“Gloria in las alturas,Cantad in vuestra jaula, criaturas.”
“Gloria in las alturas,Cantad in vuestra jaula, criaturas.”
“Gloria in las alturas,Cantad in vuestra jaula, criaturas.”
“Gloria in las alturas,
Cantad in vuestra jaula, criaturas.”
Worn, footsore, more than half-starved as he was, he could not see his goal nor hear that chime without “singing in his cage.” There was his desired haven, within how many hours of march? He could not tell how many hours; perhaps very many hours; but no matter what his pains were, he felt sure that having seen his goal, he could reach it.
Going down was like soul’s delivery after the toils of the last days. In a few miles he was in the timber, going down a glen of great trees towards a smell of honey which came thickly upon the air to him. Sometimes he missed it for a few yards, but it always returned on the next gust. Sometimes it brought to him memories of tea in England, but more often the intense memory of a picnic at Yapavai, where he had sat near a field of the yellow melilotis hovered over by countless blue butterflies.
At the end of the glen he came out on to a heave of the hill, where he found the cause of the honey scent: eleven great trees lay broken on the ground.
Nine of the eleven were hollow from the ground to the upper branches. In all these, for perhaps centuries, the wild bees had nested, till now many hundreds weight of honey lay broken or spilt upon the ground. Over this, in some places, the bees were still flying confusedly, but by this time most of them had gone with their queens to new shelters. Gorged bee-eaters sat on neighbouring boughs. Some small mountain bears boldly foraged in the tree-boles. They clawed out great paws-full of comb which they plastered into their muzzles in spite of the stings. Sard found a piece of broken yellow comb the size of a bathsponge. On this he fed with thoughts of the prophets fed miraculously in the wilderness. After this, the miseries of the wilderness fell from him as though they had never been. Perhaps the honey had in it some drug of excitement or of comfort. He wandered on happily, feeling sure that all his troubles were at an end. He bathed in the pool of a mountain stream on the banks of which wild strawberries grew so thickly that the ground looked like the foot of a red hawthorn tree after a storm in June. After this he went on through a forest of big timber which grew on easy slopes with little undergrowth.
The moon had risen before he came to any trace of men. He came to a clearing and followed wheel-tracks downhill till he saw the lights of huts. Men in the huts were beating tin pans and singing:
“Is that Mr. RileyWho sets such a styley?Is that Mr. Riley who keeps the hotel?Is that Mr. Riley they speak of so highly?How d’ye do, Mr. Riley, are you doing quite well?”
“Is that Mr. RileyWho sets such a styley?Is that Mr. Riley who keeps the hotel?Is that Mr. Riley they speak of so highly?How d’ye do, Mr. Riley, are you doing quite well?”
“Is that Mr. RileyWho sets such a styley?Is that Mr. Riley who keeps the hotel?Is that Mr. Riley they speak of so highly?How d’ye do, Mr. Riley, are you doing quite well?”
“Is that Mr. Riley
Who sets such a styley?
Is that Mr. Riley who keeps the hotel?
Is that Mr. Riley they speak of so highly?
How d’ye do, Mr. Riley, are you doing quite well?”
As he came to the door of the first hut, a man who was tapping out his pipe there, hailed him:
“Hello, sport! where in hell do you come from?”
“Over the mountain.”
“Mountain, hell! Are you looking for a job?”
“No.”
“Doing it for a bet, then?”
“No. Trying to rejoin my ship.”
“Hell!” the man said. “Here, boys, here’s a son of a gun come across the mountain, trying to rejoin his ship. Come in, son, and have one on the house.”
* * * * *
At noon the next day Sard was in San Agostino, washed, shaven, fed, reclad, and with money in his pocket. He walked in the crowded street, listening to speech, hearing the bells. Shops were full of food, drink, shoes and clothes; women were looking into shops; work was going on; men with places in life were filling them.
He had no place. He knew now how little a thing will put a man out of a place, into the wilderness beyond, where to be at all is to be an outlaw.
He stopped on the steps of the Consulate to look at the ships in port: among them was the big English steam yacht, theYuba, which he had seen in Las Palomas, as it seemed in another life. A man hailed him by name.
“Hullo, Harker!”
It was Billy Binge, his old captain of the main.
“I say, Harker,” he said, “are you ashore here? Yes? What topping luck! Could you take theYubato Santa Barbara?”
“Yes.”
“Sir James has sacked his old man for crooking his little finger: going on the jag, in other words. He wants a new old man, muy pronto, and the worst of it is all the masters on the beach here are out at elbows.”
“So am I,” Sard said.
