“San Francisco burned to the ground. Not a cent to be raised in California. Am going east.”
“San Francisco burned to the ground. Not a cent to be raised in California. Am going east.”
In view of the aforesaid game of hide and seek he had been playing with Don Luis the situation looked very dark. But, serious as it was, when, halfway to San Nicolas, he met Paulo riding at the head of a mule train loaded with fagots it was wiped altogether out of his mind.
“We go to build beacons along the rim of the Barranca to give warning against the bursting of the gringo dam,” he answered Seyd. “Si, Don Luis and the señora are at thecasa. The señorita?” His creases drew into a malevolent grin. “The señora, you mean. She was married two hours ago to Don Sebastien.”
“
What!” In the language of the good old romances, Seyd roared the word.
In the main, Paulo was not a bad old chap. To further the interests of a Garcia he would cheerfully have surrendered his old bones to be boiled in oil, and in his joy at the event he allowed his natural garrulity to dominate his prejudice against the gringo.
“Si, señor, they were married at the hacienda by the priest of Chilpancin. On account of the death of Don Sebastien’s mother Don Luis and the señora only were present, and immediately afterward the young couple went home alone to El Quiss. A sensible practice, say I! When young hot blood mixes it should be left to cool and settle. Over there at El Quiss the fur will be flying before the end of a week, and put me down as a liar if Francesca do not keep him busy. She has run too long single not to kick at double harness. But she’ll settle to it, and like the fine wench she is, there is to be no European travel or such kickshaws as now are common with our rich young folk. No, in the good old Mexican fashion she goes from the church straight to herman’s home, there to stay till the first babe makes us all completely happy.”
Over and above his real joy in the event the old fellow was undoubtedly aware of its effect on Seyd. While speaking, his small red eyes searched his victim’s face for the pain beneath its confusion. But even under the spur of race hatred his imagination could not divine a tithe of the torture he was inflicting. Like all lovers, Seyd had dreamed long moving pictures of himself and Francesca as husband and wife, and now, with the speed of light, the reels spun backward, exhibiting her with another in the thousand and one intimacies of married life. Through all, his stiff Anglo-Saxon reserve persisted, and, finding egress at his heels, the pain that he tried to hide brought the situation to a ludicrous close. Springing from the unconscious pressure of his spurs, his horse, a mettled little beast, collided with Paulo and knocked him flat on his back.
More hurt in his pride than body, the old fellow scrambled up and stood shaking his fist and cursing. But Seyd rode on without attempt to check the animal, whose top speed ran slower than his own hot thought. Indeed, when, from sheer fatigue, it slowed he laid on with quirt and spur, and kept on at a gallop till violent exercise had withdrawn the blood from his swelling brain.
In place of pulsing waves of confused paincame the tortures of clear thought. In turn he was ruled by anger, despair, unbelief. The thought of Francesca as he had seen her on the train, quiet, lovely, sympathetic, inspired the last. It was not possible! Then up would rise the blank ink scores round the divorce notice to provide the motive and plunge him back into deep despair. Lastly came anger, blind and unreasoning, in furious gusts.
Occasionally through his welter of feeling there flashed a glimmer of reason. “She’s married now! She’s married! That ends it—for you!” But instead of despair the thought produced furious reactions. “I don’t care! She’s mine! I’ll have her—I have to take her by force!” It rose again and again, his cry on the trail of the other day.
By instinct rather than conscious thought he had turned his horse into a path which presently curved at a sharp angle into one that led from San Nicolas up to the rim of the Barranca where at this season ran the only passable trail. At the forks he came on the fresh tracks of shod horses that led up the zigzag staircases.
Overlapping each other on the narrow trail, they might have been made by two or a half dozen, and not until he saw two sets clearly imprinted side by side crossing a small plateau did he think of the riders. If proof were required it was presently furnished by the little handkerchiefthat hung, fluttering in the rain and wind, on a “crucifixion thorn.”
As, reining in, he examined the corner initial a whiff of violets rose in his nostrils. Under the sudden crush of his hand it shed a rain of tears.
Fifteen miles away along the rim Francesca and Sebastien had just reined in. On a bare knoll close to the trail which led down to El Quiss three peons were building a beacon of dry wood around a core of hay, and while Sebastien talked with them the girl looked out over the valley.
Ever since, in a burst of anger at Seyd’s message, she confirmed her conditional promise she had lived in a fever of feeling which precluded clear thought. In the same way that a sufferer from toothache anticipates with almost revengeful pleasure the wrench of the extraction she had looked forward to marriage as though it were to bring the end of her pain. Not until the words that made her a wife fell like a chill on her fever did she perceive the illusion. Riding along the trail, the consequences had presented themselves, and they grew with every mile until they filled her mind with horror. She had shrunk in fear and revulsion when Sebastien offered the ordinary courtesies of the road. When he buttoned his own big rain capote around her she trembled under his hands. Again, when her beast slippedand he threw his arm round her to lift her out of the saddle, she uttered a nervous cry, and, though he released her at once, she shuddered under her cloak. Yet, with all her pain, when she gazed out over the storm-beaten valley her old passion for nature asserted itself through her agony.
