Hearts of Three by Jack London Chapter VII
"AND now we've lost both the Gringo pigs," Alvarez Torres lamented on the beach as, with a slight freshening of the breeze and with booms winged out to port and starboard, the Ang clique passed out of range of their rifles.
"Almost would I give three bells to the cathedral," Mariano Vercara e Hijos proclaimed, "to have them within a hundred yards of this rifle. And if I had will of all Gringos they would depart so fast that the devil in hell would be compelled to study English."
Alvarez Torres beat the saddle pommel with his hand in sheer impotence of rage and disappointment.
"The Queen of my Dreams!" he almost wept. "She is gone and away, of! with the two Morgans. I saw her climb up the side of the schooner. And there is the New York Regan. Once out of Chiriqui Lagoon, the schooner may sail directly to New York. And the Francis pig will not have been delayed a month, and the Senor Regan will remit no money."
"They will not get out of Chiriqui Lagoon," the Jefe said solemnly. "I am no animal without reason. I am a man. I know they will not get out. Have I not sworn eternal vengeance? The sun is setting, and the promise is for a night of little wind. The sky tells it to one with half an eye. Behold those trailing wisps of clouds. What wind may be, and little enough of that, will come from the north-east. It will be a head beat to the Chorrera Passage. They will not attempt it. That nigger captain knows the lagoon like a book. He will try to make the long tack and go out past Bocas del Toro, or through the Cartago Passage. Even so, we will outwit him. I have brains, reason. Reason. Listen. It is a long ride. We will make it straight down the coast to Las Palmas. Captain Rosaro is there with the Dolores-"
"The second-hand old tugboat? that cannot get out of her own way?" Torres queried.
"But this night of calm and morrow of calm she will capture the Angelique," the Jefe replied. "On, comrades! We will ride! Captain Rosaro is my friend. Any favor is but mine to ask."
At daylight, the worn-out men, on beaten horses, straggled through the decaying village of Las Palmas and down to the decaying pier, where a very decayed-looking tugboat, sadly in need of paint, welcomed their eyes. Smoke rising from the stack advertised that steam was up, and the Jefe was wearily elated.
"A happy morning, Senor Capitan Rosaro, and well met," he greeted the hard-bitten Spanish skipper, who was reclined on a coil of rope and who sipped black coffee from a mug that rattled against his teeth.
"It would be a happier morning if the cursed fever had not laid its chill upon me," Captain Rosaro grunted sourly, "the hand that held the mug, the arm, and all his body shivering so violently as to spill the hot liquid down his chin and into the black-and-gray thatch of hair that covered his half-exposed chest. "Take that, you animal of hell!" he cried, flinging mug and contents at a splinter of a half-breed boy, evidently his servant, who had been unable to repress his glee.
But the sun will rise and the fever will work its will and shortly depart," said the Jefe, politely ignoring the display of spleen. "And you are finished here, and you are bound for Bocas del Toro, and we shall go with you, all of us, on a rare adventure. We will pick up the schooner Angelique, calm-bound all last night in the lagoon, and I shall make many arrests, and all Panama will so ring with your courage and ability, Capitan, that you will forget that the fever ever whispered in you."
"How much?" Capitan Rosaro demanded bluntly.
Much?" the Jefe countered in surprise. "This is an affair of government, good friend. And it is right on your way to Bocas del Toro. It will not cost you an extra shovelful of coal."
"Muchacho! More coffee!" the tug-skipper roared at the boy.
A pause fell, wherein Torres and the Jefe and all the draggled following yearned for the piping hot coffee brought by the boy. Captain Rosaro played the rim of the mug against his teeth like a rattling of castanets, but managed to sip without spilling and so to burn his mouth.
A vacant-faced Swede, in filthy overalls, with a soiled cap on which appeared "Engineer," came up from below, lighted a pipe, and seemingly went into a trance as he sat on the tug's low rail.
"How much?" Captain Eosaro repeated.
"Let us get under way, dear friend," said the Jefe. "And then, when the fever-shock has departed, we will discuss the matter with reason, being reasonable creatures ourselves and not animals."