“Only in your gear,” Billy said. “These other fellows are in their souls. I can vouch for you personally. So if you really can take her, come along, I’ll fit you out a bit and then I’ll take you to Sir James.”
“One minute,” said Sard. “Have you heard anything of an abduction case at Las Palomas?”
“Abduction of Miss Kingsborough?” Billy said. “We’ve heard nothing else. She’s been carried clean away.”
“Where to?” Sard asked.
“Search me,” Billy said. “Some damned trader in Eve’s flesh; but there’s a fine old breeze about it. Now come along.”
“What brings you to San Agostino?”
Sard told him in few words.
* * * * *
Billy Binge’s recommendation was sufficient; Sir James engaged Sard to command theYuba. She sailed late that night, up the coast to the Recalde reef to take some dredgings. After a few days at the reef, she sailed for Santa Barbara, where she arrived at noon just nineteen days from Sard’s going ashore at Las Palomas.
Sir James stood at his side as he brought theYubainto Santa Barbara harbour.
“You’ve not been here recently, Captain Harker,” he said. “You’ll not know the place; it’s a different place: almost a different city. They’re making this place the Athens of the West: I saythey, but it’s reallyhe, the Dictator, Don Manuel. Look at the cathedral; there’ll be nothing so beautiful in the New World when it’s finished. Do you see your ship, thePathfinder?”
“No, Sir James, she isn’t in the sailing ship berths.”
“That is unfortunate for you,” Sir James said, “as I suppose it means that she has both come and gone; but it is fortunate for me, for I hope it will mean that you will come home with us in theYuba.”
* * * * *
Assoon as Sard was free, he went ashore to see Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s agents. He was puzzled by thePathfinder’snot being in the port. She could not be overdue, he thought, in just dropping down to leeward. She might have come and gone: in which case he would have missed her by a few hours. “More probably,” he thought, “she has gone down the coast to Otorin to complete her cargo. I’ll find her there.”
At the agents, as he asked for his letters, one of the managers of the firm, a tall, alert inscrutable man of about thirty-five, a Mr. Waycock, heard his name.
“Are you Mr. Harker of thePathfinder,” he said, “come into my office, will you? I want to speak to you. Sit down here: the cigars are at your elbow. You don’t smoke? You’re the first sailor I’ve ever known who could say that. You know, Mr. Harker,” he said, “I heard that we might expect you apart from thePathfinder. I had news of you from a man with whom I have business dealings, a man called Douglas Castleton.”
“Has he been here?” Sard asked. “Where is he?”
“Isn’t that a little like asking where is the curlew?” Mr. Waycock said. “It is best, perhaps, not to ask where Mr. Castleton is. I understand that he is not here at the moment, but away again on . . . well . . . on a business journey.”
“What news of thePathfinder, sir?” Sard asked.
“ThePathfinder!” said Mr. Waycock. “Haven’t you heard? She was wrecked last week on the Snappers. She’s a total loss.”
“On the Snappers!” Sard said. “How on earth did she get there? Are all hands saved? Is Captain Cary safe?”
“You’ve not heard then,” Mr. Waycock said. “Of course you couldn’t have heard. No, all hands are not safe. They had pestilence on board. Captain Cary is dead. He died some days before the ship went ashore.”
“Dead!” Sard said. “But he was well when I saw him. How did you hear this?”
“We had a cable from Port Matoche where the crew were landed,” Mr. Waycock said. “Here it is. It gives just the bare facts, but if you come here to-morrow morning at nine o’clock, the crew will be here with Mr. Dorney. Mr. Hopkins is still in hospital. The rest will be coming in this evening by the mail. You can see them here in the morning. Here’s Dorney’s cable as far as it goes.”
Sard looked at the flimsy.
“I’m glad Captain Cary didn’t lose her,” he said. “But how did they put her on the Snappers?”
“Well, she came down on both knees like a riderless horse,” Mr. Waycock said. “They had a fever on board. I don’t know more than that.”
“Yes,” Sard thought to himself. “I know the kind of fever they’ve had on board, Captain Cary dead and myself not there, Hopkins ill and Dorney who can’t navigate, a man who doesn’t hold with sights but can foodge a day’s work, as he calls it.”
“Are they bringing Captain Cary’s body, sir?” he asked.
“No, he was buried at sea,” Mr. Waycock said. “A fine seaman, Captain Cary—of the old school, that is. Of course his day was over. He couldn’t have held his own much longer. It’s just as well as it is.”
“Yes,” Sard said bitterly. “He didn’t lose her and he hadn’t got the sack. But he wasn’t wanted and they let him know it. You must excuse me, Mr. Waycock. I have been with Captain Cary for ten years. I must go out and think of it. I will come in the morning.”
