THE STORM CENTRE
"God forbid I should be so bold as to press to heaven in my
young days."
--_Titus Andronicus._
The feathering buckets of the paddle wheels began to turn; and _La
Luz_, long, low, narrow, and a racer, moved noiselessly out into the
bay. A few yards only, and the loungers on the wharf could neither see
nor hear her. Except for the muffled binnacle light, there was neither a
ray nor a spark. The anthracite gave almost no smoke. The hull, hardly
three feet above water amidships, was "Union color," and invisible at
night. The waves slipped over her like oil, without the sound of a
splash, almost without breaking. She glided along more and more swiftly.
The silent engines betrayed no hint of their power, though breathing a
force to drive a vessel five times as large.
There were many entrances to the bay, and Murguia had had his steamer
built of light draft especially, to profit by any outlet offering least
danger from the vigilant patrol outside. The skipper had already chosen
his course. Because of the gale, he calculated that the blockaders would
get a considerable offing, lest they flounder mid the shoal waters
inshore. He knew too, even if it were not so dark, that a long, foamy
line of surf curtained the bay from any watchful eye on the open sea. By
the time she reached the beach channels, _La Luz_ had full speed
on. Then, knifing the higher and higher waves, she made a dash for it.
For a slender steamer, and in such weather, the risk was desperate. The
skipper hoped that the blockaders would never credit him with quite the
insanity of it. He held the wheel himself, while beside him his
keenest-sighted quartermaster stood guard with a glass. The agitated
owner was there also, huddled in his black shawl, but the binoculars
glued to his eyes trembled so that he could hardly have seen a
full-rigged armada in broad daylight.
Suddenly the quartermaster touched the skipper's arm under the shrouded
binnacle. "I s'y sir," he whispered excitedly, "they're--_there!_
There, anchored at the inshore station, just off the bar! My eye, but
hain't they beastly idiots? They'll smash to pieces."
The skipper looked and Murguia tried to look. But they saw nothing.
Except for the booming of the surf, they might have been on a landless
sea, alone in the black night. Don Anastasio was shaking at such a rate
that his two companions in the dark wheelhouse were conscious of it. He
cursed the quartermaster for a pessimist. The skipper, though, was brave
enough to believe.
"We're expected, that's gospel," he muttered. But he did not change his
course, for he knew that on his other side there was a second fleet,
tugging at drift leads off the entrance to the main ship channel. It was
near hopeless, but he meant to dart between the two.
"Now for a reception as 'ull touch us to the quick, as Loo-ee Sixteenth
said----" The skipper cut himself short. "Aye, aye, sir," he cried,
"they've spied us!"
"They haven't!" groaned Murguia. "How could they?"
"'T'aint important now, sir, how they could. There might be a gleam in
our wake. But any'ow they 'ave."
They had indeed. Less than a mile to port there suddenly appeared two
red lights, two sullen eyeballs of fire. Then, a rocket cleft the
darkness, its slant proclaiming the fugitive's course. Hurriedly the
_Luz's_ quartermaster sent up a rocket also, but in the opposite
direction. It was useless. A third rocket from the signaling blockader
contradicted him.
"We're bein' chased," announced the skipper. "One of 'em 'as slipped her
chain and got off."
As _La Luz_ had gained the open, the skipper let his quartermaster
take the wheel. "'Old her to the wind, lad," he cautioned. "A beam sea
'ud swamp us." Next he whistled down to the engine room. They were to
stoke with turpentine and cotton. At once Murguia began to fidget. "It,
it will make smoke," he whined.
"An' steam. We're seen a'ready, ain't we, sir?"
"But it costs more."
"Not if it clears us. Soft coal 'ud seem bloomin' expensive, sir, if we
got over'auled."
The race was on. In smooth water it would scarcely have been one. But
the boiling fury cut knots from the steamer's speed, while the Federals
sent after her only their sailing vessels, which with all canvas spread
bent low to the chase. They had, however, used up time to unreef; and
with the terrific rolling they would not dare cast loose a gun.
When morning dawned thickly behind the leaden sky, the three men in the
wheelhouse made out a top-gallant sail against the horizon. "By noon,"
said the skipper, "the beggars 'ull 'ave us."