Along the Barranca the south wind herded great fleecy clouds. There they piled themselves up in shadowy hills, there they rolled and tumbled like thistledown in a breeze, and again cascaded down to lower levels to dissolve with muttering thunder in slaty sheets of rain. One minute the vapors filled the Barranca, flowing, a ghostly river, between the towering walls. The next a sudden rent in the veil permitted a fleeting glimpse of the trail falling like a yellow snake with myriad writhings into the treetops thousands of feet below. Enormous in scale, the scene was rendered more impressive by the roll of low thunders and flash of pale lightnings amidst leaden writhing shapes. Watching it, Francesca was forgetful until, through a sudden rift, she caught the distant pink flash of the El Quiss walls. Then she shivered, and she was still trembling when, turning from the peons, Sebastien spoke.
“It is one of a chain of beacons they are building up and down the valley to warn the people if the gringo dam should burst.” Noticing her shiver, he added: “You are cold,querida? Let us ride on.”
His usual stern gravity had given place in the last few hours to a look soft, pleasant, and very human. If she had looked into his eyes she might have read there both sympathy and understanding. But softness in him just then merely added to her fear. Following downhill, too, she watched him closely with dark, frightened eyes. In the past his strong face and lithe figure had aroused in her a certain admiration, but now they inspired revulsion. A lost spirit descending into Hades could not have battled more fiercely than did she descending the interminable staircases, and the struggle left her so pale and exhausted that Sebastien remarked upon it when they rode out at last on the valley floor.
“You are tired? We shall soon be there.”
That started her again upon a conflict which continued all the way across the pastures to the hacienda gates and reached its climax when she entered her room—not the one she had occupied before, but that which had chambered before her the line of wives and mothers which began with the Aztec bride of Flores Rocha, the conquistador. In that long line the room may have harbored a bride fully as unhappy, but none more mutinous than its present occupant.
“The señora is fatigued. She will have the meal served in her room.” Sebastien’s quiet order had dispersed the brown maids who flocked about her like cooing pigeons with greetings and offers of service. Unaware that he would observeit himself, she sprang out of her chair and ran a few steps toward the barred window when a tap sounded upon her door. In her relief when it proved to be only Roberta, she pulled the child in to her bosom.
“It is thee,niña! Oh! I had thought—what is this?”
Her sudden flush betrayed her recognition of Seyd’s writing on the package the girl held out. In the few seconds she stood hesitating her changing expression revealed the struggle between her misery and her sense of wifely honor. The issue was not long in doubt, for, suddenly murmuring “’Twill do no harm to read it,” she ripped off the cover.
While she read the blush faded. At the end her low distressed cry, “Francesca, see what thy hasty pride has done! A little patience would have saved thy happiness and his!” told of the deep impression. Sinking into a chair, she was beginning to read it again when the door trembled under a heavier rap.
Thrusting the letter into her bosom, she leaped up, under the urge of the same wild instinct to escape, retreated toward the window, and so stood, with Roberta tightly held against her skirts. Seconds passed before she managed a tremulous “Enter!” and the face she turned to Sebastien presented such a passion of fear, revulsion, and despair that he stopped and stood gazing at her from the door. If surprised, hislook, however, was still kind. He even smiled. Not until, retreating as he came forward, she stopped only with her back against the wall, Roberta still between them, did his smile give way to sudden dark offense.
“Are you ill?” He spoke sharply. “Or is this the usual way of a bride? If I were a tiger and you alone in the jungle ’twould be impossible to show more fear.”
“I wish you were!” The confession burst out of her miserable fear. “’Twere preferable a thousand times! Oh, why did I do it—commit this great wrong? Love is, can be, the only cause for marriage, but in my hasty pride I sought only revenge—on him. Oh, ’twas a sin—a sin against you, Sebastien, who have always been so kind. Somewhere there must have been a woman who would have borne you children out of her love. And now—I have not only sealed my own misery, but also yours. For, though I do not, nevercanlove you, I am—your wife.”
To repeat, it came out of her in a wild burst, without consideration. But with the last word she looked her apprehension. He, however, took it quietly. Already the flash of offense had faded. Only the measured tone betrayed restraint.
“It is so—we are husband and wife. But do not let that fact disturb you. Did you think me so much of a beast as to believe that I would take you stone-cold! Neither need you grieve overyour sin in marrying without love, for I took you on those terms. I knew very well that you were falling to me through anger. My only fear was that it might cool before you were placed forever beyond the gringo’s reach. But now that is accomplished, have no fear, we stand as we were. You are still Francesca, to be wooed with a larger license, but still to be wooed and won to my love.”
“Oh, you are—as always—kind!” A little of the terror had died out of her face, and if she had never received Seyd’s letter, had lacked the reassurance that lay warm in her breast, his generosity might have prevailed. Pitifully, she was going on, “I am sorry—” but he interrupted.
“Let us have none of that. Pity is the last thing I ask of you. The issue between us lies clearly—can be settled only one way.” His dark eyes lighting, he went on after a pause: “It needs not for me to remind you of the birth of my love, for it reaches back beyond your memory. When you were still a lovely child I gleaned a fallen eyelash from your dress and carried it for years—ay, until it was displaced by a stolen curl clipped while you slept by the maid I bribed. With you my love grew—grew with you from that lovely girl into a beautiful woman. The place which your foot had trod was, for me, the only holy ground. You were my church, the only one I ever believed in, the only one that gained my prayers. For me you and you alone held thekeys of heaven, and be sure that now that they have passed through your own act into my hands I shall never rest till they have opened for me the doors.”