At the door as he was going out, he said, “One other thing, Mr. Waycock. Douglas Castleton is mixed up with a very queer company of men. I suspect that some of those men were concerned with abducting a woman, a Miss Kingsborough, from a house in Las Palomas. I have reason to believe that the men in that abduction came from Santa Barbara here and were going to bring Miss Kingsborough here to some Mr. B. or Sagrado B. who runs a rum-running business and is plotting revolution against the Dictator here.”
“Oh, but I think you’re quite mistaken about that,” Mr. Waycock said. “Our friend moves in very queer company, but not in company of that sort at all. Besides, Miss Kingsborough has been found. The case was reported in the press a week or ten days ago. She was taken by bandits, not by rum-runners. She was held to ransom. I think I could find you the account in the paper. I have got it somewhere here. She was in a mining town quite close to Las Palomas, a place called Tlotoatin.”
“Tlotoatin!” said Sard.
“Yes, do you know it?” said Mr. Waycock.
“I have been there,” Sard said.
“Oh, here’s the ‘Humanidad,’ ” Mr. Waycock said. “Here’s the account, ‘Miss Kingsborough found.’ Cost her £400.” He pointed the paragraph to Sard, who read:
“Miss Kingsborough Found.“A cable from Las Palomas confirms the rumour, which we quoted in our columns yesterday, that Miss Kingsborough has been restored to her friends and relatives. Yesterday the agents of the British Consul visited the place appointed by the bandits with the sum demanded for the lady’s ransom: £400. Great reticence veils what took place at the meeting, but the bandits were men of their word and Miss Kingsborough was set free. A press agent who interviewed her late last night declares that she is looking none the worse for her adventure, and that the bandits treated her with courtesy. Thus ends a nine days’ wonder, and thus, as we hope, will end the campaign of calumny which the Occidental press has waged against the police of Santa Barbara ever since Miss Kingsborough’s disappearance. The criminals of this atrocity were not natives of this State, but Occidentales, living on the scene of their crime. Let the doves of Las Palomas change their ways before they accuse others of being wolves.”
“Miss Kingsborough Found.
“A cable from Las Palomas confirms the rumour, which we quoted in our columns yesterday, that Miss Kingsborough has been restored to her friends and relatives. Yesterday the agents of the British Consul visited the place appointed by the bandits with the sum demanded for the lady’s ransom: £400. Great reticence veils what took place at the meeting, but the bandits were men of their word and Miss Kingsborough was set free. A press agent who interviewed her late last night declares that she is looking none the worse for her adventure, and that the bandits treated her with courtesy. Thus ends a nine days’ wonder, and thus, as we hope, will end the campaign of calumny which the Occidental press has waged against the police of Santa Barbara ever since Miss Kingsborough’s disappearance. The criminals of this atrocity were not natives of this State, but Occidentales, living on the scene of their crime. Let the doves of Las Palomas change their ways before they accuse others of being wolves.”
“I’m relieved to find that she has been found,” Sard said. “So that ends that.”
“You see,” Mr. Waycock said, “this is five or six days ago.”
“Did you ever hear the nickname B. or Mr. Sagrado B.?” Sard asked, “in connection with rum-running or plotting against the Dictator?”
Mr. Waycock had a broad, smooth, pale face, tranquil like the face of an image of Buddha.
“I know no one with such a nickname,” he said, “and there is no rum-running from Santa Barbara. There may be rum-running from the coast far to the west, six hundred miles from here, where the rum is made, but none from here. This fiction of the rum coming from Santa Barbara is made by the Las Palomas police, Mr. Harker. And as for plotting against the Dictator, you meant, I suppose, the Don José faction. Who would shoot the Dictator to put Don José in his place?”
“Don José would, for one,” Sard said.
Mr. Waycock laughed. “He hasn’t that reputation in Santa Barbara,” he said.
Sard suddenly felt that he was in the presence of one of Don José’s backers.
“One thing, Mr. Waycock,” he said, “if Douglas Castleton isn’t plotting or fetching rum, what brings him to Santa Barbara?”
“He comes for letters, Mr. Harker; twice a year he comes to Santa Barbara for letters.”
“If ever he wants lawyer’s counsel or a gaoler’s bribe,” Sard said, “remember that I will pay for both as long as I’m alive.”
Mr. Waycock considered him with just the flicker of a smile.
“Very good, then, Mr. Waycock,” Sard added, “I’ll come in the morning at nine.” He went out into the street. “Captain Cary dead,” he muttered, “thePathfindergone and Miss Kingsborough found. Well, that ends that.”
