Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's Note: The author refers to George Fleming's brother as
both "Harry" and "Henry" in this story. The original naming has been
retained.]
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[Illustration: "PERHAPS I COULD DRESS THE HURT." SUGGESTED MISS WALLACE
A LITTLE SHYLY. Frontispiece. p. 109]
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THE PIRATE OF PANAMA
A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure
By
WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE
Author of "Wyoming," "A Texas Ranger," "Bucky O'Connor,"
"Brand Blotters," "Mavericks," Etc.
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS--NEW YORK
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Copyright, 1914, by
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
The Pirate of Panama
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York
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TO
CAPTAIN FORRESTER
FIRST MATE ROBERT, QUARTERMASTER WILLIAM
AND BO'SUN KENNETH
THIS VOYAGE OF THE _ARGOS_ IS DEDICATED
Ho, gallant tars and true, fall to!
Up anchor, lads, and sheets unfurl.
Let engines throb a low tattoo;
It's "All aboard for Panama."
The snell wind whistles shrill o'erhead,
The bullets spatter thick below,
By candle light we count our dead,
While we are bound for Panama.
For all true men waits hidden gold,
'Gainst all true hearts fight pirate foes,
Who bears him with a courage bold
Will land with us at Panama.
Into the deep drive strong and sure,
Straight as an arrow for the goal,
From off the course let nothing lure,
The breeze is fair for Panama.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A Scrap of Paper 7
II. Captain Bothwell Interrupts 22
III. Concerning Doubloon Spit 39
IV. The Man With the Secret 51
V. We Find a Ship 61
VI. The Missing Corner 72
VII. In the Fog 84
VIII. Aboard the Argos 91
IX. Bothwell Makes a Move 101
X. Another Stowaway 110
XI. Taking Stock 123
XII. My Unexpected Guest 137
XIII. Mutiny 147
XIV. The Battle 161
XV. The Morning After 168
XVI. The Night Attack 178
XVII. A Taste of the Inquisition 189
XVIII. Anchored Hearts 207
XIX. Sense and Nonsense 214
XX. The Big Ditch 225
XXI. A Message from Bucks 237
XXII. Treasure-trove 250
XXIII. Aboard the Schooner 266
XXIV. A Rat in a Trap 280
XXV. A Rescue 292
XXVI. The Last Brush 299
XXVII. In Harbor 312
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ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"Perhaps I could dress the hurt," suggested Miss Wallace a
little shyly _Frontispiece_ 109
"Crikey! I didn't know that was there," Jimmie cried 240
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THE PIRATE OF PANAMA
CHAPTER I
A SCRAP OF PAPER
It was a dismal, sodden morning, with heavy clouds banked in the western
sky. Rain had sloshed down since midnight so that the gutter in front of
me was a turbid little river.
A chill wind swept across the city and penetrated to the marrow. From
the summit of the hill, three blocks above me, my car was sliding down,
but I clung to the curb to postpone until the last moment a plunge into
the flowing street.
Since I was five-and-twenty, in tip-top health, and Irish by descent, I
whistled while the windswept drops splashed the shine from my shoes.
Rain or sun, 'twas a good little old world, though, faith! I could have
wished it a less humdrum one.
For every morning I waited at that same time and place for the same car
to take me to my desk in the offices of Kester & Wilcox, and every day I
did the same sort of routine grubbing in preparation of cases for more
experienced lawyers to handle.
Sometimes it flashed across me that I was a misfit. Nature had cast me
for the part of a soldier of fortune, and instead I was giving my
services to help a big corporation escape the payment of damages for
accidents caused by its cars. I had turned my back on the romance of
life. Well, it was the penalty one must pay to win success.
And while I stood on the curb there fluttered down to me from the dun
heavens an invitation to the great adventure my soul longed for. It came
on a gust of wind and lay on the sidewalk at my feet, a torn sheet of
paper yellowed with age.
I had no premonition of what that faded bit of parchment meant, no
picture of men in deadly battle, of the flash of knives or the gleam of
revolvers, of lusty seamen lying curled on the deck where they had
fallen at the call of sudden death. The only feeling that stirred in me
was a faint curiosity at the odd markings on the sheet.
My foot moved forward and pinned the paper to the cement walk. Should I
pick it up? Of what use? It would turn out to be only some Chinese
laundry bill. Already the gong of the street-car was not more than a
block away as it swept down the hill.