“You will always have my liking and respect—”
He cut her off again. “Idle words—they are not enough. And you owe me one thing—your willingness to help. I shall try hard, harder than I have ever done, to win you, but without that my efforts will be in vain. And remember—for your own sake—if you do not help me it may be that you yourself will reap the pain. The immortality of love is the wild talk of poets. One cannot love a statue. The eye tires at last of the most beautiful marble, goes roving after warm flesh. So take care that you do not awake too late to find yourself unloved, pining for the affection you once rejected.”
Through all he had maintained his dark calm, speaking quietly with a touch of sadness. Yet, the stronger for its suppression, vibrant feeling pulsed in the appeal. Had Francesca still been smarting under the lash of hurt pride he might have caught her on a second reaction. For she was moved. Pity and distress governed her answer.
“Oh, I feel wretchedly ungrateful. But what can I do? I cannot—oh, give me time?”
“All that you need,querida. You are to have your own time and terms. Now listen! I am going away.”
He smiled a little grimly at her start of relief. “Soveryglad? Then I am sorry it will not be for longer. I shall be back in a few days. Word came to the administrador yesterday that the gringo dam is greatly endangered by warm rains that have added the volcano’s snows to the flood. A hundred feet deep, the waters are pouring down the Barranca de Tigres, and if they once top it the dam will go.” He uttered a bitter oath. “A curse on it! If it were not that the wave would sweep the valley clean I would send one to hasten the end with a charge of powder. But that must wait for the dry season. I go now with every man and mule I can muster to raise and strengthen it. Signal beacons such as we saw at the trail head have been built all along the rim, and, if the dam goes, smoke by day or fire by night will flash timely warning. But if you are timid—San Nicolas stands on higher ground. If you would prefer to return—”
“No! no!” Her fervent gratitude prompted her to attempt some return. “I shall stay here—to care for our people.”
He smiled at the “our.” “Spoken like a Rocha. You never lacked courage, Francesca, but be careful. At the first signal leave everything, fly with the people up to the hills. If it should happen that the place is spared you can come back again. If not, follow the upper trail down to San Nicolas.”
Her fright had now altogether faded. While he was giving a few last instructions a touch of anxiety diluted her brimming thankfulness. But when he went out without having attempted anything more intimate than his usual bow, this vanished. And his restraint gained him more ground. Walking to the window which overlooked the patio, which was now thronged with a motley mixture of peons, mule-drivers, and serving women, she watched him mount and ride away at the head of the mule train. Looking backward from the great gates, he saw and answered the wave of her hand. But it was too far for him to catch either her wistful expression or pitiful murmur “If it had not been—”
Inside her bodice Seyd’s letter crackled under her hand. The blush with which she withdrew it indicated a doubt that his letter had a right to further tenancy in that warm nest. Roberta had followed Sebastien out to watch his departure. After placing the letter on the table she sat, one oval cheek propped on her hand, her dark head drooping over it like a tired flower. Once she made to pick it up, then snatched back her hand as though from a flame.
“No! no! It would be wrong—after his kindness.” After a few minutes’ further musing she added: “’Tis now of the past. By your hand was it put there, Francesca. Now remains only to make a finish.”
Taking a match from a tray at her elbow, shelit the letter and threw it, all flaming, to the center of the tiled floor. While its pages withered her face quivered in sympathy, and when suddenly a single line stood blackly out in the expiring glow—“I love you—shall always love you!”—her breath came in a sudden sob.
Rising, she gathered the ashes into a small tray, carried them across the room to the little altar that stood against the wall—an action significant as it was conscious. Kneeling, she bowed her head in her hands. She remained there a full hour, and when she rose no one of the ten generations of women whose soft knees had worn a depression in the tiles was ever animated by a more honest sense of duty. The face she turned to little Roberta, who came bursting in a few minutes later, was quiet and serene.
“Oh, señorita!” In her excitement the child gave her the maiden title. “Pancho, the administrador, will have you come at once. Smoke is rising northward along the rim. Also there comes a horseman at full speed.” Lowering her voice, she added: “Pancho showed him to me through Don Sebastien’s far-seeing glasses. It is the señor Seyd.”
Riding at a hard gallop, Seyd had cut down Sebastien’s lead by a full hour in the run along the rim. At the sight of the beacon—which the peons were now thatching with grass—he, also, reined in. But, having learned from them that Sebastien and Francesca had passed two hours ago, he rode on down the staircases at a pace which showed little respect for his neck.
Nearly an hour later he stopped again on the very knoll from which he had overlooked El Quiss. If he had looked northward it would have been possible to see Sebastien at the head of the mule train which was wriggling like a mottled brown snake across the wet green pastures. But during the quarter hour that Seyd remained there his gaze never left the distant pink of the hacienda walls.
Somehow their solid realism cooled his fever and brought order to his rioting senses. “Well, you are here! Now what are you going to do? Whatcanyou do?” The still small voice of Reason rose above the storm. “These, you know, are not the days of chivalry. It is nolonger the fashion for a jilted lover to snatch his bride from the horns of the altar. And if it were”—Reason here observed a deadly pause—“what chance would you have against Sebastien and his retainers?”
“But I must see her! Iwillsee her!” The still small voice was drowned in a gush of passion. “There have been too many accidents already. Not till I hear from her own lips that she has done this of her free will shall I quit.”
“Sounds good.” Reason agreed only to differ. “But it has one drawback—she might not care to be interviewed in her bridal chamber.”