He found himself at the bronze of the Bajel Verde on the beach. He gripped it with his hand, suddenly overwhelmed with grief. His captain, the old extra-master:
“John Craig Cary, of the shipPetrella,Thunder-ship and stand-front-under fella,”
“John Craig Cary, of the shipPetrella,Thunder-ship and stand-front-under fella,”
“John Craig Cary, of the shipPetrella,Thunder-ship and stand-front-under fella,”
“John Craig Cary, of the shipPetrella,
Thunder-ship and stand-front-under fella,”
was now a new hand, at sea in death, with perhaps no one to teach him the ropes. ThePathfinder, who had found so many paths, where no paths showed, would now find no more. She would be jammed on the reef in the glare, while the rollers would surge over her, climbing her stern, rising, rising, rising, then thundering down, blue, then green, then blinding, all day long, all night long, till she broke.
“I’ve had enough of the sea,” he said. “It takes a man like Cary to master the sea. Then the day after he goes, the sea smashes all that ever he made, as though it had never been.”
Everything there reminded him of Captain Cary. The bronze on which his hand lay marked the very place where the Heroic Six had made their stand at the Green Boat. He had seen them there. He had been with Captain Cary in the cross-trees of theVenturer, watching the Heroic Six hiding, creeping out and firing until their cartridges were all gone. He remembered Captain Cary stamping and cursing when the boat patrols put out.
“There, boy,” he had said, “now they will be destroyed. Their retreat’s cut off. But fly down on deck, boy, and pitch the coils of the buntlines over the sides, so that, if any of them does reach the ship, he’ll be able to get on board.”
He had done this and in the dusk of that bloody day one of those buntline ends had caught a strange fish, Don Manuel himself, now the Dictator.
“Yes,” Sard thought, “it was Captain Cary who saved Don Manuel and by doing that he made this port the Athens of the West.”
Two hundred yards further along the new front towards the city was a strong shelter made of white Otorin marble. Something was displayed within it upon a bronze pedestal. Sard went in to see what it was, because it seemed to be a ship. It proved to be a big model barque flying the house flag of Wrattson & Willis: Sard recognised her instantly as theVenturer. On each side of the supporting bronze was a medallion portrait of Captain Cary, with an inscription in Spanish, which Sard translated thus:
“In eternal gratitudeTo Captain John Craig CaryAnd the officers and companyof the English Barque Venturer,For their nobleness to the ruined in the Noche Triste.”
“In eternal gratitudeTo Captain John Craig CaryAnd the officers and companyof the English Barque Venturer,For their nobleness to the ruined in the Noche Triste.”
“In eternal gratitudeTo Captain John Craig CaryAnd the officers and companyof the English Barque Venturer,For their nobleness to the ruined in the Noche Triste.”
“In eternal gratitude
To Captain John Craig Cary
And the officers and company
of the English Barque Venturer,
For their nobleness to the ruined in the Noche Triste.”
Under the inscription was a list of theVenturer’scompany, divided into watches, just as it had been in that long ago time. The list ended with the boys of his own watch: “Adam Bolter, Charles Crayford, Edward Grant, Chisholm Harker.” Under his own name were two lines of verse:
“They gave their safety, shelter, friendship, bread,To me who had a price upon my head.”
“They gave their safety, shelter, friendship, bread,To me who had a price upon my head.”
“They gave their safety, shelter, friendship, bread,To me who had a price upon my head.”
“They gave their safety, shelter, friendship, bread,
To me who had a price upon my head.”
Sard was overwhelmed. “So,” he thought, “here is Captain Cary’s monument. I wonder if he knew of it; he never mentioned it. I hope that he knew of it. He must have known of it.”
The model had been made in England by skilled craftsmen working under someone who had known theVenturerintimately. Little special matters, such as the make of the truss of the fore-yard, the lead of the braces, the design stencilled on the deckhouse, the use of brass pins in the poop fiferails, all showed that one of the oldVenturershad been engaged in the work. “Flackwell, the bo’sun, helped in this,” he thought, “there is Flackwell’s gadget of the broom-rack in the bo’sun’s locker.”
By this time the sun was behind the Sierra; the ships were dim against the bay and men were hoisting the riding lights. Sard could hear the blocks creak as they swayed them up. He went along the water-front to the end, and then climbed the great white marble staircase, between the lines of orange trees, to the Plaza of the Martyrdoms. He had never ceased to be amazed and exalted by the beauty of the new work. That stair, ten years before, had been palm-stems pinned into the earth like the rungs of a ladder. Now it was all Otorin stone, white and exquisite, with marvellous busts of the martyrs at intervals along the balustrades: Carlotta, Jane Jennings, Pascual Mestas, Celedonio Vigil, Agapito Chavez, Luciano Sisneros, Inocencio Chacon; then Carlotta and Jane Jennings again, with those five of the Heroic Six who had been killed in the bay. The faces leaned from among the dark green of the orange trees. In the groves behind them there were fountains.
