Chapter VIII (2)

Then Clensy gathered that many of the Government soldiers who had been brought to the palace had gone over to the side of the Cacaos. Seeing that he could do nothing, that he was utterly helpless to help Sestrina or even find out anything about her, Clensy took to his heels and made his way to the small wooden house on the outskirts of the town where Sestrina had told him Père Chaco, the Catholic, dwelt. In less than ten minutes he stood in front of the small wooden building that had a small cross on top of it. He knocked at the door. It was immediately opened by a grey-bearded, serious-looking old man. The face before Clensy was expressive, very melancholy looking, the eyes deep set and clear, the brow high and intellectual.

“Well, my son, and what would you wish of me?”

“I am a friend of Sestrina’s, President Gravelot’s daughter. What can be done about her?” said Clensy, immediately going into the matter.

“A true friend?” said the father.

“Yes, her life is all to me,” said Clensy.

The old priest scanned him steadily with his deep-set, earnest eyes, and then said, “Um!” Then the aged priest told Clensy that his call had already been too prolonged, for he, the priest, had just been about to go off and visit the British Consul to ask about Sestrina and get help in case her life should be in danger.

“Thank God for that!” exclaimed Clensy. Then the priest laid his wrinkled hand on Clensy’s shoulder, and told him to have faith, and possibly all would be well. The next moment Père Chaco had hurried away, and Clensy was hastening back to the town to see Biglow and Adams.

“Thank heaven you’re here!” exclaimed the young Englishman as he entered Biglow’s lodgings and found him standing by his old carpet bag, all packed ready for immediate removal. “Well, it’s come!” exclaimed Clensy.

“Yes, and Adams and I and you had better be going!” said Biglow.

“I can’t go. I must hear if Sestrina’s safe first. I’d go mad if anything happened to her,” said Clensy, as he almost lost control of himself.

“Don’t worry about Sestrina, bless yer, she’s on board the _Catholot_, a Government steamer, that’s outbound for Vera Cruz,” said Biglow.

Clensy’s relief at hearing this information may be imagined.

“Sestrina safe. I’ll see her again!” he cried out as Adams walked in and said he wasn’t going to walk any longer about a place where “myderers” kept firing revolvers and strangling people.

“You’re quite sure Sestrina’s safe?” said Clensy as he looked steadily in the gun-runner’s eyes.

“Safe as houses, and her old man, the president, had the top of his head blown off, and De Cripsny’s got his left ear blown away.”

“No!” exclaimed Clensy in a horrified voice.

“Well, he’s Sestrina’s father to you, but I don’t look upon him in that light,” said Biglow when he noticed the note of sorrow in Clensy’s voice on hearing that the president had been shot. “He won’t be a party to killing any more children at the _vaudoux_ altars in the mountains, will he?” said Biglow.

“No, he won’t,” replied Clensy in a very quiet voice.

Then Biglow began to inform our hero that directly the first shots had been fired by the Government scouts in the hills behind Port-au-Prince, the officials of the British and French consulates had immediately set out for the presidential palace to warn the president and take charge of Sestrina. It appeared that when they arrived at the palace the president, who had foolishly ventured out to plead to the soldiers who had shown signs of going over to the insurgents, had been shot by one in the crowd.

Sestrina, who still remained ignorant of her father’s death, had been immediately disguised in a servant’s robe, and hurried out of the palace by a back entrance. She had then been at once escorted down to Cap Hatien, and then taken in a boat out to the steamer _Catholot_ which lay in the middle of the harbour.

“Must get out to the _Catholot_, whatever happens,” said Clensy. Biglow could hear his comrade’s eagerness trembling in his voice. “I’ve got eight pounds, and I’ll give you the lot if you can get me out to the _Catholot_,” said Clensy.

“Keep yer money, lad. It’s my fault that you’re in this scrape, and I’ve got enough money to get you out of the fix which I’ve got you in,” said Biglow, as he gripped Clensy’s hand, and promised to do all he could to bring Clensy and Sestrina together again, and get them safely away from Hayti.

That same day Biglow kept his word, for he managed to hire a boat and take Clensy out to the _Catholot_ himself.

The _Catholot_ was a steamer of about two thousand tons.

As Biglow rowed alongside, the funnel was smoking heavily.

