any more,” serenely confessed Teresa
Fernandez.
“But if he had all kinds of money, what then?”
“Never, Ricardo. He disgusts me. That last voyage, when I told him to
wait, you had not kissed me then.”
“You are _my_ sweetheart,” he passionately exclaimed. “And I’ll take
care of that Colombian blackguard if he pesters you again.”
“You would kill him, Ricardo, because you love me?” happily sighed
Teresa Fernandez. “But, listen, don’t you go making trouble with that
man if he acts jealous. I will be glad when the ship sails for Santa
Marta to-morrow.”
Richard Cary’s laugh was lightly scornful. He held the amorous Colonel
Fajardo in very small esteem. By this time the latter gentleman had
awakened from his siesta. He yawned and blinked at the harbor upon whose
oily surface a small sailing vessel drifted becalmed in the blistering
heat. Then his gaunt frame uprose from the steamer chair and he stiffly
straightened himself in the frogged white uniform with the ornate gold
shoulder-straps.
He was not a man to be dismissed with a careless laugh. A visage tanned
to the hue of brown leather was bitten deep with the lines of a hard and
cruel temper. The thin lips and jutting nose were predatory. One thought
of him as perhaps a soldier who had seen more arduous service than this
lazy billet of _Comandante_ of the Port. He had the air of command, but
sloth and dissipation were corroding him as rust destroys a good weapon.
Yawning, Colonel Fajardo lighted a cigarette and smoothed the wrinkles
from his tunic. Then he twisted the ends of a mustache that was
prematurely flecked with gray. He sauntered forward, to the gangway, and
swore viciously at two of his custom-house guards who had retreated to
the shade of a deck-house. One of them he kicked by way of emphasis.
From this part of the ship he caught sight of Teresa Fernandez under the
awning with the huge, yellow-haired young second mate of the
_Tarragona_.
At a glance it was easy to perceive that they found this dalliance
agreeable. Excessively and infernally agreeable, in the opinion of this
interested Colonel Fajardo. It was a mordant sight for him to behold. He
felt suddenly feverish. It was, indeed, like a touch of _calentura_.
A certain thing was revealed to him. It displayed itself beyond a shadow
of doubt. Teresa Fernandez had considered his offer of marriage. Yes,
she had been favorable, his vanity led him to believe, delaying the
answer until the ship had returned to Cartagena.
Now she had rejected him; the humble stewardess of the _Tarragona_
rejecting the renowned Colonel Fajardo, _Comandante_ of the Port, who
might have had so many other young and beautiful women. It was because
she had found a Yankee lover. Little devil, would she so wantonly flaunt
this great, stupid beast of a sailor before the eyes of Colonel Fajardo?
It was amusement for those two.
The Colonel’s lean fingers quivered as he lighted a fresh cigarette. The
thin lips twitched beneath the martial mustache. He turned on his heel
and strolled aft to the smoking-room. There he slumped upon a cushioned
settle and rested his elbows upon the table. He ordered a whiskey and
soda and drank it very slowly. Another Colombian official joined him, a
loquacious person who babbled about various matters and was indifferent
to the brooding, ungracious demeanor of Colonel Fajardo. After a while
this acquaintance departed.
The colonel continued to drink, steadily and alone, until the chief
engineer drifted in for a cold bottle of beer. He was sweaty and dirty
and his legs ached. For sociability’s sake he sat down at the table with
the _Comandante_ of the Port. It was an error, as he presently
discovered. The morose gentleman of the gold shoulder-straps contributed
no more than an occasional grunt or a bored, “_Si, señor_.”
His eyes were slightly bloodshot and failed to focus. Otherwise his
sobriety could not be challenged. He brightened only when about to
plunge his predatory beak into another whiskey and soda. Having
prudently slaked his own thirst, the chief engineer betook himself back
to the task of tinkering with a balky condenser in a temperature that
would have made Hades seem frigid. Later in the afternoon, when he
emerged on deck for air, he accosted Richard Cary.