He reached the Plaza at the top of the stairs. There at least the Houses of the Last Sighs were as they had been. They looked dingy and evil in that place of brightness: they looked as if they would not have any life of their own until all the lights were turned out. They were inhabited still, for a little smoke came from one of the chimneys. Sard wondered that anybody should live still in them; but he had heard that they were let at cheap rates, being supposed to be haunted, and that they were to stand thus, unpainted, till the last of the Don Lopez faction, Don José and one Rafael, had been shot there like their victims.
There were three houses together, a big one in the centre, flanked on each side by a smaller. On the wall of each of the smaller houses, at breast-height, were the chippings of bullets, under the legend, painted in white,
Hic ceciderunt.
Hic ceciderunt.
Hic ceciderunt.
Hic ceciderunt.
He did not need to be told that, for he had seen the prisoners dragged thither to be shot after Don Manuel’s defeat. He had seen two or three hundred men shot there by the Lopez faction. He had watched it all from theVenturer’scross-trees: batch after batch, volley after volley: not men only, but many women, and some children. He had seen the accursed Reds drag their victims out of houses. It had not been the suppression of a rising, but a massacre of all whose virtue shamed them.
Hic ceciderunt.
Hic ceciderunt.
Hic ceciderunt.
Hic ceciderunt.
He could not see the words without a prayer, that those who had fallen there had found peace, and that those who had killed them there might find justice.
There was another white temple-like structure in the Plaza, a round roof upon columns of marble, which sheltered musicians. In a European city it would have been a “kiosk” or a “bandstand”; here it was a lovely work of art, which took away the breath by its grace and fitness. Some musicians were moving away from the shelter, having finished their playing: the crowd which had been loitering or lounging about the music was now breaking up. Most of it was setting towards a theatre which stood under bright lights on the southern side of the Plaza. Sard went with the crowd, with a feeling which he had never known before, that to be with many people, in bright light, is a satisfaction, an excitement, a consolation.
Outside the theatre doors were the bills of the play, which gave yet another shock to Sard.
“Theatre Jane Jennings.Numancia,by Cervantes.Tafoya. Archuleta. Vizcarra.”
“Theatre Jane Jennings.
Numancia,
by Cervantes.
Tafoya. Archuleta. Vizcarra.”
Theatre of Jane Jennings, playing a poetical tragedy by Cervantes. Why, when he had come there in theVenturerJane Jennings was alive there, a byword, a most notorious bawd, the talk of all the fo’c’sles in port, infamous herself and the cause of infamy in others. Adam Bolter had been to her house and had talked and drunk with her. “A big, fat, black-haired woman, with a hooky nose: she was always either swearing or singing lullabies.” Now for her heroic defiance a simple people had made her a heroine, a national heroine. All that was evil in her had dropped from her, like rags or lice, leaving only something noble. He felt the nobleness. She had had her throat cut there in front of those dingy houses rather than do a dirty thing. Now her memory was kept alive in that place, as one whose fineness alone counted; the rest was rightly forgotten. She had come from Bermondsey and had been a bawd; now there were marble busts of her and a theatre named after her in a capital city.
He paid tribute to her memory by entering her theatre. He heard Tafoya, Archuleta, Vizcarra and their companions speak the verse of that great soldier-of-fortune. But he could not heed the tragedy.
His mind was full of what he had heard in Mr. Waycock’s office.
“What does it all amount to?” he kept asking himself. “I met a girl, many years ago, who altered my life for me: all my time has been a dream of her. Then in my dream, hearing those men at the fight, I went to warn some strangers; for they were strangers, name and nation different from hers. I warned them. I might just as well have held my tongue and gone on board; they did not profit by my warning. Now the girl who did not take my warning is safe and sound with her friends, while my friend is dead, my ship is on the Snappers a total loss, and I myself am alive only by miracle.
“What does it all mean? Some power, with foreknowledge and other knowledge, wanted me out of thePathfinderand got me and kept me out of her by the only means which could have done it. With me away, the Captain dies and the ship is lost; then I am allowed to rejoin the ship’s company. Why should I have been wanted away, save for evil, since nothing but evil came of my going? ThePathfinderwas doomed, so the man who could have saved her was taken out of her. That ass Pompey and the foodger Dorney were left to play hell with her and well they seem to have played it.
“I was lured out of the ship by the appeal to the softest thing in me. By stooping to the lure, I have made a pretty mess of things: the ship lost . . .