The suggestion was ill-timed, for it started a new riot among his senses. “I’ll see her! Iwillhave speech with her!” It went roaring through his brain.
But how to compass it? Had he known the name of Caliban’s woman’s cousin it would have been difficult enough! Not knowing it, the thing was almost impossible. He was tossing on successive waves of feeling that now urged him forward, again carried him back in the undertow of despair, when there came a patter of nude feet behind him.
“Señor! señor!Mira!The beacons! The beacons!”
It was one of the peons whom he had left above. “Ride, señor! Ride and give warning lest they have not seen it at El Quiss! I go to my woman and children!” Shouting it, he swungat right angles and flew down the valley at top speed.
Almost as quickly Seyd galloped off. One glance had shown the tall smoke plumes which were rising like ghostly sentinels above the black edge of the pine, and with it there burst upon him a vivid picture of the muddy sea behind the great dam. Crossing the river that morning, he had noticed that the floods were running above last year’s highest mark, and almost as plainly as by actual sight his imagination pictured the wave which had just leaped, like a huge yellow hound, over the broken dam. A solid wall of water, he saw it sweeping down the valley, lapping up villages, ranches,jacals, with greedy tongues. Roweling the flanks of his tired beast, he drove on. Yet, despite his apprehension, the phrase rang in his mind like a clashing bell:
“I shall see her! Now I shall see her!”
While he was still half a mile away he saw two mounted men dash out of the patio gates and ride off at right angles, north and south. After them came a crowd on foot, and as they opened to let him through Seyd noted with wonder that all were women. His surprise deepened when, driving in through the gates, he almost rode over Francesca, who stood with Roberta against her skirts in the deserted patio. While, breathing hard after his wild ride, he sat looking down upon her she returned his gaze with big mournful eyes.
“You are—alone?”
“Yes.” Hesitating, she went on, “Don Sebastien left an hour ago—immediately after our arrival—with the men to work on the dam.”
He almost shouted. It was inconceivable, except on a supposition that filled him with sudden hope. “Then it isn’t true? If it were, he would not have left you. He lied! Paulo lied! All day I have ridden hard on your trail to disprove it! He lied! Tell me that Paulo lied!”
It was not necessary to reply in words. The slender weaving fingers, her quivering distress, the pity and grief of her eyes, made answer.
“Oh, how could you?” But his natural sense of justice instantly asserted itself. “But no! I have only myself to blame. I played the fool all through. Yet, I meant well—but I explained that in my letter.”
“I only received it two hours ago. Oh, why didn’t you send it sooner?”
“I did—wrote the instant I got the paper. It lay here four days.”
Now, only twenty miles away, at speed swifter than bird flight, the wave was leaping over the jungle with plumage of tangled debris streaming out behind. Even then they might have caught its distant roar. But, blind to all but the fortuitous chance that had dogged their love to this unhappy conclusion, they stood gazing at each other in distress and despair.
“We have been unfortunate, you and I.”She spoke, mournfully, at last. “And this is the end.”
He would not accept it. In thought he was storming the barrier her act had placed between them when her sorrowful voice answered the mute appeal of his eyes. “Si, the end. If Sebastien had not been so kind! He took advantage of my anger to place bars between you and me, but there he rests. His consideration deserves some return, and the least I can offer is the outward semblance of good wifehood. You must go!”
“What! Leave you—now?” Recalled to a sudden realization of their imminent danger, he pleaded, “First let me place you in safety?”
“No.” She nodded toward a saddled horse under the gateway. “In a few minutes I can overtake the people. With you will go my—”
While they talked Roberta had wandered over to the gates. Now she suddenly cried: “Oh, señora! Don Sebastien!”
Seyd’s view of the trail was limited by a swing to the south that cut off all but a couple of hundred yards. As he made, instinctively, to move forward Francesca caught his bridle. “No! no! He must not see you! If he finds you here—with me—oh, has there not been trouble enough?” Her distracted glance circled the courtyard. “See, the old guardhouse! Dismount—quickly! Lead in your horse, then I will ride with the child to meet him!”
As a matter of fact, he felt like anything but hiding. His eye lit with a hard gray gleam. But in these premises that he had forced upon her it was not for him to pick and choose. He yielded to her pleading, “For my sake?”
Dismounting, he led his horse in through the arched doorway, and as she closed the door upon him Francesca added a last hurried instruction. “He will undoubtedly turn with me. Give us time to gain cover under the oaks, then take you the trail to the south. It reaches high ground quickly. And ride hard”—her voice broke in a sob—“for if you should be overtaken by the water what in this miserable world would be left for me?”
“And this is the end?” He caught her hand between the closing doors.
“The end—for thy sake.” She dropped into the tender second person of the Spanish. “Si, if you wish it.”
Left alone, Seyd stood listening, the soft touch of her lips thrilling upon his. In the guardhouse, used now for a storeroom, all but one window was blocked by piles of sacked maize, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the half gloom he made out the massive beams which held up the heavy roof. The wall from which the one window looked out formed part of the hacienda’s southern face, and, remembering that the trail inclined in that direction, he moved over to it when he caught the clatter of departing hoofs. Deeply recessed inthe thick wall, the low sill afforded standing room, and by peering obliquely through the bars he caught first the flutter of her skirt, then gradually she forged into full view. About three hundred yards away the trail ran in among shade oaks, cedars, and great spreading banyans, that were strewn in clumps all over the pastures. But just before she rode in among them Sebastien and Pancho, hismozo, galloped out from among the trees.