Was it some faint sound that drew my eyes up? Or was I answering the
call of my destiny when my lifted gaze met the figure of a young woman
framed in a second-story window? She was leaning far out, with arm
stretched down and fingers opened wide.
Behind her stood a man, also out of the window to his waist. One of his
hands clutched her wrist, the other reached toward hers. That he had
been trying to take from her the paper she had flung away was an easy
guess.
I had but the fraction of a second before my car was slowing for the
crossing, but it was long enough to read in his dark face a malignant
rage, in her fair, flushed one a defiant triumph. Stooping, I gathered
the document that lay under my foot, then ran forward and swung to the
platform of the car.
If there had been time for second thought I might have stayed to see the
drama out, or I might have left the cause of quarrel where it lay. As it
was I had done neither one thing nor the other. Having yielded to
impulse so far as to pick up the paper, I had then done the conventional
thing and ignored the little scene above.
But when I glanced back up the hill I glimpsed a man flying bareheaded
from a doorway and pursuing the car with gestures of impotent fury.
All the way down to the business quarter the odd affair challenged my
interest. What did it mean? The picture in the window was no laughing
romp meant to end in kisses. So much I was willing to swear. There was
passion in both the faces.
Out of those two lives I had snatched a vivid moment, perhaps one of
many common to them, perhaps the first their intersecting life-lines had
developed.
Was the man her husband? I was not willing to think so. More likely a
brother, I persuaded myself. For it was already being borne in upon me
that freakish chance had swept me into the orbit of the thing we spell
Romance.
A petty domestic quarrel suggested itself as the obvious solution, but
the buoyant youth in me refused any such tame explanation. For the girl
was amazingly pretty.
After a glance at it I put the crumpled paper in my pocketbook. In that
crowded car, hanging to a strap, I could make nothing of it. At the
office my time belonged to Kester & Wilcox until noon, for I was still
in that preliminary stage of my legal career during which I found it
convenient to exchange my inexperience for fifteen dollars a week. A
clouded real-estate title was presumably engaging my attention, but
between my mind and the abstract kept jumping a map with the legend
"Doubloon Spit" above it.
Faith, the blood sang in my veins. The scent of adventure was in my
nostrils. A fool you may think me, but I was already on the hunt for
buried treasure. Half a dozen times I had the paper out furtively, and
as soon as my hour of release came I cleared the desk and spread the
yellow, tattered document upon it.
The ink had been originally red, but in places it was faded almost to
illegibility. The worn edges at the folds showed how often it had been
opened and scanned. One lower corner had been torn away, leaving perhaps
seven-eighths of the original manuscript. Yet in spite of its imperfect
state of preservation I found this relic of a dead and forgotten past
pulse-stirring.
Before me lay the map of a peninsula, the upper part sketched in vaguely
but the toe marked apparently with the greatest care. The first detail
that caught my eye was a sketch of a brig in the bay, beneath which was
written:
"Here _Santa Theresa_ went to Hell."
It was plain that the coast line was charted accurately so as to show
the precise location of the inlets. It was a contour map, giving the
hills, sand reaches, and groves. At the nearest one of these last was
jotted down the words: "Umbrela Tree."
A little cross had been drawn near the foot of a hill. From this a long
line ran into the bay with a loop at the end in which had been printed
neatly: "Where Lobardi croked. Good riddance."
Not far from this were three little circles, beneath which was one word
in capitals, "ITTE."
My heart leaped like an unleashed foxhound taking the trail. What could
it mean but treasure? What had happened to the _Santa Theresa_? Had some
one helped Lobardi to "croke" by cracking his skull? Could that dim, red
ink once have been, the life blood in a man's veins?
Here was food enough to fire the blood of a cool-headed Yankee, let
alone that of a mad Irishman. I caught a vision of a boatload of
red-turbaned buccaneers swarming up the side of a brig; saw the swish of
cutlases and the bellying smoke of pistols; beheld the strangely garbed
seadogs gathered around an open chest of yellow gold bars shining in the
sun.
For an eyebeat it was all clear to me as day. Then I laughed aloud at
myself in returning sanity. I was in the twentieth century, not the
eighteenth. An imagination so vivid that it read all this from a scrap
of paper picked from the gutter needed curbing. I repocketed the chart
and went to lunch.