“It all comes from my love for that girl. Even if it be madness, or folly, or delusion, all that love has been very real, it is my intensest thing: and the intense things cannot lie: they are the only true things. Jane Jennings’ intense defiance was the true woman speaking: all the rest was only mistake.”
The tragedy came to an end with the blowing of a trumpet for the great who had died. Sard moved out with the company into the Plaza, which was now lively with the city’s amusement. He went to a little table in front of a café, and dined there, listening to selections from Gluck’s “Iphigenia.” He faced the music; the Houses of the Last Sighs lay to his left.
When he sat down at his table, before the waiter took his order, a man in uniform appeared with a pencil and a printed form. Sard’s name, nationality, ship, duty, station, lodging and other particulars were asked and noted. “Such is the law,” the man said. “In every eating-house and hotel in Santa Barbara. It prevents unpleasantness.”
Sitting there in the light, among the crowd, listening to the music, was a pure pleasure to one who so few days before had been starving in the Sierra. Sard could not feel that “unpleasantness” was near that happy place: all seemed so happy. Long after his dinner was at an end he sat there sipping coffee. His waiter, a big brawny Spaniard with a good-humoured cynical face, pointed out the Houses of the Last Sighs.
“It was there, Señor, that they shot the martyrs on the Day of the Troubles. See, Señor, the bullet-marks. Never will those houses be cleaned, or painted, or rebuilt, till the vengeance has been paid; thus has our Dictator vowed. When the debt is paid, they shall go; until then . . . thus.”
Sard knew more about the martyrdoms than the waiter, but in politeness he edged his chair aside, so that he could see the houses. The two outer houses were closed, with dark green jalousied shutters over every window. The central house, the largest of the three, had no shutters, but the windows were blinded and blank. The big windows of the ground floor were also shaded by the green, iron turtle-back of a verandah.
“The houses are dead,” he said.
“No, Señor,” the waiter said, “they are inhabited. A poor sort of people live in them. See, there, a padre enters.”
The houses were about forty yards away, under brilliant electric light. Sard saw a big, muscular priest walk with the air of a king up the steps of the central house. He turned at the door to survey the Plaza below him. Even at that distance his attitude and gesture gave the idea of domination. He seemed to dilate there. He looked like a lion conscious of supremacy. His pose seemed to say, “You canaille exist and die and rot, but I am above these things.”
There was something familiar in the man’s presence, strange as it was. That pride and power of bearing seemed familiar to Sard: he felt that he had seen it before. As the priest entered the house, Sard thought that he reminded him of Father Garsinton, who had begged a passage in thePathfinder.
“He was like that Father Garsinton,” he thought. “And it is strange. . . . Sailors would say that it was the sky-pilot who brought her on the Snappers. I did not hear about Garsinton at the office. Waycock never mentioned him, though of course he would not concern Waycock in any way.”
“Tiene,” he said to the waiter, “that priest who entered, do you know his name?”
“No, Señor; nor himself. A poor sort of people live in those houses. Without the priest they would be poor indeed. ‘They have but birth and death,’ as we say; with a priest, these will suffice a man.”
“Do you know of any people called Garsinton in that house?”
“I know no one there, Señor.”
“After all,” Sard thought to himself, “it can hardly be Garsinton. He will be coming here in theRecaldewith the rest on a Consul’s order. He can hardly be here yet. Even if it were Garsinton, his story of the wreck would probably be worthless. I suppose Pompey or Dorney will lose his ticket over this wreck, but the fault will be with myself and my dreams.”
He ordered more coffee. He talked to the waiter about events in Santa Barbara. The man said, as Waycock had said, that there was a little rum-smuggling from the western coast, in that immensely remote part known as “beyond Caliente.” He said that “things” were settled now in Santa Barbara. “Revolution, Señor,” he said, “what is it? A grand name for bad manners. What overcomes all revolution? Art. And art Don Manuel brings here. Regard the cathedral . . . the western front not faultless, but what spirit . . . . Then, too, the opera. I, a poor man, have my fill of opera, I sing in opera . . . in certain choruses. . . . All this Don Manuel makes possible. Great things are shared by all here; this gives security.”
Sard presently rose, thinking that he would take a turn about the Plaza and then to bed. It seemed to him that to work in a city like that, where great things were shared by all, would be happier than working against the sea, which shares nothing, permits little and surely takes all in the end. “I must make a new start somewhere,” he said, “on a new foundation since the old has come to grief. Since the old ends here, the new had better begin here.”