"How much?" Captain Eosaro repeated again. "I am never an animal. I always am a creature of reason, whether the sun is up or not up, or whether this thrice-accursed fever is upon me. How much?"
"Well, let us start, and for how much?" the Jefe conceded wearily.
"Fifty dollars gold," was the prompt answer.
"You are starting anyway, are you not, Capitan?" Torres queried softly.
"Fifty gold, as I have said."
The Jefe Politico threw up his hands with a hopeless gesture and turned on his heel to depart.
"Yet you swore eternal vengeance for the crime committed, on your jail," Torres reminded him.
"But not if it costs fifty dollars," the Jefe snapped back, out of the corner of his eye watching the shivering captain for some sign of relenting.
"Fifty gold," said the Captain, as he finished draining the mug and with shaking fingers strove to roll a cigarette. He nodded his head in the direction of the Swede, and added, "and five gold extra for my engineer. It is our custom."
Torres stepped closer to the Jefe and whispered:
"I will pay for the tug myself and charge the Gringo Regan a hundred, and you and I will divide the difference. We lose nothing. We shall make. For this Regan pig instructed me well not to mind expense."
As the sun slipped brazenly above the eastern horizon, one gendarme went back into Las Palmas with the jaded horses, the rest of the party descended to the deck of the tug, the Swede dived down into the engine-room, and Captain Eosaro, shaking off his chill in the sun's beneficent rays, ordered the deck-hands to cast off the lines, and put one of them at the wheel in the pilot-house.
And the same day-dawn found the Ang clique, after a night of almost perfect calm, off the mainland from which she had failed to get away, although she had made sufficient northing to be midway between San Antonio and the passages of Bocas del Toro and Cartago. These two passages to the open sea still lay twenty-five miles away, and the schooner truly slept on the mirror surface of the placid lagoon. Too stuffy below for sleep in the steaming tropics, the deck was littered with the sleepers. — On top the small house of the cabin, in solitary state, lay Leoncia. On the narrow runways of deck on either side lay her brothers and her father. Aft, between the cabin companionway and the wheel, side by side, Francis' arm across Henry's shoulder, as if still protecting him, were the two Morgans. On one side the wheel, sitting, with arms on knees and head on arms, the negro-Indian skipper slept, and just as precisely postured, on the other side of the wheel, slept the helmsman, who was none other than Percival, the black Kingston negro. The waist of the schooner was strewn with the bodies of the mixed-breed seamen, while for'ard, on the tiny forecastlehead, prone, his face buried upon his folded arms, slept the lookout.
Leoncia, in her high place on the cabin-top, awoke first. Propping her head on her hand, the elbow resting on a bit of the poncho on which she lay, she looked down past one side of the hood of the companionway upon the two young men. She yearned over them, who were so alike, and knew love for both of them, remembered the kisses of Henry on her mouth, thrilled till the blush of her own thoughts mantled her cheek at memory of the kisses of Francis, and was puzzled and amazed that she should have it in her to love two men at the one time. As she had already learned of herself, she would follow Henry to the end of the world and Francis even farther. And she could not understand such wantonness of inclination.
Fleeing from her own thoughts, which frightened her, she stretched out her arm and dangled the end of her silken scarf to a tickling of Francis' nose, who, after restless movements, still in the heaviness of sleep, struck with his hand at what he must have thought to be a mosquito or a fly, and hit Henry on the chest. So it was Henry who was first awak-ened. He sat up with such abruptness as to awaken Francis.
"Good morning, merry kinsman," Francis greeted. "Why such violence?"
"Morning, morning, and the morning's morning, comrade," Henry muttered. "Such was the violence of your sleep that it was you who awakened me with a buffet on my breast. I thought it was the hangman, for this is the morning they planned to kink my neck." He yawned, stretched his arms, gazed out over the rail at the sleeping sea, and nudged Francis to observance of the sleeping skipper and helmsman.
They looked so bonny, the pair of Morgans, Leoncia thought; and at the same time wondered why the English word had arisen unsummoned in her mind rather than a Spanish equivalent. Was it because her heart went out so generously to the two Gringos that she must needs think of them in their language instead of her own?
