keeairy usted by any dam Dago on this coast. There’s your keeairy usted
in your teeth.
He seized the tin cups one after the other and hurled them in the
waiter’s face; then he and his Paggy upset a table apiece, screamed
aloud, and ran yelling down the marble steps towards the port. Sard
turned to the sober reefer.
“Huskisson.”
“Sir.”
“What were you doing with those two?”
“Helping them to their ship, sir.”
“Don’t you know that you belong to a crack ship?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why disgrace her, then, by going about with a pair like that?”
“I was trying to save them from arrest, sir.”
“Where are you sleeping to-night?”
“At the Sailors’ Home, sir.”
“Very good, Huskisson, now sit down and eat an ice with me and tell me
of Captain Cary’s death.”
Huskisson sat down and began to cry.
“Avast heaving, with the tears, Huskisson,” Sard said kindly. “Tears
won’t help anybody. Just take your time. Eat your ice and then we will
walk to your Sailors’ Home and you shall tell me everything as we go.”
This is Huskisson’s story:
“After Captain Cary left you ashore in Las Palomas, sir, he waited for
you a long time. He wanted to be sailing, for it was looking very black
and he was anxious for the ship. After an hour or so, he sent Mr. Dorney
ashore to look for you. Mr. Dorney didn’t come back till after eight. He
said he’d been out to a house for you and that you’d started back by
another way before he got there. Captain Cary was upset by that. He said
he hoped you hadn’t got into any trouble. He said to Mr. Hopkins, ‘I
don’t like staying any longer. The ship’s not safe here in a norther and
the glass is dropping like a stone. Still I must leave word about Mr.
Harker.’ So he sent the boat in again to leave word at the police about
you, sir. The swell was setting in very heavy indeed when we went
ashore, but coming back we were very nearly swamped. When we got back,
Captain Cary said that there was nothing for it but to leave you ashore.
He was very much upset about it, sir. He said, ‘I wish I had not let him
go, but I felt it my duty at the time.’ And that padre fellow, Father
Garsinton, the passenger, said, ‘Whatever one feels to be one’s duty, is
right, depend upon that, Captain Cary.’ Captain Cary said, ‘I’m not so
sure, sir,’ and told Mr. Hopkins to man the windlass.
“We were well out of Las Palomas, sir. We were the last to run for it,
all except the _Mondovo_, and we heard since that she drove ashore.
“It was after the sea had gone down, when we were well clear of the
Serranas, that the trouble began.
“It began the third day out, just when everything seemed settled in for
a quick run. It began with quite a little thing, sir. The geraniums in
the cabin were all found withering. They all died within a few hours:
Captain Cary thought that the steward had given them salt water by
mistake. Well, that passed over, sir, and we thought no more of it. But
then, the next day, there was something wrong with one of his canaries;
something the matter with its throat. The steward said he thought it
must have the pip. It kept straining with its head as though trying to
clear its throat. And in the course of the day the others fell ill with
the same complaint. Captain Cary supposed that some poisonous seeds had
somehow been packed in their bird-seed: anyhow they all died. Mr. Dorney
told us that Captain Cary was very much upset at the canaries dying. He
had always counted on his geraniums and canaries for a bright cabin, and
you know, sir, they had been lovely little singers.
“Captain Cary seemed out of sorts that night during the first watch. He
said something to the helmsman, who couldn’t understand what he said. I
was near at the time, time-keeping, and I couldn’t understand either; he
spoke so thickly. Then the next day he fell really ill. He came down to
breakfast dragging one leg and making a noise in his throat as though he
was trying to swallow or trying to speak. He couldn’t do either; he
couldn’t eat nor drink nor say what was the matter. At first they
thought that something was stuck in his throat, but it wasn’t that. Mr.
Dorney said he thought it was hydrophobia, and Mr. Hopkins thought it
was more like lockjaw. There didn’t seem to be much pain, but he was
frightfully distressed. He kept trying to explain what was the matter or
what should be done, but nobody could understand what he said, and it
weighed upon him frightfully that people couldn’t understand him. Mr.
Dorney said he cried.
“They tried to get him to lie down, but he seemed worse, lying down. He
was very much worse next day. You see, sir, he was an old man. He’d
never been ill before and the worry of not being able to speak or
swallow or sleep broke him up.