Though it was easy to say that the old had ended, his mind was full of Juanita de la Torre, as he crossed the Plaza to the jut of land called Cachopos. On this jut, completely covering it, was the nunnery of Santa Alba, whose votaries kept the Cachopos Lighthouse. Sard had heard of these nuns. He walked to the end of the Plaza to see where they lived. He could see little more than the body of their church, the walls of the conventual buildings and the pharos with its slowly revolving beam of light. Twice in each minute, the beam as it came round fell for five seconds upon the unfinished spire, tower and pinnacles of the cathedral, making them glow as though they were living creatures.
Sard watched its coming and going for some minutes. He had grateful thoughts of the women who kept that light. He turned slowly back into the Plaza, feeling utterly alone. He found that the café where he had dined was closed. The tables and chairs had been stacked away together at the edge of the pavement; his waiter had gone. Sard took a seat at another café nearer to the Houses of the Last Sighs; he ordered coffee and sat there watching the people. All were going home now, for the amusements were done: it was almost midnight. Among the last to pass across the Plaza near Sard was a little old figure of a woman, who carried a mandoline case and music. Something about her seemed familiar to Sard. Her name and state came back to him in a flash: he rose and bowed, saying:
“Señorita Suarez.”
She came nearer to him, looked at him hard, but could not recognise him. She was sixty-five. She wore black and yellow lace upon her head; her face was yellow as gold, wrinkled as shrunk cloth; her hair was iron grey, done in ringlets, her nose was like a hawk’s beak and her eyes like coals.
“Señorita Suarez,” Sard went on, “I was in theVenturer, years ago, in the Days of the Troubles. You were on board for some days, with other ladies of The Blancos.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, “sad, sad days in theVenturer. You have seen that we remember?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“And you remember me? I cannot remember you.”
“How should you?” Sard said. “I was but a boy then, and, unlike you, did not make lovely music.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, smiling, “always I make music.”
“Señorita,” he said, “for the sake of old times, will you let me offer you refreshment?”
“That, no,” she said: then, in English, “No thanky.”
The talk did not seem successful, so Sard said:
“We were lucky in theVenturer. We saved Don Manuel for a great future.” The old woman drew back as though he had insulted her or wounded her to the quick.
“For a great future?” she said, swelling like a cat about to spring. “For a great future? I trust, yes, for a very great future; for an execution so great that all this city, this bay, the mountains and the islands of the sea shall be black with people come to watch it. Let him live, Lord, to taste the greatness of that future, the Lord-with-us, the padre Pipi. You, sailor, dog of the tides, who caused us the contamination of his presence, and cursed this city with his life, speak not to Jenny Suarez of dons and futures, he, the accursed, the accursed, whose footsteps press blood out of the stones.” She spat towards Sard in the vehemence of her hate (she did not do it well) and went shaking, muttering and clicking past him, and so away down the great marble stairs.
“I suppose she was a Red,” Sard thought, “become a Red since Don Manuel became Dictator. I thought that perhaps Waycock lied about the Dictator’s popularity.”
When the waiter brought him his coffee, he asked whether Don Manuel were much loved.
“Very much, Señor.”
“Since when, and why have they named him padre Pipi?”
The waiter looked round in alarm.
“This Plaza is Blanco, Señor,” he said.
“What of it?”
“Perhaps, Señor, you know little of affairs here. Let me then warn you, as a native, never to make use of that name. It is a Red name, Red as the grid of hell, where I yet shall see those Red accursed roasting. We of the Whites call him the Grande. And truly he is Grande. He is the Lion of the Faith, Grandissimo. Yet even that name, in certain parts, among certain people, it is not prudent to speak aloud.”
“It is very true,” Sard answered. “Truly a man digs his grave with his teeth, but assuredly he cuts his throat with his tongue.”
“Assuredly.”
“Viva Don Manuel,” Sard said, “to the great race the great ruler.”
“Amen, indeed, Señor.”
“When will you close?” Sard asked.
“At one in the morning, Señor; lo, now the day passes.”
One of the bells of Santa Barbara very sweetly chimed for the hour. Instantly, from all over the city, other bells began either to strike or to chime till the air was trembling with sweetness of sound which melted into the midnight and made it deeper. Some of the ships in the bay made eight bells: a clock in the House of the Dying Sighs struck: it was midnight. Now while the deepness of a tenor bell was toning, there came, from Cachopos, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, the exquisite song of the nuns of Santa Alba at their midnight office. Sard was spellbound. All the night had ceased to be of men and folly: it had become suddenly a thing of stars and flowers and of the joy of the soul in her God.
The coming of the midnight seemed to be a signal that the life of the town should stop. It seemed to bring everybody home, so that in a few minutes the Plaza was almost empty and so quiet that one could tell the passing feet: the small, belated woman hurrying: the guardians in couples slowly patrolling, pausing to try if doors were locked.