He was a small pert man, was the skipper, with a sharp face, an edge to
his voice, and two little points of eyes that glowed. Salt water had not
drenched his dry cockney speech, and he was a gamin of the sea and as
keen to its gammon ways as in boyhood he had been to those of pubs
around the old Bow Bells.
Don Anastasio heard the verdict with a shudder. Given the nature of the
man, his mortal fear was the dreadfullest torture that could be devised.
The game little cockney peered into his distorted face, and wondered.
Never was there a more pitiful coward, and yet the craven had passed
through the same agony full twenty times during the last few years.
Murguia knew nothing of the noble motives which make a man stronger than
terror, but he did know a miser's passion. He begrudged even the
costlier fuel that was their hope of safety.
"Your non-payin' guest, sir," said the skipper, pointing downward.
"'Spose he wants to buy them 'ere smokestacks?"
The trooper had appeared on deck. He was clinging to a cleat in the rail
with a landsman's awkwardness and with the cunning object of proving to
the ship that he wasn't to be surprised off his feet another time. He
swayed grandly, generously, for'ard and aft, like a metronome set at a
large, sweeping rhythm. Every billow shot a flood from stern to bow, and
swished past his boots, but he was heedless of that. His head was thrown
back, a head of stubborn black curling tufts, and he seemed absorbed in
the _Luz's_ two funnels. They gave out little smoke now, for with
daylight the skipper had changed to anthracite again, in the forlorn
hope of hiding their trail. But it had lessened their steam pressure,
and in a short time, the skipper feared, the pursuer would make them
out, hull and all.
A moment later the passenger climbed into the wheelhouse. "Look
here--Mur--Murgie," he said, "for a seven-hundred-dollar rate that was
a toler'ble unsteady cabin I had last night; restless, sort of. It's
mighty curious, but something's been acting up inside of me, and I can't
seem to make out _what_ it is!" As he spoke, he glanced inquiringly
from owner to skipper. He might have been another Panurge envying the
planter of cabbages who had one foot on solid earth and the other not
far away. He looked pale.
It afforded Don Anastasio little satisfaction to find a young man not
more than twenty-two or three. Without his great coat the Southerner
proved lithe rather than stocky. There was even an elusive angular
effect to him. Yet the night before he had looked as wide and imposing
as the general of an army. His cheeks were smooth, but they were tight
and hard and brown from the weathering of sun and blizzard. His features
had that decisive cleanliness of line which makes for strong beauty in a
man. Evidently nature had molded them boyishly soft and refined at
first, but in the hardening of life, of a life such as his, they had
become rugged. Most of all, the face was unmistakably American. The
large mouth had that dry, whimsical set, and that sensitiveness to
twitching at the corners, which foretells a smile. The brown eyes
sparkled quietly, and contour and expression generally were those which
one may find on a Missourian, or a Texan, or on a man from Montana, or
even on a New Yorker born; but never, anywhere, except on an American.
Whatever is said to the contrary, the new Western race in its fusing of
many old ones has certainly produced not one but several peculiarly
American types, and Driscoll's was American. It was most so because it
had humor, virility, and the optimism that drives back despair and holds
forth hope for all races of men.
Murguia was right, his passenger seemed a boy. But war and four years of
hardest riding had meant more of age than lagging peace could ever hold.
Sometimes there flitted across the lad's face a vague melancholy, but
being all things rather than self-inspecting, he could never quite
locate the trouble, and would shake himself out of it with a sort of
comical wonder. Bitterness had even touched him the night before, as it
did many another Southerner on the eve of the Surrender. Yet the boy
part in him made such moods rare, and only passing at their worst. On
the other hand the same boy-part gave a vigor and a lustre to his
occupation, though that occupation was--fighting. He knew no other, and
in that the young animal worked off excess of animal life with a
refreshing gusto. Even his comrades, of desperado stripe that they were,
had dubbed him the Storm Centre. And so he was, in every tempest of
arms. The very joy of living--in killing, alas!--always flung him true
to the centre. But once there, he was like a calm and busy workman, and
had as little self consciousness of the thing--of the gallantry and the
heroism--as the prosiest blacksmith. He had grown into a man of
dangerous fibre, but he was less aware of it than of his muscles.
