The new day opened a new and fertile country before Seyd's sleepy eyes,
a country wonderfully beautiful with variegated foliage of coffee,
rubber, palm, and banana plantations.
During the night the Barranca walls had, while growing lower, closed in
to a long gorge through which the river ran like a millrace. For two
hours their ears were dinned and deafened by the roar and thunder of mad
waters, but, as the boulders of the one rapid were buried thirty feet
deep, they sustained nothing worse than a slight deafness and natural
apprehension at the hair-raising speed with which they were catapulted
onward. Excepting those two hours when he had to use both oars to hold
the dugout's head in the center of the current, Francesca had slept in
his arms, and, nestling upon his shoulder the moment they emerged upon
quieter waters, she had fallen asleep once more, nor did she move till
the sun pointed a golden finger down between two clouds.
Awakening, she uttered a small cry and lay for a few seconds looking up
into Seyd's face, her eyes blank with bewildered terror. Then,
recognizing him, she gave a sob of relief. "Oh, I was dreaming--that I
was at El Quiss--to stay there--forever!" She paused and sat for a
moment looking into his tired face, then burst out: "Oh, little animal!
All night I slept while you kept watch. Now you shall sleep."
Taking his place in the stern, she forced him, with pretty authority, to
cushion his head in her lap. "_Si_, I will awaken you before we reach
the harbor, but do not dare to open an eye till then."
The command was unnecessary, for, completely fagged, he had no more than
lain down when he was fast asleep. Until sure of the fact she sat
perfectly still. Then, with a rueful glance at her soiled and shrunken
garments, she murmured, "Nevertheless, we must try to look our best."
After a second shy study of his sleeping face she let down her hair and
began to comb it out with her slender fingers. Because of the length and
thickness of the dark masses this proved a long task. The dugout had
drifted miles before she finished the coiffure with small feminine pats.
Reassured that he still slept, she dipped her handkerchief overside and
washed her face and neck.
Her own toilet completed, she next essayed his. After warming the wet
handkerchief against her own cheek she cleansed his face with delicate
touches, then, with the same soft white comb--her fingers--smoothed his
hair. Discovering, in the process, a few gray hairs, she murmured: "Oh,
_pobre_! See what I have cost thee!"
Very gently she began to trace and smooth out the lines of worry upon
his face, and, rediscovering his cleft chin, she repeated, with a soft
laugh, her comment made that night in the shepherd's hut. "Oh, fickle!
fickle! I said thy wife would need the sharpest of eyes, but they will
needs have nimble fingers that steal thee from me."
Her face at that moment formed a playground for all that was arch, but
presently it took the shadow of sadder thoughts. Brimming over, a big
tear rolled down her cheek. Yet, while sincerely sorry for Sebastien,
she was perfectly frank with herself in thought. "I would not, if I
could, bring him back. 'Twould mean only more trouble--for all of us.
Now, at least, he is at peace.
"They will think me hard and cruel." Her musings continued. "The whole
Barranca will throw up hands of horror--the hands that applauded the
greater sin when I gave myself without love in marriage. _Bueno!_" She
scornfully tossed her head. "Wicked or not, I will do it--for thee."
She squeezed his face so hard, murmuring it, that he stirred, and for
fully a minute thereafter she sat holding her breath. But he slept on.
During the last hour the river had widened, and along its banks tufted
cocoa palms were woven with the brighter foliage of bananas into the
rich green damask of the bordering jungle. Also the sun had prevailed
for a few hours in the daily battle with the mists, and under the
golden spell of light and warmth the girl's musings grew happier as they
floated on. When she awoke him to the sight of the blue harbor opening
up from behind a long bend, Seyd looked up at a smiling face.
"That's the American consulate." After rubbing the sleep out of his eyes
he pointed out a white stone building which perched, like a gull, on a
terrace above the flaming rose and gold of the adobe town. "We'll go
there. The consul is a fine old fellow. He'll help us all he can."
First, however, they were destined to encounter the unexpected, for
when, an hour later, Seyd pulled the dugout into a ragged wooden pier an
officer in the silver and gray of the Mexican rurales pushed through the
peon laborers who thronged the wharf.
"You are from up river, senor? Then you can tell us of the flood in the
Barranca. A cousin of mine, Don Sebastien--_Caramba!_" At the sight of
Francesca he broke suddenly off. "It is surely the senorita Garcia? You
will remember me, Eduardo Gallardo, upon the occasion that I visited, at
San Nicolas, your uncle, the excellent General Garcia, with my wife, who
is of your kinsfolk?"
Recognizing him while he was still in the crowd, Francesca had gained
time to prepare. His use of her maiden name proved that here at the port
they had heard nothing as yet of her marriage, so, after briefly
describing Sebastien's death and the destruction of El Quiss, she
concluded: "I was saved by the senor, here, who rode in to warn us. But
for him I also should have drowned."
