Francis Lynde - Pirates' Hope

It was evident at once that the boat was coming off to the Andromeda . We were anchored well out in the harbor, and there was nothing beyond us; nothing but the harbor mouth and the open sea. Visions of banditry began to flit through my brain. When I had been last in the Caribbean, some three months earlier, Nicaragua had been in the throes of one of its perennial guerrilla wars. A rich man's yacht, offering dazzling loot, might easily be a tempting bait to any lawless band happening to be within striking distance.

While I was straining my eyes to get a better sight of the approaching boat, and deliberating as to whether or not I hadn't better call Van Dyck or the sailing-master, a voice at my elbow said: "So you are up late, too, are you, Dick?" and I faced about with a prickling shock of surprise to find Bonteck standing beside me.

"I must be getting weak-kneed and nervous," I said. "I thought I was the only person awake at this end of things, and you gave me a start. What boat is that?"

"A shore boat, I suppose," he answered evenly. "After I found that we were likely to be delayed until to-morrow, I told Goff he might give some of his men shore leave for a few hours. They were asking for it."

"But that isn't one of the Andromeda's boats," I objected.

"No; they didn't take one of our boats; they hailed a harbor craft of some sort. I fancied they'd make a night of it, but it seems they didn't."

"What time is it now?" I asked.

"Two bells in the middle watch – otherwise one o'clock."

While we were talking, the boat was pulled up to the port bows of the yacht and a number of men, some half-dozen or more, came aboard. We could see dark figures climbing the rail, but since the yacht was painted white, and Van Dyck and I were both wearing yachting flannels, I suppose we were invisible to the group at the bows. In a minute or so the boat pushed off, cut a clumsy half circle in turning, and headed for the shore, and there was just enough of my foolish nervousness left to suggest that the oarsmen were still trying not to make any more noise than they could help. But the second thought made me smile at the remains of the nervousness. What more natural than that our returning shore-leave men had cautioned the boatmen against making a racket and waking everybody on the Andromeda?

"I take it you've been down with Haskell," I said to Bonteck, after the shore boat had become a vanishing blur in the darkness.

"Yes. He is as sore as a boil about that propeller shaft. Says he never had anything like that happen to him before, and that it reflects upon him as chief. He tried to tell me how unaccountable it was, but I hardly know enough about mechanical things to keep me from spoiling."

"It is rather unaccountable," I offered. "I was down a few hours ago and crawled into the shaft tunnel to have a look at it. Ordinarily, when a bearing as large as that begins to run dry, it gives warning some little time beforehand. But Quinby, Haskell's second, says he put his hand on it less than an hour before it began to complain, and it was perfectly cool."

"Oh, well," was Van Dyck's easy-going rejoinder, "such things are all in a life-time. We're in luck that it didn't 'seize,' as Haskell says, and twist itself off. You're yawning as if you were sleepy. Better turn in and get whatever this hot night will let you have. Good-night."

That was the end of the day for me, save that when I went to my stateroom and once more tried the wall switch the lights came on as usual.

The next morning, after a breakfast so early that I sat alone at the long table in the white-lacquered saloon, I went below and offered my services as those of a highly educated jack-of-all-trades to Haskell.

"By golly, you're saving my life, Mr. Preble," said our chief mechanic, whose eyes were looking like two burned holes in a blanket. "If you'll boss the job and let me get about a couple of hours in the hay – "

"Sure," I agreed; and crawling into the extra suit of overclothes, I proceeded to do it, becoming so mechanically interested in a short time that I not only neglected to call Haskell when his two hours were up, but also let the luncheon hour go by unheeded.

By keeping faithfully at it, our gang got the recalcitrant thrust bearing in shape by the middle of the afternoon, the fires were broken out and the blowers put on, and by four o'clock the Andromeda was once more under way and pointing her sharp nose for the open water. As I came up out of the engine-hold to make a bolt for a bath and clean clothes, I saw that Van Dyck had the wheel and was apparently heading the ship straight out toward the Mosquito Cays. As the trim little vessel – which was little only by comparison with the great liners of which it was a copy in the small – went shearing its way at full speed through the heaving ground swell with the westering sun fairly astern, I could not help wondering what our next port of call would be, and if it would be a disabled piece of machinery which would drive us into it.

With the Nicaraguan coast fairly astern, and the Andromeda picking her way gingerly among the cays and reefs which extend from fifty to one hundred miles off the eastern hump of the Central American camel, we soon made the open Caribbean, and our course was once more laid indefinitely to the south and east. If we were to hold this general direction we should bring up in due time somewhere upon the Colombian or Venezuelan coast of South America.

Watching my opportunity, I cornered Van Dyck on the bridge at a moment when he had relieved the man at the wheel; this on our second evening out from Gracias á Dios. As I came up, he was changing the course more to the southward, and I asked him if we were slated to do the Isthmus and the Canal.

"I hadn't thought very much about it," he answered half-absently. "Do you think the others would like it?"

"The Isthmus is pretty badly hackneyed, nowadays," I suggested; "and for your particular purpose – "

"Forget it!" he broke in abruptly. And then: "It's a hideous failure, Dick, as you have doubtless found out for yourself."

"Which part of it is a failure – your experiment, or the other thing?"

"I don't know what you mean by 'the other thing'," he bit out.

"Then I'll tell you: You thought it wouldn't be such a bad idea to show Madeleine Barclay what a vast difference there is between yourself and Ingerson as a three-meal-a-day proposition; as a steady diet, so to speak, in an environment which couldn't very well be changed or broken. Wasn't that it?"

"Something of the sort, maybe," he admitted, rather sheepishly, I thought.

"And it isn't working out?"

"You can see for yourself."

"What I see is that you are giving Ingerson a good bit more than a guest's chance."

"You don't understand," he returned gloomily.

"Naturally. I'm no mind reader."

While the Andromeda was shearing her way through three of the long Caribbean swells he was silent. Then he said: "I'm going to tell you, Dick; I shall have a fit if I don't tell somebody. Madeleine has turned me down – not once, you know, but a dozen times. It's the cursed money!"

"But Ingerson has money, too," I put in.

"I know; but that is different. Can't you conceive of such a thing as a young woman's turning down the man she really cares for, and then letting herself be dragooned into marrying somebody else?"

"You are asking too much," I retorted. "You want me to believe that a sane, well-balanced young woman like Madeleine Barclay will refuse a good fellow because he happens to be rich, and marry the other kind of a fellow who has precisely the same handicap. It may be only my dull wit, but I can't see it."

"I could make you see it if you were a little less thick-headed," he cut in impatiently. And then he added: "Or if you knew Mr. Holly Barclay a little better."