Even if the wind had not been dashing the sheeting rain in his face it would have been impossible for Seyd to have caught a distant murmur of voices. But he saw themozolift Roberta from Francesca’s beast, and lead off, with his mistress following. Then Sebastien came galloping on toward the gates.
“Coming for something—money or papers,” Seyd thought. “Just for fear he looks in—”
At the far end of the room a pile of sacked beans formed a natural stall, and he had no more than gotten his horse behind it when the clatter of hoofs broke in the court. He could not, of course, see Sebastien dismount. But, faint as they were, his highly keyed senses recorded the vibrations of the other’s footsteps as he followed the muddy horse tracks across to the guardhouse.
Outside the door Sebastien stopped. In the tense pause that followed Seyd’s hand went to his gun. At first the act was due to the natural instinct of self protection, but in the very momentof its inception that gave place to a second, more powerful impulse that dyed his face and neck with a dark flush. Drawing the weapon, he trained it across a sack at the door, and at that moment no primitive man in hiding at the mouth of his enemy’s cave was ever obsessed by a fiercer lust to kill. All of his trials and long travail, despair, seemed in his disordered fancy to materialize just then in Sebastien’s person. And it would be so easy! A slight pressure of his finger the instant he showed in the doorway, then—the flood!
In a flash the pros and cons of it passed through his mind. If the circumstances were reversed he knew exactly the course that Sebastien would take. And almost as he thought it came proof—first the grating of the key in the lock of the inner door, next the groaning complaint of rusty hinges as Sebastien swung to the iron outer doors which had not been used for a score of years, finally the wooden crash of the oaken bars falling into their staples.
It was all over before Seyd really understood. With knowledge there flashed upon him the thought of the flood. Rushing across the floor, he leaped and threw all of his weight against the inner door. It hardly shook, and the recoil threw him flat on the floor. As he rose came the clatter of Sebastien’s departing hoofs, and running across to the window he was just in time to see him come in view. On the skirts of the timberhe reined suddenly in and sat his beast, listening. Then, after a quick glance northward, he galloped on.
And Seyd, at the window, also heard.
Above the sough of the wind which drove the sheeting rain into his face he caught the roar of the oncoming flood.
In the few minutes that passed before she met Sebastien Francesca had regained self control. To his reproof, “This was foolish; why did you linger?” she calmly replied, “I wished to make sure that all the people were out.”
He nodded approval. “Then no one is left?”
“No one.”
“Bueno!We have no more than time to make the hills. Pancho’s beast is stronger than yours. Give him the child.” She had begun to hope, but it died within her as he went on: “In my rooms are valuable papers. ’Twill take but a moment to get them. Ride on, you. My horse goes two paces to your one. I can catch you halfway to the hills.”
She almost fainted when he rode off, for just as surely as though she had seen him questioning the fugitive women she knew now that he was aware of Seyd’s presence. She reined her animal around to follow, then checked it sharply under a sudden inspiration.
“Why do you wait, Pancho?” she asked, sharply. “While you sleep the flood will be on us. Ride! Ride your hardest! I will follow.”
Themozo, to tell the truth, was damning with inward tremblings the luck that had placed him in such jeopardy. Only the fear of Sebastien had kept him from bolting, and now, without even a backward glance, he laid on with quirt and spurs and galloped off with Roberta, leaving Francesca free to carry out her plan.
It was quite simple. In this, the rainy season, the shade trees were draped from crown to foot with green lace of morning glories, and on the outer edge of the nearest clump a banyan had been converted into a huge tent which would have stabled a hundred horses. Parting the lacework of leaves with one hand, after she had ridden under it, Francesca obtained, through the gateway, an oblique view of the guardhouse at the moment Sebastien closed the iron doors. The crash of the bars carried to her tree, and had he looked that way he might have seen the curtain of leaves swing under the forward move of her beast. But, controlling the impulse, she reined it back again. When Sebastien raced past a couple of minutes later she dropped her hand and shrank in sudden fear.
It was, however, impossible for him to see her. Moreover, the intervening clumps prevented him from discovering that she was not with Pancho until he came bursting out on his heels in open pasture half a mile ahead.
“Tonto!where is thy mistress?”
Themozo’slook of frightened surprise proclaimedat once his ignorance and fear. Both had reined in, and under the other’s deadly look Pancho cowered behind his bent arm. Sickly green patches stained his dull chocolate. When Sebastien pulled a pistol from his holster he bowed down to the saddle horn, his face in his hands. Leaning over, Sebastien placed the muzzle against the fellow’s head. His finger even had tightened. Then, checking the impulse, came Roberta’s whimper, “Señor! oh, señor!” Above it rose a distant thunderous roar, and, glancing northward, he saw in the far distance a writhing movement in the jungle beyond the pastures.
“Off, fool! Save the child!”
Striking the man’s shoulders with the pistol, he wheeled his horse and shot away, heading back to the hacienda. Riding, he kept one eye on the green wave that was moving with the speed of the wind over the jungle. As he passed in among the shade trees it boiled over the far edge of the pastures, and from beneath the swaying trees emerged a muddy wall crowned with bristling black. Traveling more swiftly in the open, it came on at an acute angle which had its point in the flooded lands along the river, its base in the jungle close to the hills, and when Sebastien dashed out of the timber the point had passed the hacienda.