And Seyd availed himself of the opening. "As the senorita is completely
exhausted, senor, you will please to excuse us. We go to the American
consulate."
"But why the consulate, senor," the rurale politely objected, "when she
owns here the house of her kinswoman? The senora, my wife--"
"_Si_, I have heard of her--nothing that is not lovely." Drawing him a
little aside, Francesca proceeded to heal, with winning smiles, the
wound in his pride. "You shall give her my love, cousin. Tell her that I
should prefer to visit her, but, having taken my life from the hand of
this senor, I cannot do otherwise than fall in with his plans."
Deferring with Latin politeness to her wish, his pride was none the less
hurt, and while they climbed the hill to the consulate he hurried home
to his wife, whose feminine intuitions placed the whole matter in an
entirely new light.
"A gringo, sayest thou? Then it will be he for whose sake she was sent
away to Europe. Medium tall, is he, with a straight nose, hollow cheeks,
quick gray eyes? The very man that Paulo, the administrador, described
to me on his last visit to the port. _Caramba!_ Here's fine bread for
the baking! 'Tis told all over the Barranca that she has this man in
her blood, and count me for a liar if she comes with him this far for
any purpose but marriage. 'Twill never do to have Don Luis knocking at
our door to ask why we let her go before our very eyes. He is a power,
_hombrecita_, with the government, thy master, and, fail or win, we lose
nothing by trying to trip her run. And 'twill be easy! A word in the ear
of the _jefe_, judge, and priest, and 'tis done. And do not sleep on it.
Away with you--at once."
In his cool white salon on the hill above, the consul--a portly old
fellow with a clean, good-natured face--was counseling Seyd at that
moment in almost the same terms.
"As you say, this is no time to stand on conventions--especially after
the man had locked you in and left you to drown. After seeing the young
lady"--his smiling glance went to the door through which Francesca had
just gone with his wife--"I should feel less than ever like protracted
mourning. Besides, it is now or never. If you don't marry her at once
the chance may never come again. If Eduardo Gallardo hadn't seen you it
would have been quite simple. I could have fixed it up for you all
right. But he is counted something of a sneak, and if he once sniffs the
wind--well, you can be sure he won't let such a chance slip to better
himself with General Garcia. You've simply got to beat him to it."
After a pause of thought he went on: "In their usual course, both the
legal and ecclesiastical procedures are very slow. It takes about a week
for the lawyers to coin the bridegroom's natural impatience into ready
money, and after they are through the Church holds out its hand for
what's left. It's an awful graft, but has its advantages, for if the
wheels are well greased they spin like lightning. Shut up! I don't have
to be told that you emerged from the flood with empty pockets. I'll
attend to that, and you can settle with me any old time. All you have to
do"--taking Seyd by the shoulders, he marched him into his own
bedroom--"is to take a shave and bath and make yourself look as much as
you can like a happy bridegroom."
With a last order, "Help yourself from my clothes," he went out
laughing. But when he returned an hour later his smile was obscured by a
vexed cloud. "Eduardo wins," he reported to Seyd, who had just come out
on the veranda. "He must have gone right to it, for when I arrived at
the _edificio municipal_ they were already primed. The judge and
_jefe-politico_ both count themselves of mine, but they wouldn't do a
thing. Really you can't blame them. _El general_ Garcia is a name to
conjure with down here, and they are all afraid of their official heads.
'Much as we would like to serve you,' and so forth, 'but in the case of
a young lady of such high family we dare not proceed without her
guardian's written consent.'
"And the _jefe_ gave me good advice. _El capitan_, Eduardo, it seems, is
not only ambitious, but not a bit too scrupulous about the way by which
he gains his ends. So you must not go out alone. It would be quite easy
to trump up some charge, arrest, and then shoot you as an escaping
prisoner under the law of _El Fuga_. You wouldn't be the first to be
shot inside the prison and then thrown outside, and, though I should
most certainly hold an inquiry and kick up an awful row, that wouldn't
bring you back to life. Also we shall have to look out that they don't
kidnap your girl."
While the consul was thus easing his bosom of its load of doubt Seyd had
stared out over the blue harbor at a steamer that was taking cargo from
a dozen lighters. Suddenly he asked, "What ship is that?"
"The _Curacao_, of San Francisco."
"American, then. When does she sail?"
"To-morrow morning at five."
"How far outside the harbor does Mexican jurisdiction extend?"
"The usual three miles beyond the headlands."
Seyd came to his point. "Then what is to prevent her skipper from
marrying us?"
"_Bueno!_" The consul slapped him on the back. "He'll do it sure, for
he's a friend of mine. Bravo! Trust your lover to find a way."