“Old Jellybags went aft to be near him in case of a call that night; so
as to give the steward a rest. Old Jellybags was in a blue funk about
it, because we all thought that it was hydrophobia and that he’d be
bitten. Still, he said he wasn’t going to let any da . . . I mean any
O.S., sir, look after Captain Cary, while there was anyone in the half
deck to do it.
“We helped him shift his bed aft. We envied him having all night in.
Wolfram saw him at the beginning of the first watch; he said that
Captain Cary seemed quieter. I suppose that that was about a quarter
past eight.
“The steward peeped in on them at coffee-time next morning. He didn’t
like their looks, so he called Mr. Hopkins. Captain Cary was
unconscious, but still fighting this thing in his throat; and poor old
Jellybags had caught it: he couldn’t speak nor swallow, but seemed
trying to clear his throat. I can’t explain it, sir, but it was horrid
to see: they felt it so.”
“What was the passenger, this Father Garsinton, doing,” Sard asked.
“Most priests in the tropics have some knowledge of medicine; couldn’t
he help or suggest something?”
“Yes, sir. He said that he had seen nothing like it. He examined the
patients and said that their hearts were very fluttery. He said that the
poison must have come on board in the air, from the norther, the day we
sailed. He said that it must have come from some very poisonous place
away up north, where there is no sun to kill germs, and that it came in
at the skylight.
“He said that it must have come in at the skylight because the first
things it attacked were the geraniums just under the skylight, that then
it attacked the canaries, close to, and then spread to Captain Cary, who
was so often there, and from him to poor old Jellybags.
“Mr. Hopkins said, ‘We’re certainly carrying some tropical disease, it’s
in the cabin where the Captain and Old Jellybags have been sleeping.
We’ll sulphur out all the cabins.’
“So we sealed all the cabins, both fo’c’sles and both deckhouses and
sulphured them out. Then when we unsealed them, we mopped them all over
with carbolic solution. We reckoned that that must have disinfected the
ship.
“Next morning Mr. Hopkins was down with the disease, just the same
symptoms and this fluttery heart.
“We could find nothing like it in our medical book, but Mr. Dorney
worked out a dose for a weak heart; but you see, sir, they couldn’t
swallow. When we tried to dose them they seemed to choke. Mr. Dorney
said all along it was hydrophobia they’d got. You can understand how we
felt about it, sir.
“The next day the steward went down with it just the same as the others.
That was one of the worst of all the things, sir, because with all these
people falling sick, one of the chronometers ran down and something went
wrong with the other. You see, sir, it had been in the infected cabin.”
“Rot, boy,” Sard said, “a chronometer couldn’t pick up infection.”
“Well, sir, perhaps it can’t, but that was how we felt about it when
everything in the cabin got poisoned.
“And then that morning, sir, poor Captain Cary died in the room where he
was with Jellybags. He hadn’t said anything that we could understand
since he had fallen ill. You can imagine what we all thought, sir; we
all knew what Captain Cary was. We buried him that afternoon, sir. It
was dead calm and hazy and blazing hot. Mr. Dorney read the service and
just as we put poor Captain Cary into the sea, that little black cat
came out of the cabin, and it had the disease. It dragged one of its
legs and was fighting in its throat and its coat was all staring. It
came to the grating where Captain Cary had lain and mewed. Mr. Dorney
said, ‘My God, the cat’s got it.’ I don’t think anything scared the men
so much as that cat coming out; there was a regular growl; and they
growled a good deal too, because Mr. Dorney took the service instead of
the padre. Mr. Dorney said that he was acting captain and it was the
captain’s place to read the service; marriage, christening or burial.
The crowd didn’t like that at all, nor did the padre; but Mr. Dorney
said that they’d ‘joost have to loomp it.’
“Poor old Jellybags died the next day.
“Then we got a slant of wind which lasted for three days: the disease
never seemed to do much when the wind was stronger than light airs. Then
the wind died out and it came on thick, just as we were expecting to
pick up Cape Caliente. It was blazing hot, with mist, just when we
didn’t know where we were. Then the disease came on again: the poor
steward died and the poor little cat died, and the padre seemed very
queer.
“Then Sainte Marie, the French A.B., who had helped to bring out the
steward’s body, went down with it. He was the first man forward to get
it, and, of course, he got it by coming aft. And now everybody was
terrified, not only at the disease but at being shut up in the mist and
lost. We hadn’t picked up Cape Caliente and we were all afraid we’d been
caught in the southerly set and put to the south of it on one side or
other. We couldn’t tell where we’d got to. We tested the water alongside
to see if we were near the mouth of the Santa Maria, but the water
wasn’t brackish. We’d hands aloft looking for high land. From time to
time we hove the lead, but it’s all volcanic water there, sir, just like
the bottomless pit. It was like being under a curse. One of the worst
things was that when the padre went queer he kept intoning the burial
service. It was dead calm and very hot, with the sail slatting and all
the gear jangling and the ship’s bells tolling as she rolled.