Even then he must have known it for hopeless. The thunderous diapason had risen into a furious crescendo which was spaced by the tear and crashof uprooted trees, and, higher than his head, the liquid wall was coming on under the pressure of the yellow frothing sea that stretched behind to the limit of sight. Yet, laying on quirt and spurs, he raced down its front in a desperate spurt for the gates.
While he was still a hundred yards away the wave struck the northern wall of the compound that fenced the buildings. Built solidly of stone, it melted, vanished without a premonitory shiver, and in its overthrow accomplished good. Catching root and branch in the debris, the grinding welter of fallen trees hesitated, then piled in a huge tangled bar upon the line of cottages and stables which intervened between the wall and house.
To Sebastien, however, this brought no respite. Shooting along the eastern wall, the wave outraced him and beat him to the gate by a long fifty yards.
While Francesca was still under the banyan she had heard the roaring diapason of the flood. Clothed in dripping lacery of leaves and flowers torn away by the beast’s leap from the spur, she galloped into the patio, and when she dismounted the vines still twined around her limbs. Without waiting to tear them off she threw all of her strength into a vain effort to swing the bars of the guardhouse doors, but, swollen by the rain, they were fast in the staples.
“Oh,whatshall I do?”
Her cry carried through to Seyd. After a fruitless attempt on the door he was just about to attack the window bars with an oaken club he had found in one corner. Now, tearing away the sacks of maize that blocked the one small square window on her side, he thrust it between the bars.
“Knock them up with this!”
But after the bars yielded the rusty doors defied her strength. “They will not budge! Oh, I cannot move them!”
Again his practical sense served. “Slip a stirrup over the staple, then start your horse gently. Fine!” He heard the groan of the moving door. “Key gone! Never mind, I can shoot out the lock. Stand away—off to one side.”
Above the roar of the flood Sebastien heard the shots. A few seconds later he saw Seyd look out of the gateway, then rush back in. Behind the gates an iron ladder led up to a lookout post on top of the guardhouse, and, racing down the front of the wave, Sebastien saw Seyd rise above the low parapet and lift Francesca to his side.
At the same moment they saw him. In Francesca’s outstretched hands Sebastien saw her impulse to save. In the sudden covering of her eyes he read his fate. The fifty yards that lay between him and the gates might just as well have been a thousand, for, less than half thedistance away, the great yellow comber rose high over his head.
Before it broke, however, he did two things—reined his horse to face it, then, just before he went under the grinding welter, with the same easy courtesy which he would have shown to a kinsman or a friend, he turned in the saddle and waved his hand.
From the time Seyd rode into the hacienda up to that moment less than twenty minutes had passed, but events had leaped to a conclusion.
The barrier of debris across the outer buildings had diminished the force of the blow upon the house, and had the water gained instant access to the interior and equalized the pressure it might have stood. As the wave raced past, level with the high wall, the patio presented for an instant a curious resemblance to a square vessel pressed down till its edges just rose above the water. The next, its stout walls fell inward, and over them a yellow wave leaped at the house. Reinforced by its partition walls, it withstood for a few seconds the enormous pressure. Then above the cracking and grinding of debris and the mingled roar of the flood rose the boom of doors and windows blown out of their frames.
Because of its length the guardhouse went first. Feeling it tremble under his feet, Seyd lifted Francesca and held her face in against his breast. Not that he was in the least resigned. Never in all his life had he felt a keener desire tolive. His glance darted hither and thither, and when, freed by the fall of the stone lintels, a patio gate sprang out of the yellow cauldron almost at his feet he snatched up Francesca, leaped, and landed in its very center. Falling under her, he was, for an instant, breathless. But in the few seconds that he lay there gasping circumstances worked in their favor. Thrust by the impact into the recoil of the wave from the house wall, the gate was heaved out of the patio, and passed the guardhouse just before the heavy tiled roof collapsed with the walls.
Almost in an instant the house crumbled and melted with scarcely a splash. Sitting up a few seconds later, Seyd looked back on all that was left of El Quiss, the barrier of debris rising, a black reef, out of a yellow sea. A mile ahead the wave roared on, its furious crescendo again reduced to a booming diapason. While the gate was being carried with incredible swiftness across the El Quiss pastures the roar sank to a distant hum, and presently died altogether, leaving only the quiet lapping of the waters in the falling dusk.
So quickly had it all passed that Seyd found it hard to believe they were floating in comparative safety. The gate, which was ten feet by twelve in size and four inches thick, floated evenly, and if an occasional wave ran across it the tepid rain water of the tropics caused no discomfort. Neither were they in danger from the debris, logs, and uprooted trees which floated at equalspeed on currents that were setting back to the river. With a pole that he picked up Seyd was able to keep out of the way of the few that rolled and tumbled when their branches caught on the bottom, and when at last they drifted on the deeper, slower currents of the river he turned to Francesca, who had remained a huddled, sobbing heap just where she fell.
She looked up when he touched her shoulder. “Oh, I feel wicked!” she cried, remorsefully. “If I had only waited for a few more days, given you time to explain, he would still be alive.”
“It was perfectly natural,” Seyd comforted her. “He would absolve you from all blame were he here, for with all his faults he was big and brave.”
“You really think that he would?” She looked up with tearful anxiety.
“I’m sure of it. How could he do otherwise?”
“But he was—my husband. And I left him—for you.”
“Yet I do not think that he held you in blame.”