But I found I could not laugh myself out of my interest. The mystery of
it drew me, despite myself. While I waited for my chop I had the map out
again, studying it as a schoolboy does a paper-backed novel behind his
geography.
Beneath the map were some closely written lines of directions for
finding "itte," whatever that might be. As to that my guess never
wavered.
Whoever had drawn the map had called the peninsula "Doubloon Spit." Why?
Clearly because he and his fellow buccaneers had buried there the
ill-gotten treasure they had gained from piracy. No doubt the _Santa
Theresa_ was a gold ship they had waylaid and sunk.
At my entrance I had taken a little side table, but the restaurant was
filling rapidly. A man stopped beside my table and took off a frogged
overcoat with astrakhan trimmings. He hung this and his hat on a rack
and sat down in the chair opposite me.
Instinctively I had covered the map with a newspaper. With amazement I
now discovered that my _vis-a-vis_ was the villain of the Adventure of
the Young Lady and the Chart, as the author of the "New Arabian Nights"
would have phrased it.
The man was in a vile humor, so much could be seen at a glance. Without
doing me the honor of a single glance he stared moodily in front of him,
his heavy black brows knit to a grim frown.
He was a splendid specimen of physical manhood, big and well-muscled,
with a broad, flat back and soldierly carriage. That he was a leader of
men was an easy deduction, though the thin, straight mouth and the hard
glitter in the black eyes made the claim that he would never lead toward
altruism.
In quick, short puffs he smoked a cigarette, and as soon as he had
finished it he lit a second. Men all around us were waiting their turn,
but I observed that the first lift of his finger brought an attendant.
"Tenderloin with mushrooms--asparagus tips--strong black
coffee--cognac," he ordered with the curtness of an army officer
snapping commands at a trooper. His voice was rich and cultivated, but
had a very distinctly foreign quality in spite of the fact that his
English was faultless.
I took advantage of the distraction of the waiter's presence to slip the
map from the table into my pocket. After this I breathed freer, for it
is scarcely necessary to say that in the struggle for the map--and by
this time I had quite made up my mind that there would be fought out a
campaign for its possession--I was wholly on the side of the young
woman.
But as yet I knew none of the facts, and so was not in a position to
engage with him to advantage. I called for the check and took my coat
and hat from the rack.
Then I made my first mistake. I should have carried my raincoat to the
door before putting it on. As I buttoned it recognition began to
struggle faintly into his eyes. I waited for no further developments.
But as I went out of the door I could see him hurrying forward.
Instantly I turned to the right, dodged into a tobacco shop, ran swiftly
through it to the surprise of the proprietor, and found myself in an
alley. I took this in double-quick time and presently had lost myself in
the hurrying crowds on Kearney Street. Five minutes later I was in the
elevator on the way to our office.
I set to work resolutely, but my drifting thoughts went back to the
military man with the frogged coat, to the distractingly pretty girl who
did not want him to have the map, and to that spit of land lapped by
Pacific waves in a latitude and longitude that shall be nameless for
reasons that will hereafter appear.
It must have been fifteen minutes after my return that our office boy,
Jimmie, came in to tell me that a lady wanted to see me.
"She's a peach, too," he volunteered with the genial impudence that
characterized him.
This brought me back to earth, a lawyer instead of a treasure seeker,
and when my first client crossed the threshold she found me deep in a
volume on contracts, eight other large and bulky reference books piled
on the table.
The name on the card Jimmie had handed me was Miss Evelyn Wallace. I
rose at once to meet her.
"You are Mr. John Sedgwick?" asked a soft, Southern voice that fell on
my ears like music.
"I am."
My bow stopped abruptly. I stifled an exclamation. The young woman was
the one I had seen framed in a second-story window some hours earlier.
"I think you know me by sight," she said, not smiling exactly, but
little dimples lurking in her cheeks ready to pounce out at the first
opportunity. "That is, unless you have forgotten?"
Forgotten! I might have told her it would be hard to forget that
piquant, oval face of exquisite coloring, and those blue eyes in which
the sunshine danced like gold. I might have, but I did not. Instead, I
murmured that my memory served me well enough.
"I have come for the paper you were good enough to take care of for me,
Mr. Sedgwick. It belongs to me--the paper you picked up this morning."
From my pocket I took the document and handed it to her.
"May I ask how you found out who I was, Miss Wallace?"