“Then about dark that night the wind freshened a little. We got her to
lay a course about west-north-west. She made as much as two knots for
the first couple of hours, though it was still thick. We had the
fog-horn blowing because we hoped to get an echo if we were anywhere
near the high land. Just before midnight we heard breakers on the lee
bow. Mr. Dorney put her about and kept her on the other tack for a
couple of hours. Then we heard breakers again on the lee bow. Mr. Dorney
put her about again and took a cast of the lead and got volcanic rock at
125 fathoms. Then the wind dropped and it came on very thick. We had all
hands on deck waiting for a call and from time to time we heard the
padre, sometimes fighting with this thing in his throat, sometimes
calling out the burial service. It went on like that, sir, for some
hours. Sometimes we had a few stray slants of air and then they would
die away again. At about 3.30 we heard breakers on the port bow and then
breakers on the starboard beam. Mr. Dorney said we must be among the
Chamuceras. Anyway, we were embayed. I don’t think Mr. Dorney had been
off his feet for two days and two nights, sir. We drew clear of these
breakers, and it was just beginning to grow light when we heard breakers
again on our starboard bow and then breakers on the port bow and then
the wind died on us, sir, and there wasn’t a breath. Suddenly the padre
appeared on deck in red socks and with a red tamash for a loin-cloth. He
stood at the poop rail, laughing and cussing, and then the fog cleared
away, and old Holdfast, the Vancouver man, who was in the cross-trees,
sang out, ‘Land, ho,’ and the look-out man shouted, ‘Breakers dead
ahead, sir.’
“Mr. Dorney sang out to let go both anchors, and one of them, at least,
was let go. Somebody sang out, ‘Weather main brace,’ I suppose, to lay
the main yards aback. Most of us ran to the weather main braces, and I
was on the rope and we were just beginning to haul, when I saw something
white rise up on our own weather bow, and then she went crash on to
something and knocked us all off our feet. She got up just as we did and
seemed to look around and wonder what was happening, and she lifted
clear of whatever it was and seemed to jump out of it, but perhaps it
was only the broken water that gave me the idea that she did, for then
she ran fairly on to it with a crash which tore the boat’s skids clean
off and pitched her fore and main top-gallant masts right out of her
like bitten-off carrots.”
“Were the men aloft killed,” Sard asked.
“No, sir, they were warned by her hitting the first time. After that
second crash she didn’t strike again, she only worked down into where
there were great breakers all round us. Then the fog went as though by
magic and it was daylight. We could see everything when it was too late,
Cape Caliente, Port Matoche, and all the coast as far as the Cow and
Calves. We were on the Snappers, seven miles west of Caliente. Mr.
Dorney had been thinking that we were among the Chamuceras, thirteen
miles east of her.
“Well, sir, we could take stock of how we were. She was lying over on
her starboard side a little and about a foot or two by the stern. We
judged that she was ripped pretty well open, for the water was over her
’tween decks. And now that it was too late the wind began to freshen and
she began to grind where she lay. Mr. Dorney furled the sails to ease
her and got the boats ready for hoisting out, and by the time the boats
were ready she was grinding down at each swell with a noise like ice
cracking on a lake, and the sea all round her began to come up in a kind
of syrup from our sugar.
“By eight o’clock it was no joke to be on deck. She was pounding and
breaking the sea. Mr. Dorney decided to abandon ship. He hoisted all her
colours first, house flag, ensign and number, and then he got off three
of the boats. I went in the bo’sun’s boat. Just before Mr. Dorney’s boat
was put over the side, while we were lying off watching, there came a
great big swell, which passed underneath us, of course, but it caught
the old _Pathfinder_ fair and gave her a great yank over and everything
in her seemed to fetch away over to starboard with a bang, and the next
swell went right over her all along. It was just all they could do to
get that last boat over.
“Well, that was the end of it, sir, we’d a bit of a job to make Port
Matoche, for the wind freshened into one of those local northerly gales
which they call Arnottos. But we landed everybody and we took the sick
up to the hospital. Mr. Hopkins and the A.B. were both much better when
we left Port Matoche. The padre, Father Garsinton, was quite recovered.