Kneeling beside her, with one arm around her shoulders, he gave his reason—Sebastien’s last salute. Even if this started her tears anew she, nevertheless, felt comforted. When a black shape forged out of the dusk alongside, and he had to return to his pole, her natural spirit reasserted itself.
“Here am I, crying like a child instead of helping. What can I do?”
There was really nothing. But to keep her from brooding he placed her on watch. “If you’ll keep a lookout I’ll take a shove at everything that floats in reach. The current is setting across the river, and we have nearly twenty miles to work in. With any old luck we ought to be able to land at Santa Gertrudis.”
Thick dusk presently merged into night, but they were helped by a full moon which shed a dew of light through the falling rain. Not that they voyaged without hazard. Twice they were almost swamped by trees which rolled over under the thrust of Seyd’s pole. Farther down they narrowly escaped shipwreck on wooded islands. Yet, thrusting and hauling, he worked steadily with the favoring current, and they had gained almost across when, rounding a bend, they sighted a distant light.
“Caliban’s, for sure! Only another hour to food and fire!” Seyd cheered her.
He had, however, his own misgivings. As they drew into the shadow of the Barranca wall the moonlight grew fainter, and, drifting later over the submerged jungle, they were hard put to avoid the treetops which upreared like huge mushrooms above the flood. More than once they were almost swept off the raft by bejucos, vegetable cables, which stretched from top to top, and as these grew thicker Seyd saw that disaster was merely a question of time. He was hoping desperately that their capsizing would not entailtoo long a swim, when out of the obscurity rose a huge black shape.
With a shock that threw them both down, the raft grounded in shallow water.
It was the plateau on which the new smelter stood. But, changed as it was in the new geography of the flood, Seyd did not recognize it until, scrambling ashore with Francesca, he saw above the dark mass of the buildings the cable and iron ore buckets in dim outline against the sky.
“Why, it’s the smelter!” he shouted, in glad surprise. “Ever since the explosion we have kept a man here on guard.Ola!Calixto!Ola! Ola!”
While he was calling a yellow oblong broke out of the building’s mass, framing the black silhouette of a man. “It is thejefe!” They heard his comment to his woman inside, then, uttering a volley of surprised “Caramba’s!” he came rushing down the bank with his lantern.
When Francesca’s pale wet face shone under its sudden glow he dropped the lantern, which, fortunately, did not go out. Picking it up again, he lighted their way to the adobe that had served Billy for house and office while the smelter was building.
For use during the rains, a chimney and wide hearth had been installed in the adobe, and while Calixto was building a roaring fire Seyd directed a piratical raid on Billy’s trunks. At first hissearch returned only muddy overalls and soiled clothing of various sorts, but at the very bottom—just as they had been placed by the hands of a careful mother—a new suit of flannel pajamas and a voluminous woolen bathrobe appeared. When, with some misgivings, and confused, he suggested a change, a touch of the girl’s old archness flashed out. Her smile was almost mischievous as she returned thanks.
“I’m sorry there’s nothing better to offer.” The smile emboldened him to add: “But they will serve till we have something to eat. Then you may have the fire all to yourself to dry your own things.”
She smiled again when, returning with food and coffee prepared by Calixto’s woman, he exclaimed, “You look like the Queen of Sheba!”
With the brown-black hair swinging almost to her knees and the bathrobe—a gorgeous affair in pink chosen with an eye to Billy’s vivid taste—belted in to her waist and pajamas ballooning beneath over small bare feet, she did look Oriental. When the coffee and food had relit her eyes and restored her usual faint color he was sure that she had never looked so distractingly pretty. The effect was not diminished either by her small vexed frowns at the revelations of smooth whiteness caused by the persistent slipping of the wide sleeves. When, as they sat by the fire after the meal, warmth and fatigue moved her to a yawn and he caught the full redness ofher mouth before she could cover it the intimacy of it all sent the blood drumming through his pulses. If her serious eyes restrained him, they did not repress his thought.
“I have you—now! I have you at last, and I’ll never let you go again!”
Undoubtedly she furnished the inspiration which kindled a sudden light in his eyes. “Why not?” he urged against the one objection that occurred in his thought. “It’s an awful smash at the conventions, but—it’s the only way. He locked me in to drown—and do you suppose that he’d hesitate if he were here now in my shoes? I guess not. And if he would, I won’t. By the Lord, I’ll do it!”
He rose soon after reaching his conclusion. “You must be very tired, so I’ll go now and leave you to dry your things. You know, we start early in the morning.”
“Start early?” She opened her sleepy eyes.
“Listen!” He took her gently by both shoulders. “We have been held apart so far by all sorts of accidents and misunderstandings. You know how closely we came to utter shipwreck?” Her shiver answering, he went on, “Now, will you trust—leave all to me?”
She had been no woman if she had not divined the restraint behind his quiet during the last warm hour, and, rising suddenly upon small bare toes, she paid him for his consideration. “I will do anything you say.”
Breaking through the stream of ocean vapors, the morning sun showed the jungle raising a languid head above the ruins of the flood. Long rents in its green mantle, bare patches of yellow mud, dark bruises where acres of debris had been piled in twisted masses, testified to the force of the wave. But, overlooking the wreckage from the smelter, Seyd took notice principally of a fact that suited his purpose—the river had been swept clean of driftwood. Not since the beginning of the rains had it shown such open stretches.
