Louis Tracy - His Unknown Wife

She should have sailed some hours earlier, but the drastic changes in the marine department entailed by the day’s happenings had delayed certain formalities connected with her manifests.

“For a time, señor,” explained the ship’s chandler who gave him this latter information, “no one would sign anything. You see, a name on a paper would prove conclusively which president you favored. You understand?”

Maseden understood perfectly.

“It is well that you and I, señor, have no truck with these presidents, or we might be in trouble,” he laughed. “As it is, another bottle, and to the devil with all politicians!”

Under cover of the darkness the American slipped away from his boon companions, now comfortably drunk at his expense. Having no luggage, he bought a second-hand leather trunk and some cheap underclothing, such as a muleteer might reasonably possess. He also secured the repeating rifle and cartridges which he had left in a restaurant, and, thus reinforced, made for the Plaza, where Cartagenians of both sexes and all ages were gathered to enjoy the cool breeze that comes from the Pacific with sunset.

From that point he knew he could see the Southern Cross lying at anchor in the roadstead. She was there, sure enough, nearly a mile out, and he was puzzling his wits for a pretext to hire a boat and board her without attracting notice when chance solved the problem for him.

Two men passed. They were talking English, and he heard one addressing the other by name.

“Tell you what, Sturgess,” the speaker was saying, “I’d be hull down on Cartagena to-night if the skipper would only bring up at Valparaiso. But his first port of call is Buenos Ayres, and I’ve got to make Valparaiso before I see good old New York again, so here I’m fixed till a coasting steamer comes along. Great Cæsar’s ghost, I wish I were going with you!”

The second man, Sturgess, was carrying a suitcase, and the two were evidently making for a short pier which supplied landing places for small craft at various stages of the tide.

Maseden quickened his pace, overtook them, and said in Spanish that he wished to book a passage to Buenos Ayres on the Southern Cross , and, if the Señor Americano would permit him to board the vessel in his boat, he (Maseden) would gladly carry the bag to the pier.

Sturgess evidently did not understand Spanish, and asked his companion to interpret. He laughed on hearing the queer offer.

“Guess I can handle the grip myself, and the gallant vaquero is pretty well loaded with his own outfit,” he said, “but he is welcome to a trip on my catamaran, if it’s of any service.”

Maseden, however, insisted on giving some return for the favor, and secured the suitcase. Now, if any sharp-eyed watcher on the pier saw him, he would pass as the traveler’s servant.

Within half an hour he was aboard the ship, and had bargained for a spare berth in the forecastle with the crew. He would be compelled to rough it, and remain as dirty and disheveled as possible until the ship reached Buenos Ayres. Obviously, no matter what his personal wrongs might be, he could not make the captain of the Southern Cross a party to the escape from Cartagena of the man who had nearly succeeded in ridding the republic of its president.

But the prospect of hard fare and worse accommodations did not trouble him at all. He had nearly ten thousand dollars in his pockets. If the note sent through Lopez to the American Consul was acted on promptly, a further sum of fifteen thousand dollars lying to his credit in a local bank was now in safe keeping.

Really, considering that he had been so near death that morning, he had a good deal to be thankful for if he never saw Cartagena or the Los Andes ranch again.

As for the marriage, what of it? A knot so easily tied could be untied with equal readiness. He hadn’t the least doubt but that an American court of law would declare the ceremony illegal.

At any rate, he could jump that fence when he reached it. At present, in sporting phrase, he was going strong with a lot in hand.

He kept well out of sight when a government launch came off, and a port official boarded the vessel.

He never knew what a narrow escape he had when the chief steward who acted as purser, was asked if any new addition had been made to the passenger list. The ship’s officer was not a good Spanish scholar. He thought the question applied to the cargo, and answered “no.”

Then, after a wait that seemed interminable, the snorting and growling of a steam winch and the unwilling rasp of the anchor chain chanted a symphonic chorus in Maseden’s ears. Those harsh sounds sang of freedom and life, of golden years on a most excellent earth instead of an eternity in the grave. He came on deck to watch the Castle of San Juan dwindle and vanish in the deep, blue glamour of a perfect tropical night.

He was standing on the open part of the main deck, close to the fore hold, when he heard English voices from the promenade deck high above his head.

A man’s somewhat querulous accents reached him first.

“Well, at this time two days ago, I little thought I’d be on a steamer going south to-night,” said the speaker.

There was no answer, though it was evident that the petulant philosopher was not addressing the silent air.

“I suppose you girls are still mooning about that fellow getting away from the Castle?” grumbled the same voice. “I tell you he has no earthly chance of winning clear. Steinbaum will see to that. His record is none too good, and a question in the American Senate would just about finish him, even in San Juan. So Mr. Philip Alexander Maseden might just as well have been shot yesterday morning as to-day or to-morrow. They’re hot on his track now, Steinbaum told me —

“Eh? Yes, I know he did me a good turn, but, damn it all, that was merely because he was going to die, not because he was a first-rate life for an insurance office. It was no business of mine that he and Suarez couldn’t agree… Oh, let’s go to our cabins! Tears always put my nerves on a raw edge! Anyone would think you had lost a real husband on your wedding day!”

There was a movement of shadowy forms. Maseden thought he could distinguish a woman’s white hand rest for an instant on the ship’s rail. Was that the hand he thought he would remember until the Day of Judgment? He could not say.

The one fact that lifted itself out of the welter of incoherent fancies whirling in his mind was an almost incontrovertible one. If his ears had not deceived him, he and his unknown but lawful wife were fellow-passengers on board the Southern Cross !

A slight mist hung over the sea – sure outcome of the tremendous range of the thermometer between noon and midnight in a tropical clime. The sky was cloudless, and the stars clustered in myriads.

Though the Southern Hemisphere falls far short of the glory of the north in constellations of the first magnitude, the extraordinary clearness of the upper air near the equator enhances the stellar display. It would almost seem that nature knows she may veil her ample splendors in the north, but must make the most of her scantier charms in the south.

Maseden, swinging on his heel in sheer bewilderment, suddenly found himself face to face with the Southern Cross, hanging low above the horizon. Had an impossible meteor flamed forth from the familiar cluster of stars and shot in awe-inspiring flight across the whole arc of the heavens northward to the line, it would not have surprised him more than the discovery that his “wife” was on board the ship.

That was a stupendous fact before which the whirl of adventure of the long day now drawing to a close subsided into calm remoteness.