[Illustration: "JOHN DINWIDDIE DRISCOLL--THE MISSOURIAN"
"His cheeks were smooth, but they were tight and hard and brown from
the weathering of sun and blizzard"]
Various items on the _Luz_ struck the trooper as amusing. There
was the incongruity of his seven-hundred-dollar cabin, the secession of
his stomach from the tranquillity of the federal body organic, and
finally, this running away from somebody. But he quickly perceived that
the last was serious enough. The skipper lowered his glasses, and shook
his perky head a number of times. "_Who_ said life was all beer and
skittles?" he demanded defiantly, and glared at Driscoll as though
_he_ had. But getting no answer, he seemed mollified, as though
this proved that the man who _had_ said it was an imbecile.
Murguia, by the way, had come to hate no truth more soulfully than the
palpable shortcoming of life in the matter of beer and skittles. And now
it was borne in upon him again, for the skipper announced, definitely
and with an oath, that they'd have to begin throwing the cargo
overboard.
Poor Don Anastasio behaved like a man insane. He wrung his hands. He
protested stoutly, then incoherently. He whined. He glared vengefully at
the dread sail on the horizon, and then he shrank from it, as from a
flaming sword. And as it grew larger, his eyeballs rounded and dried
into smaller discs. But at once he would remember his darling cotton
that must go to the waves, and the beady eyes swam again in moisture,
like greenish peas in a sickly broth. Avarice and terror in discord
played on the creature as the gale through the whimpering cordage.
"No 'elp for it, sir," said the skipper, bridling like a bantam. "Didn't
I try to save _my_ cargo, off Savannah, and didn't I lose my sloop
to boot? Didn't I now, sir?--Poor old girl, mebby she's our chaser out
'ere this very minute."
"Try--try more turpentine," said Murguia weakly.
"Yes, or salt bacon, sir, or cognac, or the woodwork, or any blarsted
thing I see fit, sir!" The little skipper hit out each item with a step
downward to the deck, and five minutes later Murguia groaned, for bale
after bale came tumbling out of the hold. Then over they began to go,
the first, the second, the third, and another, and another, and after
each went a moan from Anastasio. He leaned through the window to see one
tossing in the waves, then suffered a next pang to see the next follow
after. It was an excruciating cumulus of grief. The trooper regarded him
quizzically. Destruction of merely worldly goods had become routine for
him. He returned to his contemplation of the two funnels.
The skipper came back, dripping with pray. "The wind's changin'," he
said, "and that'll beat down the sea some."
"Reckon they'll get us?" Driscoll asked.
Murguia took the query as an aggravation of woe, and he turned
wrathfully on the trooper. "Don't you see we're busy?"
"I see you're very damn sullen, _gra_-cious me!--Reckon they will,
captain?"
"We'll be eatin' a United States of America supper, chained, sir."
"Now look here," said Driscoll plaintively, "_I_ don't want to get
caught."
"But I hope as you'll bide with us, sir?"
"Still, I was just thinking--now that smoke----"
"And I'm a thinkin' you don't see much smoke. We're keepin' out o' sight
as long as God'll let us."
"But, Captain, why not smoke up--big? Just wait now--this ain't any of
my regiment, I know that--but listen a minute anyway. Well, once or
twice when we were in a fix, in camp, say, and we knew more visitors
were coming than was convenient, w'y, we'd just light the campfires so
they would smoke, and then--meantime--we'd light out too. Old Indian
trick, you know."
The skipper was first impatient. But as that did no good, he cocked
himself for a laugh. Then his mouth puckered to a brisk attention, and
at the last word he jumped to his feet. "Damme!" he said, and went
thumping down the steps again. He splashed through the water on deck,
minding the stiff wind not at all, and dived into the engine-room.
"Soft coal!" gasped Murguia with relief.
It was pouring from the stacks in dense black clouds.
The captain returned. "We'll try to save the rest o' that 'ere cotton,
sir," he said.
He looked out at the trembling smoke that betrayed their course so
rashly, and from there back to the pursuer on the horizon. He waited a
little longer, carefully calculating; then sent an order down the tube
to the engineer. The dampers were shut off, and the fuel was changed to
anthracite. Soon the smoke went down, and a hazy invisible stream puffed
from the funnels instead. The _Luz_ swung at right angles to her
former course. The paddles threshed hopefully, and on she sped, leaving
no track. The skipper gazed back at the lowering line, which ended
abruptly on their port and trailed off toward the horizon with a
telegraphy of deceit for the distant sail.