“Good!” he muttered. “The sooner we get away the better. I’ll call her at once.”
When, however, he knocked at the office door Francesca answered “Come!” When he entered she smiled at his surprise. “You said that we were to start early. Here I am, dressed and dried.”
“Not before breakfast,” he laughed. “It is ready. I’ll have it brought right in.”
All through the meal her eyes questioned, but, denying her curiosity, he talked of anything and everything but that which filled her mind. Evenwhen, clothed in his waterproof, she took her seat opposite him in the stern of the dugout he denied their eloquent appeal. While sending the boat with vigorous strokes flying downstream he drew her attention to this and that phase of devastation and commented on the beauty of the morning, but not a word as to his purpose. It was cruel, and her eyes said so. But, remorseless, he held on till, about midway of the morning, they sighted San Nicolas. All the way down he had hugged the Santa Gertrudis side, and she received the first inkling when he replied to her question if it were not time to pull across.
“We are not going there.”
“Not going there?” she repeated, surprised.
“No, we shall keep right on—down to sea.”
“The sea?”
“The sea.” He nodded firmly. “And the minute we land there we’re going to be married.”
The idea was altogether too radical to be absorbed at once. No doubt she thought he was joking, for a smile broke around her mouth. Not until they were almost opposite San Nicolas did it give place to puzzled alarm.
“But, señor—Rob—Roberto.” She changed it in answer to his quick look. “But, Roberto—”
“Might as well make it Bob,” he cut in, crisply. “It may seem strange at first, but seeing that we’re to be married you might as well begin to get used to it now.”
The San Nicolas walls now lay, a long, warm band, across their beam. From them her glance returned to the pendulum swing of his body. Finality centered in his steady stroke. It told that he had settled down for the day. Had he calculated its effect beforehand he could not have done better. Accustomed to Spanish deference, she was nonplussed by his authoritative air, yet its very unusualness invested it with a certain charm.
“But—Bob?” Somehow the curt appellation acquired grace and softness from her Spanish lisp. It fell so prettily that he made her repeat it. But, though she added to its attraction an appealing glance, he remained grimly obdurate.
“Give me time to think?”
“All you want. At this speed”—the oars creaked under his stroke—“you will have about twenty-four hours.”
She looked at him, frightened. “Please?At least let us talk it over.”
The cheerful roll of oars in the rowlocks returned wooden answer.
“Won’t you?”
He stopped rowing and sat regarding her sternly. “I’m allowing you more time than you gave me. If”—he paused, then, judging it necessary, relentlessly continued—“ifhewere here in my place do you suppose—”
“Oh, he would! He did! After he had insured me against—”
“—Me,” he supplied, with a dogged shake of the head, then went on, “Well, even if he would, I won’t.” As he bent again to the oars the touch of admiration that leavened her undoubted fright paid tribute to his stubborn logic. Settling to his stroke, he began again: “Supposing that I complied and put you ashore at San Nicolas? Do you think that Don Luis would be any more favorably inclined toward me? You know that he wouldn’t. I should do well to escape with my life. But if you go back as my wife—well, the most they can do is to turn us out. Of course I can understand your feeling. It will be a frightful breach of the conventions—”
“No, it is not that,” she interrupted him. “My friends will be scandalized,si, but they are long ago broken to that. They would be dreadfully disappointed if I did not fulfil their predictions by making a shameful end. And it isn’t—he. It is wicked to acknowledge it, but I know—I know now that no matter how hard I tried to school myself I should sooner or later have run away to you. They’ll think it shocking—my friends, my mother—but I can endure it.”
“And that can be avoided. I’ll take you away—throw up everything here—make a new start somewhere else.”
“No! no!” She shook her head. “Your work is here, and I am just as proud of it as you could be. Let them chatter. No, it isn’t even that.”
“Then what is it?”
“You wouldn’t understand. It is silly, just a woman’s reason. No, you would not understand.”
“I’ll try.”
“It issofoolish.” Nevertheless, encouraged by his sympathy, she continued: “Do you know that since the first kiss passed between us a year ago we have had speech together only for a few minutes in the presence of others? And her courtship is of such supreme importance in a girl’s life. It is her love time, and she loves to lengthen and draw out its lingering sweetness. And ours has been so short.”
It was the poignant cry of her girl’s heart expressing the yearning of her starved love, and, coming from such spirited lips, it moved him deeply. Slipping the oars, he seized her two hands and pulled her forward into his arms. Then, while her dark head lay pillowed upon his shoulder, he continued the argument to better advantage.
The walls of San Nicolas had dwindled to a golden streak before she looked up in his face. “Supposing that I had refused?”
“I’d have carried you off in spite of yourself.”
And, whether she believed him or not, she clung the closer in that embrace.
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, recognizinghim, 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 dailybattle 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, señor? 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 señorita 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 señor, here, who rode in to warn us. But for him I also should have drowned.”
And Seyd availed himself of the opening. “As the señorita is completely exhausted, señor, you will please to excuse us. We go to the American consulate.”
“But why the consulate, señor,” the rurale politely objected, “when she owns here the house of her kinswoman? The señora, 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 señor, 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 theBarranca 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 thejefe, 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: “Intheir 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 theedificio municipalthey were already primed. The judge andjefe-politicoboth count themselves of mine, but they wouldn’t do a thing. Really you can’t blame them.El generalGarcia 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 thejefegave 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 ofEl 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?”
“TheCuraçao, 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.”