“Hearken to me, shipmate. If you insist on sparking the beautiful
stewardess, I suggest that you suspend operations until Cartagena is in
the offing. What I mean to say is, a little discretion wouldn’t be half
bad.”
“Thanks, Mac, but if you had just as soon mind your own damn business,”
was the discourteous retort, “I can hearken a lot easier. How did you
get this way?”
“By using a normal intelligence and powers of observation in which you
are so colossally lacking,” was the unruffled reply. “You have already
driven Colonel Fajardo to drink. He has been at it ever since luncheon,
according to Jimmy, the barkeep. No, he isn’t drunk, but, my word, his
disposition is ruined. He may be chewing glass by this time.”
“Humph! You read too many novels, Mac. Trying to stage a melodrama?”
“This from you, Dick Cary? You wild ass! After boring me with your
fantastic nonsense about buried memories of the Spanish Main? Accuse me
of being stagey when I offer a friendly bit of common sense? Oh, very
well, if you get a knife in your ribs or a bullet in your back, you
needn’t expect me to hold your hand and listen to your last words. I
have heard gossip in Cartagena, that this Colonel Fajardo has bumped off
one or two sprightly young _caballeros_ who got in his way.”
“And you listen to such rot?” scoffed Dick Cary. “The drunken
counterfeit! Somebody ought to call his bluff. I wish he would give me a
chance.”
“The Devon lad? Spaniards are good hunting,” quizzed McClement. “Up, my
hearties, and at ’em.”
Instead of dining at his favorite café in Cartagena, Colonel Fajardo
remained on board the _Tarragona_. He swayed just a trifle as he walked
into the saloon, but his bearing was haughty and sedate. He held his
liquor well, did this seasoned soldier of the tropics. A man of blood
and iron! More accurate, perhaps, to say that he had a copper lining.
Whatever emotions may have tormented him, his appetite for food was not
blighted. He ate enormously and gulped down cup after cup of black
coffee.
This treatment was sobering. The colonel’s eyes were again in focus.
They expressed an intelligence alert and sinister. His gait was normal
when he returned to the promenade deck. He posted himself where he could
observe the gangway steps that led down to the wharf. It was not long
before Teresa Fernandez appeared. As he suspected, she had been warily
avoiding him. Just now she failed to see him because she was looking
elsewhere, forward, where the stairs led down from the officers’
quarters on the boat deck.
This was a woman of a very different aspect from the industrious
stewardess of the _Tarragona_ in her white garb so severely trim and
plain. The wide black hat framed a face girlish and piquant. The gown
was of some gray stuff, thin and shimmering. It revealed the soft
contours of her shoulders, of her slenderly modeled arms. The ancestry
which could boast of a Don Juan de Fernandez, captain of the great
galleon of the plate fleet, had survived in Teresa’s small-boned wrists,
in the curves of her slim silken-clad ankles. Greedily did the lustful
Colonel Fajardo gaze at her. Damnation! Never had he so greatly desired
to possess a woman. In proof of this he had been even willing to marry
her.
She gayly waved a hand, but not at him. The second officer of the ship
was hastening to join her, the great, insolent ox of a Yankee sailor.
He, too, was in shore-going clothes, a jaunty Panama with a crimson
band, cream-colored suit of pongee, a bamboo stick crooked on his arm.
He was so flagrantly the happy lover off for a holiday hour ashore that
Colonel Fajardo muttered blasphemies the most picturesque. The intention
was to annoy him, to make him beside himself. It was odious.
The perfidious Teresa Fernandez hung on the arm of Richard Cary as they
descended to the wharf and walked to the custom-house gate beyond which
waited a group of little open carriages, plying for hire. The drivers
raised their voices in clamorous persuasion, naming extortionate prices.
Teresa scolded them in voluble Spanish as _piraticos_ and children of
the Evil One. They meekly subsided. The carriage with the least bony and
languorous nag rattled over the cobblestones in the direction of the
nearest gateway through the city wall.