He came on here in a coaster so as to save a day while we were waiting
for the mail. The doctor said that we had got some tropical infection on
board, he didn’t know quite what; he said it was like medellin throat,
but he had never known cases fatal before. We were all fumigated and had
our clothes baked, which spoiled all our boots.”
“Did the _Pathfinder_ break up?” Sard asked.
“Yes, sir,” the boy said. “Mr. Dorney, Wolfram, the Bos’un, and Sails
went out in a shore boat after the Arnotto died down, to see if they
could salve anything from her, but they found only her fo’c’sle and
forepeak wedged on the rocks and the fore-mast still hanging by its
gear. She had broken short off, they said, just abaft her fore-hatch and
the rest of her was gone down into over 100 fathoms. They said that the
worst of it was that she was within a ship’s length of clearing the
Snappers altogether. Another hundred yards would have fetched her
clear.”
“You aren’t allowed a hundred yards, nor a hundred inches, in our
profession,” Sard said. “A ship is either afloat or ashore, and that’s
all there is to it.”
By this time they had reached the door of the Sailors’ Home.
“Here you are at your inn,” Sard said. “Now go up to your berth and turn
in, and don’t run the town with flash reefers again. You can’t do them
any good, and they may do you great harm. Cut away to bed, and tell Mr.
Dorney at breakfast that I hope to see him at nine in the morning at the
agent’s office.”
After he had dismissed the boy, Sard walked back to the Plaza, to think.
He sat again at his table, sipping coffee, while the waiters about him
prepared for closing time. “Medellin throat,” he kept thinking, “dead of
medellin throat; Captain Cary dead and the ship thrown away on the
Snappers.”
There came the tramp of feet upon the stairway: men were marching to the
Plaza crying strange cries like cheers. The waiter at his elbow touched
him and muttered under his breath “Cuidado.”
Sard looked up suddenly. Men in the green and silver uniforms of the
Guards came up the staircase into the Plaza: they drew up in three
little squads of four men each. They carried rifles with which they
stood on the alert. After them marched two officers, who came to Sard,
jingled the spurs on their heels, clicked and saluted. Sard rose,
returned the salute and waited.
“Captain Chisholm Harker?” one of the men said.
“I am Harker, not Captain,” Sard answered.
“His Excellency, Don Manuel, the Dictator, desires to speak with you.”
They jingled, clicked, saluted and went. A great man stepped from the
stairs into the Plaza. Sard knew him at once; indeed no one could fail
to know him; there being only one such man alive. He was a grand man,
with beauty and power in every line and gesture. He was dressed in
spotless white and girt with a green sash. He wore the great white Santa
Barbara hat of white macilento straw. He stood still, surveying Sard,
for half a minute; Sard stood bareheaded surveying him. Very slowly and
reverently the Dictator removed his hat, bowed to Sard and stood
bareheaded before him. He said no word, but stood there bowed. Sard
wished that it might end.
The Dictator advanced suddenly and spoke in English with fierce
interjections of Spanish.
“Por Dios, Captain Harker,” he said, “I have waited all these years,
knowing that you would come. When I heard that you were ashore and at
the Plaza I could hardly endure to wait. So, give me your hands: no:
both hands: so: how are you?”
Sard mumbled that he was well and glad to see the Dictator well.
“Yes,” the Dictator said, “I am better than when last we met. You
remember the time we met, on board the _Venturer_?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“I, too, I do not forget. Listen, all of you; this man is one of those
who saved me in the _Noche Triste_. I was ruined: I was a beggar, what?
Love killed, ay de mi; friends killed, hope killed. Myself wounded,
exhausted. Those swinery had a price upon my head: two thousand English
pounds. These men in the _Venturer_ they took me in; they defended me.
Those swinery were rowing harbour-guard for me. These men in the
_Venturer_ drew me half drowned from the sea and stood between me and
death.”
He paused for a moment muttering words which were customary with him
when moved: some were prayers for Carlotta, the rest curses on her
killers.
“Yes,” he muttered, “the swinery; but they paid with their life’s blood,
all but that dog, Don José, and that dog, Rafael. They wetted those
stones of horror with their tears, those swinery.”
“There was a boy in the _Venturer_,” he continued, “what you call
reefer, in what you call the half deck. He brought me in the dusk a suit
of serges and a shirt and said, ‘Better luck next time, Señor.’ What was
that reefer’s name? Hey?”