You might have thought that roses had brushed her cheeks and left their
color there.
"I asked a policeman," she confessed, just a little embarrassed.
"To find you a man in a gray ulster, medium height, weight, and
complexion," I laughed.
"I had seen you come from the Graymount once or twice, and by describing
you to the landlady he discovered who you were and where you worked,"
she explained.
Her touch of shyness had infected me, too. It was as if unwittingly I
had intruded on her private affairs, had seen that morning an incident
not meant for the eyes of a stranger. We avoided the common interest
between us, though both of us were thinking of it.
Later I was to learn that she had been as eager to approach the subject
as I. But she could not very well invite a stranger into her difficulty
any more than I could push myself into her confidence.
"I hope you find the paper exactly as you left it, or rather as it left
you," I stammered at last.
She had put the map in her hand-bag, but at my words she took it out,
not to verify my suggestion but to prolong for a moment her stay in
order to find courage to broach the difficulty. For she had come to the
office in desperation, determined to confide in me if she liked my face
and felt I was to be trusted.
"Yes. It was torn at the moment I threw it away. My cousin has the other
part. It is a map."
"So I noticed. My impression was that the paper was yours. I examined it
to see whether it held your name and address."
Her blue eyes met mine shyly.
"Did it--interest you at all?"
"Indeed, and it did. Nothing in a long time has interested me more."
I might have made an exception in favor of the owner of the document,
but once more I decided to move with discretion.
"You understood it?" Her soft voice trailed upward so that her
declaration was in essence a question.
"I am thinking it was only a wild guess I made."
"I'd like right well to hear it."
My eyes met hers.
"Buried treasure."
With eager little nods she assented.
"Right, sir; treasure buried by pirates early in the nineteenth century.
We have reason to think it has never been lifted."
"Good reason?"
"The best. Except the copy I have, this map is the only one in
existence. Only four men saw the gold hidden. Two of them were killed by
the others within the hour. The third was murdered by his companion some
weeks later. The fourth--but it is a long story. I must not weary you
with it."
"Weary me," I cried, and I dare swear my eyes were shining. But there I
pulled myself up. "You're right. I had forgotten. You don't know me.
There is no reason why you should tell me the story."
"That is true," she asserted. "It is of no concern to you."
That she was a little rebuffed by my words was plain. I made haste to
explain them.
"I am meaning that there is no reason why you should trust me."
"Except your face," she answered impulsively. "Sir, you are an honest
gentleman. Chance, or fate, has thrown you in my way. I must go to
somebody for advice. I have no friends in San Francisco that can help
me--none nearer than Tennessee. You are a lawyer. Isn't it your business
to advise?"
"If you put it that way. But it is only fair to say that I am a very
inexperienced one. To be frank, I've never had a client of my own."
Faith, her smile was warm as summer sunshine.
"Then I'll be your first, unless you refuse the case. But it may turn
out dangerous. I have no right to ask you to take a risk for me"--she
blushed divinely--"especially since I am able to pay so small a fee."
"My fee shall be commensurate with my inexperience," I smiled. "And are
you thinking for a moment that I would let my first case get away from
me at all? As for the danger--well, I'm an Irishman."
"But it isn't really a law case at all."
"So much the better. I'll have a chance of winning it then."
"It will be only a chance."
"We'll turn the chance into a certainty."
"You seem very sure, sir."
"I must, for confidence is all the stock in trade I have," was my gay
answer.
From her bag Miss Wallace took the map and handed it to me.
"First, then, you must have this put in a safety-deposit vault until we
need it. I'm sure attempts will be made to get it."
"By whom?"
"By my cousin. He'll stick at nothing. If you had met him you would
understand. He is a wonder. I'm afraid of him. His name is Boris
Bothwell--Captain Bothwell, lately cashiered from the British army for
conduct unbecoming a gentleman. In one of his rages he nearly killed a
servant."
"But you are not English, are you?"
"He is my second cousin. He isn't English, either. His father was a
Scotchman, his mother a Russian."
"That explains the name--Boris Bothwell."
Like an echo the words came back to me from over my shoulder.
"Capt. Boris Bothwell to see you, Mr. Sedgwick."
In surprise I swung around. The office boy had come in quietly, and hard
on his heels was a man in a frogged overcoat with astrakhan trimmings.
Not half an hour earlier I had sat opposite him at luncheon.