Colonel Fajardo moved to the gangway. He halted to think. His hard, worn
face was not so angry as perplexed. It was to be surmised that things
had taken a disappointing turn. Possibly it would have pleased him more
had the second officer gone ashore alone. The fact that Teresa Fernandez
had accompanied him intruded a certain awkwardness. In a way, it was
unforeseen. In previous voyages she had declined to leave the ship after
dark.
Colonel Fajardo absently fingered a scar on his chin. The circumstances
were regrettable, but he was not one to neglect a matter of importance
so long as there was the remotest chance of success. Immediately he made
his way down to the wharf and strode as far as the office of the
customs. He entered this small building, locked the door, and talked
softly into the telephone. The conference was brief. His language was so
guarded that it could mean nothing at all if overheard. The message was
a masterpiece of circumlocution. It was understood, however, by a
certain sallow young man who had been playing a guitar in a café of
shady repute in a dingy street of Cartagena.
He had been waiting for a message. In the afternoon a dusty urchin had
come from the wharf with a few unsigned words scrawled on a bit of paper
advising him to hold himself in readiness for orders.
In employing the telephone, Colonel Fajardo displayed the modern spirit.
In certain aspects of his private affairs he harked back to earlier
centuries. From the wharf he returned to the ship and sought the
smoking-room. With a mien of somber abstraction he applied himself to a
whiskey and soda.
Meanwhile the shabby open carriage had rattled through a cavern of a
gateway in the wall. Cartagena by moonlight! Richard Cary was glad he
had waited until night. All traces of garish modernity were banished by
the sorcery of the silver moon. In the shadows of the winding streets,
gallants whispered at grated windows. The tall houses with overhanging
balconies that almost met across these narrow streets were gravely
beautiful. In the stones above their doors were chiseled the crests of
conquering _hidalgos_ whose bones had been dust these hundreds of years.
There was almost no traffic. Strollers loitered in the grateful breeze,
a group was singing as it passed. There was the hum of voices from the
balconies, the distant music of a band in a plaza. To Richard Cary it
was like the ghost of a city, untouched by change or dissolution, which
dwelt with memories great and tumultuous. He gave himself over to its
spell.
Teresa Fernandez also was silent. When she spoke, it was to say, with
deep emotion:
“It is so wonderful to be with you, Ricardo, away from the ship and all
those noisy people. To-night we seem to belong right here in my old
Cartagena, you and I. This is like a beautiful dream, but, ah, dreams
never last very long. Will you love me for more than a little while?”
“Aye, Teresa mine; forever and ever. McClement calls me crazy, but I
feel as though I had loved you in Cartagena long ago.”
“Santa Maria, do I look as old as that?” she rippled. “And I thought I
had made myself _muy dulce_ for you. If you will stay crazy about me, I
don’t care how crazy that old chief engineer thinks you are.”
When deeply stirred, Ricardo was not one to turn a ready compliment. She
was satisfied, however, with his smile of fond approval, with his
manifest pride in her slender and elegant beauty. One thought made them
wistful. To forsake the open carriage and wander at their will, to a
stone bench in the shadows of the Plaza Fernandez de Madrid, or to the
murmuring beach, this was their desire. But they could not remain long
away from the ship.
Teresa had petulantly explained that there was no evading a call at the
house of her uncle, Señor Ramon Bazán. It was a promise, made last
voyage, and she was a woman of her word. Besides, this funny old guy of
an uncle, said she, had vowed to leave her all his money when he was
dead. It was necessary to be nice to him while he was alive. Ha, not one
dollar would he give her until he was dead, not if she begged him on her
knees. A terrible tightwad was the Señor Ramon Bazán.
Richard Cary made no comment. He felt sorry for the girl who had been
compelled to travel rough roads of life, courageously battling for
survival. She was not sordid, but anxious. Money was a weapon of
self-defense. She had been compelled to think too much of it.