Sard growled that reefers generally answer to the name of Smith.
“Not this one,” Don Manuel said. “Por Dios, Captain Harker, it was you
did that charity, you, then a boy. In the dusk, you remember, by the
deckhouse, under the chocks of the boats, I know not the right name of
it: you remember? Por Dios, I remember.
“Yes, yes, yes, por Dios; never will I forget. £2,000 to give me up, and
I all in rags and bloody and shaking, with nothing but my personal
charm, what?
“Ay de mi, one is slow in being grateful, too slow; but always in life
the present is so full, the past drops, fades. I have watched for all
old _Venturers_. I read all ships’ papers for names. I have watched and
waited for you. ‘Everything comes to him who waits,’ you say. Many
things come; not everything; some things come not again. Ah, Harker,
youth comes not again; thank God, what? Dead love comes not again.”
He was silent for a full half minute, thinking of the dead love. When he
spoke again it was very gently.
“No, dead love comes not again, Harker mio. You never saw her, Carlotta
mia. That was where they killed her, so some say: others say there: I
shall never know. She was not like me, one of power, but one of
exquisite life.
“Lopez, Jorge, Zarzas and Don Livio. Jorge, whom they called Pluma
Verde, and that other dog, El Cuchillo. Ha, those woman-killers, they
repented. Listen. Lopez cut his veins in prison, but not enough: no, he
was alive. He and El Cuchillo and Pluma Verde and Zarzas and Don Livio
they all came up those stairs on their knees and kissed where she died
before they were shot. Ay de mi, Carlotta mia, pobrecita. It was sweet,
but it did not bring her back.
“It is with me now as with the slave: I work that I may not think. God
prisons us all in sorrow of some sort, so that we may seek our escapes.
I seek, now, only one escape. Don José’s throat in my hands, and
Rafael’s throat in my teeth; then, then, then will she be paid.
“But, Harker mio, old _Venturer_, my great kind benefactor, I want such
men as you. This Santa Barbara is great, great; there is no place like
it on earth: only I want men: I have brains, plenty, but only two hands.
I want hands like yours. Will you join me? Choose your work, what say
you, and be with me. What would you like?”
“I’d like to congratulate you, sir.”
“What for? My fortune?”
“No, sir, your gratitude.”
He was pleased with the answer. “Ha, yes,” he said, “the ingratitude of
a king. But it is often hard to be grateful to individuals: it is easier
to be grateful to the world.
“I see you are not married, Harker. You, too, have sorrowed.
“But it is now early. I have to rise early to a special Mass at our
friends of Santa Alba yonder. I shall have but a short watch below.
Come, then, Harker mio, to coffee with me at seven, at the palacio; you
will have thought, then, what we may do together. So, then, I shall
expect you.”
He took Sard’s hands and shook them; then he stood back, as though
stepping away from the life that he enjoyed into the loneliness of
monarchy. Majesty seemed to come upon him like a garment; for the
purple, like other habits, may be assumed. His guards clicked, saluted,
and fell in. They were all men from Encarnacion, from the old Encinitas
estate, where they showed as relics a hoof of Alvarado’s horse, set in
silver, the sword of Vasco Nuñez, and a piece of the script of the
Gospel of St. John.
They passed down the marble stairs, uttering the cries which Sard had
heard as they came up.
“They cheer the dead, Señor,” the waiter explained, “they cheer the
Heroic Five and Señora Jennings and the Pobrecita, whose images they
pass.”
The bells chimed for one in the morning: all shops and cafés in the
Plaza closed. The waiters came from within, dressed in their old coats,
with turned-up collars; their feet passed away, some to the old town,
some to the north, till the town was almost silent. A cat or two went
stealthily or swiftly across the Plaza. A little brown owl flew across
crying a note that was querulous and sad. Out in the harbour, some
watchman whose clock was slow made two bells.
Sard stayed in his chair, wondering.
He had no wish to sleep: he only wanted a new direction for his life. He
was going to strike at life until he found one. “I will stay here,” he
thought, “till I can see what I can do.”
He had thought of many ways of life as desirable, after he had once held
command at sea. Now his old desire of command was gone. He wanted no
more of the sea, but to come ashore and begin anew, without any dreams
to mislead him, nothing but the work to do and the honour to earn from
it. Why should he not come ashore, to bear a hand under Don Manuel?
Great things were being done there: a great state was rising.