To escape the perplexity of her thoughts, she dangled the scarf again, was discovered, and laughingly confessed that it was she who had caused their violence of waking.
Three hours later, breakfast of coffee and fruit over, she found herself at the wheel taking her first lesson of steering and of the compass under Francis' tuition. The Any clique, under a crisp little breeze which had hauled around well to north 'ard, was for the moment heeling it through the water at a six — knot clip. Henry, swaying on the weather side of the after-deck and searching the sea through the binoculars, was striving to be all unconcerned at the lesson, although secretly he was mutinous with himself for not having first thought of himself introducing her to the binnacle and the wheel. Yet he resolutely refrained from looking around or from even stealing a corner-of-the-eye glance at the other two.
But Captain Trefethen, with the keen cruelty of Indian curiosity and the impudence of a negro subject of King George, knew no such delicacy. He stared openly and missed nothing of the chemic drawing together of his charterer and the pretty Spanish girl. When they leaned over the wheel to look into the binnacle, they leaned toward each other and Leoncia's hair touched Francis' cheek. And the three of them, themselves and the breed skipper, knew the thrill induced by such contact. But the man and woman knew immediately what the breed skipper did not know, and what they knew was embarrassment. Their eyes lifted to each other in a flash of mutual startlement, and drooped away and down guiltily. Francis talked very fast and loud enough for half the schooner to hear, as he explained the lubber's point of the compass. But Captain Trefethen grinned.
A rising puff of breeze made Francis put the wheel up. His hand to the spoke rested on her hand already upon it. Again they thrilled, and again the skipper grinned.
Leoncia's eyes lifted to Francis', then dropped in confusion. She slipped her hand out from under and terminated the lesson by walking slowly away with a fine assumption of casualness, as if the wheel and the binnacle no longer interested her. But she had left Francis afire with what he knew was lawlessness and treason as he glanced at Henry's shoulder and profile and hoped he had not seen what had occurred. Leoncia, apparently gazing off across the lagoon to the jungle-clad shore, was seeing nothing as she thoughtfully turned her engagement ring around and around on her finger.
But Henry, turning to tell them of the smudge of smoke he had discovered on the horizon, had inadvertently seen. And the negro-Indian captain had seen him see. So the captain lurched close to him, the cruelty of the Indian dictating the impudence of the negro, as he said in a low voice:
"Ah, be not downcast, sir. The senorita is generously hearted. There is room for both you gallant gentlemen in her heart."
And the next fraction of a second he learned the inevitable and invariable lesson that white men must have their privacy of intimate things; for he lay on his back, the back of his head sore from contact with the deck, the front of his head, between the eyes, sore from contact with the knuckles of Henry Morgan's right hand.
But the Indian in the skipper was up and raging as he sprang to his feet, knife in hand. Juan, the pale-yellow mixed breed, leaped to the side of his skipper flourishing another kniie, while several of the nearer sailors joined in forming a s^mi-circle of attack on Henry, who, with a quick step back and an upward slap of his hand, under the pin-rail, caused an iron belaying pin to leap out and up into the air. Catching it m mid-flight, he was prepared to defend himself. Francis, abandoning the wheel and drawing his automatic as he sprang, was through the circle and by the side of Henry. "What did he say?" Francis demanded of his kinsman.
"I will say what I said," the breed skipper threatened, the negro side of him dominant as he built for a compromise of blackmail. "I said…"
"Hold on, skipper!" Henry interrupted. "I'm sorry I struck you. Hold your hush. Put a stopper on your jaw. Saw wood. Forget. I'm sorry I struck you. I…"
Henry Morgan could not help the pause in speech during which he swallowed his gorge rising at what he was about, to say. And it was because of Leoncia, and because she was looking on and listening, that he said it. "I… I apologize, skipper."
"It is an injury," Captain Trefethsn stated aggrievedly. "It is a physical damage. No man can perpetrate a physical damage on a subject of King George's, God bless him, without furnishing a money requital."
At this crass statement of the terms cf the blackmail, Henry was for forgetting himself and for leaping upon the creature. But, restrained by Francis' hand on his shoulder, he struggled to self-control, made a noise like hearty laughter, dipped into his pocket for two ten-dollar gold-pieces, and, as if they stung him, thrust them into Captain Trefethen's palm.