Then, from one of the streets leading to the Plaza from the northward, there came the singing of drunkards. Sard hoped at first, from the noise that was made, that the drunkards were foreigners; but they were two English reefers, both sillily drunk, followed by a third, who, being sober and much younger than the others, was trying to pilot the drunkards down to the landing-stage. They were trying to sing some fragment of grand opera which they had heard that night: they made a bestial row, “between the bull and the cat.”
Sard eyed them to see who and what they were: the two drunkards were from a small barque in the bay: the sober boy, to his amazement, was Huskisson, a first-voyager from thePathfinder. Huskisson, aPathfinder, running the midnight with these two night-owls, within an hour or two of landing, and not ten days from Captain Cary’s death. Sard stiffened and waited.
The drunkards bowed low to Sard, laughed, lurched across to the door of the centre house of the Last Sighs, and banged upon it with their fists. They shouted a song as they banged.
“Beautiful Rosey-posey,Ever I think of thee,I love sweet Rosey-poseyAnd sweet Rosey-posey loves me.”
“Beautiful Rosey-posey,Ever I think of thee,I love sweet Rosey-poseyAnd sweet Rosey-posey loves me.”
“Beautiful Rosey-posey,Ever I think of thee,I love sweet Rosey-poseyAnd sweet Rosey-posey loves me.”
“Beautiful Rosey-posey,
Ever I think of thee,
I love sweet Rosey-posey
And sweet Rosey-posey loves me.”
One of them called to the waiter to bring them some vinos; the other, a short, squat, sub-nosed lad, whose name was Crockums, did not like the waiter.
Crockums: You darned mañana Dago, fetch the vinos, intende, or I’ll smash your papish chops. You want to forget, you ain’t in no Vatican, now, nor yet in any rancheria. Come on, Paggy, and pitch this feller over the bubb-banisters.
Paggy: No; he’s not a genelum; never fight with a feller’s not a genelum; never fight with a genelum’s not (singing) “A captain in the how-d’ye-do brigade. How de do? How de do? I’m a captain in the how-d’ye-do brigade.”
Here Huskisson, who had not yet recognised Sard, but was terrified of arrest for disorder, interrupted:
“Look here, you fellows, don’t make this row; we’ll have the civil guards on us in a minute.”
Crockums: Make this row?
Paggy: Who’s making any row?
Crockums: We’re not making any row, you young pup; go and lap milk in a tea-joint.
Paggy: He talks like my female aunt.
Crockums: I’ve torn a man’s trousers off for less; dammy, the sea’s that refined nowadays it’s chronic.
Here the waiter appeared with the three little tin cups of Santa Barbara claret.
Crockums: He shan’t have any vinos now, because he told us not to make this row.
Paggy: All the more for us.
Crockums: Drink hearty, Paggy.
Paggy: Salue.
The two of them drank each one vino; then shared the third.
Paggy: Hold your tumbler, Crockums.
Crockums: Go easy.
Paggy: It’s only this red vino.
Crockums: You’re giving me more than my share.
Paggy: They give one the purser’s gill here: two thimbles and a thumb.
Crockums: Here’s how.
Paggy: Here’s health, wealth and unity.
As soon as they had swallowed the wine they put down the cups, breathed deeply, turned, rushed at the central door, beat upon it with all their strength singing “O come let’s kick the door in,” to the tune of Adeste, Fideles. At the second stanza they changed the words to “Let’s fling the table through the doorway,” seized one of the tables and prepared to do as the song bade. The waiter interfered with “Ho, Señores, that, no. The tables, no. The song, yes, but not to break the tables.”
Crockums: What do you want, steward?
Paggy: He wants to be paid for his vinos.
Crockums: How much for your vinos? Combien de money?
The waiter: Tres pesetas.
Crockums: Tres pese . . . ? tres pesetas?
The waiter: Si quiere usted.
Crockums: Who the hell are you calling a keeairy usted? Hold my coat, Paggy. I’ll have this blighter’s blood.
Here Huskisson interfered again, saying that the waiter had only said, “If you please.”
Crockums: I’ll please him. My mother isn’t going to be called a 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 theMondovo, 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 oldPathfinderfair 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 thePathfinderbreak 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 theVenturer?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
“I, too, I do not forget. Listen, all of you; this man is one of those who saved me in theNoche 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 theVenturerthey took me in; they defended me. Those swinery were rowing harbour-guard for me. These men in theVenturerdrew 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 theVenturer,” 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 oldVenturers. 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, oldVenturer, 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.”