"You soldiers, colonel," he announced, "don't 'ave no monopoly on tricks
and gammon, _I'm_ a thinkin'. But I s'y, w'at if you and me go down
to my cabin and have a _noggin_?"
* * * * *
Thus _La Luz_ ran her last blockade, and came safely into port. She
reached Tampico some two days before the _Imperatrice Eugenie_.
Whereupon Din Driscoll, as he was called anywhere off the muster roll,
informed Don Anastasio that he would continue with him on into the
interior. And as seen already, Murguia humbly excused delay, though his
guest was not invited, not wanted, and cordially hated besides. That
meek smirk of Don Anastasio's was the absurdest thing in all psychology.
Yet what perhaps aggravated the old man most was curiosity. He craved to
know the errand of his young despot. In the doorway of the Tampico meson
he still hovered near, and ventured more questions.
"How was it that, that _you_ happened to be sent, senor?" he asked.
"Well now," observed the trooper, "there you go figuring it out that I
was sent at all."
"It must have been--uh, because you know Spanish. Are you a--a Texan,
Senor Coronel?"
"They raised me in Missouri," said the colonel. "But I learned to talk
Pan-American some on the Santa Fe trail. We had wagon trains out of
Kansas City when I was a good sight younger."
"I thought," said the old man suspiciously, "that perhaps you learned it
with Slaughter's army, along the Rio Grande. Slaughter, he's near
Brownsville yet, isn't he?"
"Is he?"
"With about twenty-five thousand men?"
"Lord, I've clean forgot, not having counted 'em lately."
"Where did you come from then, when you came to Mobile?"
"W'y, as I remember, from Sand Spring, Missouri, near the Arkansas
line."
A more obscure crossroads may not exist anywhere, but its bare mention
had a curious effect on the prying Don Anastasio. In the instant he
seemed to cringe before his late passenger.
"Then you--Your Mercy," he exclaimed, "belongs to Shelby's Brigade?"
The Missourian nodded curtly. His questioner was extraordinarily well
informed.
"And, and how many men has Shelby at Sand Spring?"
"Oh, millions. At least millions don't appear to stop 'em any."
"But senor, how, how many Confederates are there altogether west of the
Mississippi?"
Driscoll, though, had had enough. "Look here Murgie," he said, "if you
keep on crawling, you'll crawl up on a mongoose one of these days, and
_those_ things have teeth."
He might have gone further into natural history, but a sudden commotion
down the street interrupted. "It's a race!" he cried. "No--Lordsake, if
they ain't fighting!"
He drew off his coat, took the pipe from his mouth, and shoved it into
his hip pocket, all with the air of a man who has smoked enough and must
be getting to work. His brown eyes quickened. It was akin to the
satisfaction a merchant feels who scents an unexpected order. He was
ready to deliver the goods instantly. His heavy boots went clattering
and his great spurs jangling, and soon he was stooping over two men
rolling in the dust. But he straightened and thrust his hands into his
pockets. He was disappointed. The unexpected order was a hoax. The
combatants were one to one, and he could not fairly enter into
competition. Then an unaccustomed method for getting into the bidding
occurred to him. He might be peacemaker. He leaned over again, to
separate them. Each long-fingered hand reached for a collar. Yet even as
he caught hold one of his prizes went limp in his grasp. He pulled out
the survivor, who proved to be a ragged Mexican with a knife. The other
was a French sailor. Driscoll shook the native angrily, whereupon the
little demon swung the knife with vicious intent. But Driscoll held him
at arm's length, and the sweeps fell short, to the amazement and rage of
his captive.
"You miserable little chocolate-hided galoot, why couldn't you wait for
me?"
But the chocolate-hided only squirmed to get away. Driscoll glanced up
the street whence the two had come. At the next corner, before a cafe,
he saw things more promising. A ranchero with a drawn revolver was
holding off a young officer in sky-blue uniform, while around them a
swarm of natives and ten or eleven sailors were circling uneasily, as if
waiting for some sign to begin hostilities. The joy of battle dilated
the trooper's nostrils.
"W'y, here I've been wasting time on a smaller edition."
So saying, he flung aside his prisoner; and in another minute he was the
centre of the main affair, and having an excellent time.