"Cheap at the price," he could not help muttering aloud.
"It is a good price," the skipper averred. "Twenty gold is always a good price for a sore head. I am yours to command, sir. You are a sure-enough gentleman. You may hit me any time for the price."
"Me, sir, me!" the Kingston black named Percival volunteered with broad and prideless chucklings of subservience. "Take a swat at me, sir, for the same price, any time, now. And you may swat me as often as you please to pay…"
But the episode was destined to terminate at that instant, for at that instant a sailor called from amidships:
"Smoke! A steamer-smoke dead aft!"
The passage of an hour determined the nature and import of the smoke, for the Angelique, falling into a calm, was overhauled with such rapidity that the tugboat Dolores, at half a mile distance through the binoculars, was seen fairly to bristle with armed men crowded on her tiny for'ard deck. Both Henry and Francis could recognize the faces of the Jefe Politico and of several of the gendarmes. Old Enrico Solano's nostrils began to dilate, as, with his four sons who were aboard, he stationed them aft with him and prepared for the battle. Leoncia, divided between Henry and Francis, was secretly distracted, though outwardly she joined in laughter at the unkemptness of the little tug, and in glee at a flaw of wind that tilted the Angelique's port rail flush to the water and foamed her along at a nine-knot clip.
But weather and wind were erratic. The face of the lagoon was vexed with squalls and alternate streaks of calm. "We cannot escape, sir, I regret to inform you," Captain Trefethen informed Francis. "If the wind would hold, sir, yes. But the wind baffles and breaks. We are crowded down upon the mainland. We are cornered, sir, and as good as captured."
Henry, who had been studying the near shore through the glasses, lowered them and looked at Francis.
"Shout!" cried the latter. "You have a scheme. It's sticking out all over you. Name it."
"Eight there are the two Tigres islands," Henry elucidated. "They guard the narrow entrance to Juchitan Inlet, which is called El Tigre. Oh, it has the teeth of a tiger, believe me. On either side of them, between them and the shore, it is too shoal to float a whaleboat unless you know the winding channels, which I do know. But between them is deep water, though the El Tigre Passage is so pinched that there is no room to come about. A schooner can only run it with the wind abaft or abeam. Now, the wind favors. We will run it. Which is only half my scheme-"
"And if the wind baffles or fails, sir and the tide of the inlet runs out and in like a race, as I well know my beautiful schooner will go on the rocks," Captain Trefethen protested.
"For which, if it happens, I will pay you full value," Francis assured him shortly and brushed him aside. "And now, Henry, what's the other half of your scheme?"
"I'm ashamed to tell you," Henry laughed. "But it will be provocative of more Spanish swearing than has been heard in Chiriqui Lagoon since old Sir Henry sacked San Antonio and Bocas del Toro. You just watch."
Leoncia clapped her hands, as with sparkling eyes she cried:
"It must be good, Henry. I can see it by your face. You must tell me."
And, aside, his arm around her to steady her on the reeling deck, Henry whispered closely in her ear, while Francis, to hide his perturbation at the sight of them, made shift through the binoculars to study the faces on the pursuing tug. Captain Trefethen grinned maliciously and exchanged significant glances with the pale-yellow sailor."
"Now, skipper," said Henry, returning. "We're just opposite El Tigre. Put up your helm and run for the passage. Also, and pronto, I want a coil of half — inch, old, soft, manila rope, plenty of rope-yarns and sail twine, that case of beer from the lazarette, that five-gallon kerosene can that was emptied last night, and the coffee-pot from the galley."
But I am distrained to remark to your attention that that rope is worth good money, sir," Captain Trefethen complained, as Henry set to work on the heterogeneous gear. "You will be paid," Francis hushed him.
"And the coffee-pot it is almost new."
"You will be paid."
The skipper sighed and surrendered, although he sighed again at Henry's next act, which was to uncork the bottles and begin emptying the beer out into the scuppers.
"Please, sir," begged Percival. "If you must empty the beer please empty it into me."