The carriage halted in front of the frowning residence of Uncle Ramon
Bazán. The iron-studded door was stout enough to have stopped a volley
of musket balls. It was swung open by a barefooted Indian lad in ragged
shirt and trousers. Teresa brushed him aside and led the way into the
_patio_, open to the sky, where a fountain tinkled and flamboyant
flowers bloomed. A little brown monkey scampered up a trellis and swung
by its tail. A green parrot screeched impolite Spanish epithets from a
cage on the wall.
The Indian youth shuffled into the _patio_ and timidly informed the
señorita that her uncle had gone out on an errand and would soon return.
“I hope he forgets to come back, Ricardo,” said Teresa. “Now we can sit
down by the oleander tree and I will show you the bell of the old
galleon _Nuestra Señora del Rosario_.”
They crossed the moonlit square of the patio. Cary saw a heavy framework
of Spanish oak timbers, more durable than iron. From the cross-piece was
suspended the massy bell whose elaborately chased surface was green with
time and weather. By the flare of a match, Cary discovered a royal coat
of arms in high relief and the blurred letters of an inscription,
presumably the name of the galleon and of the port whence she had
hailed.
Teresa Fernandez groped for the clapper and let it swing against the
flaring rim. The bell responded with a note sonorous and musical.
Lingeringly vibrant, the sound filled the _patio_. With more vigor
Richard Cary swung the clapper. The voice of the galleon’s bell swelled
in volume. The air fairly quivered and hummed. It was unlike any ship’s
bell that Richard Cary had ever heard at sea or in port. And yet its
timbre thrilled some responsive chord in the dim recesses of his soul.
It was such a bell as had flung its mellow echoes against the walls of
Cartagena, of Porto Bello, of Nombre de Dios when the tall galleons of
the plate fleet had ridden to their hempen cables.
The sound of the bell had died to a murmur when Teresa spoke. The
quality of her voice was attuned in harmony with it, or so it seemed to
the listening Richard Cary.
“When I was a little girl,” said she, “I liked to come and play with the
old bell. I had to stand up on my toes and push the clapper with my two
hands. Dong! Dong! It sang songs to me. They made me feel like you say
you do when you hear the wind in the palm trees, Ricardo. There is
something about this bell—very queer, but just as true as true can be.
You will not laugh, like the other _Americanos_. If anything very bad is
going to happen to the one it belongs to, this bell of the _Nuestra
Señora del Rosario_ it strikes four times. _Dong! dong!—Dong! dong!_
Four bells, like on board a ship. When there is going to be death or
some terrible bad luck! It has always been like that, ’way, ’way back to
my ancestor Don Juan Diego Fernandez.”
Richard Cary nodded assent. It was not for him to find fault with a
legend such as this. Teresa, encouraged by his sympathy, went on to say:
“Yes, it was heard the night before the two little English ships, the
_Bonaventure_ and the _Rose of Plymouth_, came sailing into Cartagena
harbor. _Dong! dong!—Dong! dong!_ There was no Spanish sailor near at
all on deck when it struck four bells. A hundred years ago there was a
General Fernandez who fought with Bolivar in the revolution against
Spain. His wife she sits right here in this _patio_ and waits for news
from her brave husband. One night it is very quiet and everybody is
asleep. She is waked up. What does she hear? Not so loud, but very sad
and clear. _Dong! dong!—Dong! dong!_ Four bells!
“This poor woman knows her husband must be dead in some battle for the
flag of Bolivar. Pretty soon a soldier comes from the Magdalena with a
message, but she has had her message already. Another time, my Ricardo,
it was a Fernandez that got drowned in a ship. It went down in a
hurricane off Martinique. The bell told his mother. Now I have told you
enough gloomy stuff, Ricardo. Maybe that old bell will belong to me some
day. I think I will throw it in the harbor. It is a Jonah.”