No further beer was wasted, and the crew swiftly laid the empty bottles beside Henry. At intervals of six feet he fastened the recorked bottles to the half — inch line. Also, he cut off two-fathom lengths of the line and attached them like streamers between the beer bottles. The coffee-pot and two empty coffee tins were likewise added among the bottles. To one end of the main-line he made fast the kerosene can, to the other end the empty beer-case, and looked up to Francis, who replied:
"Oh, I got you five minutes ago. El Tigre must be narrow, or else the tug will go around that stuff."
"El Tigre is just that narrow," was the response. "There's one place where the channel isn't forty feet between the shoals. If the skippers-misses our trap, he'll go around, aground. Say, they'll be able to wade ashore from the tug if that happens. Come on, now, we'll get the stuff aft and ready to toss out. You take starboard and I'll take port, and when I give the word you shoot that beer case out to the side as far as you can."
Though the wind eased down, the Angelique, square before it, managed to make five knots, while the Dolores, doing six, slowly overhauled her. As the rifles began to speak from the Dolores, the skipper, under the direction of Henry and Francis, built up on the schooner's stern a low barricade of sacks of potatoes and onions, of old sails, and of hawser coils. Crouching low in the shelter of this, the helmsman managed to steer. Leoncia refused to go below as the firing became more continuous, but compromised by lying down behind the cabin-house. The rest of the sailors sought similar shelter in nooks and corners, while the Solano men, lying aft, returned the fire of the tug.
Henry and Francis, in their chosen positions and waiting until the narrowness of El Tigre was reached, took a hand in the free and easy battle.
"My congratulations, sir," Captain Trefethen said to Francis, the Indian of him compelling him to raise his head to peer across the rail, the negro of him flattening his body down until almost it seemed to bore into the deck. "That was Captain Rosaro himself that was steering, and the way he jumped and grabbed his hand would lead one to conclude that you had very adequately put a bullet through it. That Captain Rosaro is a very hot-tempered hombre, sir. I can almost hear him blaspheming now."
"Stand ready for the word, Francis," Henry said, laying down his rifle and carefully studying the low shores of the islands of El Tigre on either side of them. "We're almost ready. Take your time when I give the word, and at three let her go."
The tug was two hundred yards away and overtaking fast, when Henry gave the word. He and Francis stood up, and at "three "made their fling. To either side can and beercase flew, dragging behind them through the air the beaded rope of pots and cans and bottles and rope-streamers.
In their interest, Henry and Francis remained standing in order to watch the maw of their trap as denoted by the spread of miscellaneous objects on the surface of their troubled wake. A fusillade of rifle shots from the tug made them drop back flat to the deck; but, peering over the rail, they saw the tug's forefoot press the floated rope down and under. A minute later they saw the tug slow down to a stop.
"Some mess wrapped around that propeller," Francis applauded. "Henry, salute."
"Now, if the wind holds…" said Henry modestly.
The Angelique sailed on, leaving the motionless tug to grow smaller in the distance, but not so small that they could not see her drift helplessly onto the shoal, and see men going over the side and wading about.
"We just must sing our little song," Henry cried jubilantly, starting up the stave of "Back to Back Against the Mainmast."
"Which is all very nice, sir," Captain Trefethen interrupted at the conclusion of the first chorus, his eyes glistening and his shoulders still jiggling to the rhythm of the song. "But the wind has ceased, sir. We are becalmed. How are we to get out of Juchitan Inlet without wind? The Dolores is not wrecked. She is merely delayed. Some nigger will go down and clear her propeller, and then she has us right where she wants us."
"It's not so far to shore," Henry adjudged with a measuring eye as he turned to Enrico.
"What kind of a shore have they got ashore here, Senor Solano?" he queried. "Maya Indians and haciendados which?"
"Haciendados and Mayas, both," Enrico answered. "But I know the country well. If the schooner is not safe, we should be safe ashore. We can get horses and saddles and beef and corn. The Cordilleras are beyond. What more should we want?"
"But Leoncia?" Francis asked solicitously.
"Was born in the saddle, and in the saddle there are few Americanos she would not weary," came Enrico's answer. "It would be we", with your acquiescence, to swing out the long boat in case the Dolores appears upon us."