“She’s getting up steam, ready to sail at a moment’s notice,” said Clensy, his heart heavy to think that Sestrina might leave Hayti without him. “I’m going to sail with her, if it can possibly be done,” was his determined thought as he arrived on the _Catholot’s_ deck.

One of the sailors, urged by a liberal tip from Clensy, led them down the steamer’s alley-way that led aft, and, after making several inquiries, pointed out Sestrina’s cabin.

Directly Sestrina saw Clensy’s face looking over the shoulders of the other passengers, she rushed forward and threw her arms around him. The girl nearly broke down at that meeting.

Biglow stood aside, a kind look in his serious eyes as he gazed on the scene, affected by the refugee girl’s grief.

“You will come with me, won’t you?” she reiterated, when they told her not to fear, that they would keep in touch with her.

“If it can possibly be managed, I’m coming on this steamer as a passenger,” said Clensy, when Sestrina, Biglow and he stood in a quiet spot by the engine room, out of earshot of the excited refugees who crowded the deck and cabins.

For a long time Clensy and Sestrina stood whispering together. Clensy had never realised till that moment what the girl’s life meant to him.

“I reckon we’d better be making a move and try and see the skipper,” said Biglow, who had begun to get impatient, for he saw that the lovers were likely to stand there making plans and whispering till it was too late.

Clensy tore himself away from the girl.

Sestrina’s depressed spirits had wonderfully revived when Clensy and Biglow left her to seek the _Catholot’s_ skipper, and to try and negotiate for berths as deck passengers.

When Clensy and Biglow at last found the skipper, and asked for passages, they were sadly disappointed at finding that the authorities at Port-au-Prince had given orders that no more passengers were to be taken without permits being produced. Why such an order should have been given out was a mystery. However, the skipper only shook his head to all Biglow’s persuasions. “I’ve had strict orders from the officials, and not another soul comes aboard. I should probably get shot were I to take you fellows: how do I know who you are?” So spake the skipper. And Biglow, after assuring the skipper that he wouldn’t like to see him shot or mutilated in any way through swerving from his duty, told Clensy to follow him.

“Never mind the girl now, she’s all right; I’ll manage everything.”

“Thank you,” exclaimed Clensy, who felt humbled through the uncertainty of things, and his fear of losing Sestrina.

In a few moments they had reached the gangway.

“Make haste, no time to lose,” said Biglow, as he walked down the gangway and re-entered their boat.

“He’s got some good scheme up his sleeve,” thought Clensy, as he obsequiously followed his lusty comrade.

Immediately they had re-embarked and had rowed the boat out of earshot, Biglow said, “We’ll stow away on her to-night! see?”

Clensy, at hearing the gun-runner say that, was considerably cheered up. He had already told Sestrina not to despair. He had said, “Don’t you worry, dearest, I’ll follow on by another steamer if I cannot get on this boat.” Then he had taken Sestrina aside, and had told her to make her way to Honolulu just as they had planned. “Go straight to this address,” he had said, as he wrote down fullest particulars. “I’ll come to Honolulu and wait there till you come if you are delayed in any way, trust me, dear.” And, as he spoke, Sestrina had looked into his eyes and knew that he meant what he said.

Before Clensy left the _Catholot_ he told Sestrina to expect to see him on board again that same night.

The _Catholot_ was supposed to sail next morning, so Clensy naturally presumed that he could, at any rate, row out to her and see Sestrina once more before she sailed.

That same night, Biglow, Clensy and Adams packed their few goods and got all ready to clear out of Hayti. They had decided to take a boat from L— and row out to the _Catholot_ after dark, get on board by some excuse and then stow away.

That night, without delay, they hired the boat.

“If _one_ can stow away three can, eh, lad?” said Biglow, as they pulled at the oars and got round by the bend of the harbour near S—.

In a few moments they had turned the point where they got a good view of the harbour.

“Done! She’s sailed!” said Biglow in a mighty voice.

He nearly upset the boat as he stood up and stared over the waters of the starlit harbour.

It was true enough, the _Catholot_ had sailed. Sestrina had gone from Hayti!

“We’ll all be mydered, sure!” wailed Adams, as he leaned back on his portmanteau—an old red handkerchief—and groaned.

“It’s the fear of the blockade that made her sail to-day instead of to-morrow. Hear that?” said Biglow.

And as the three of them listened they could distinctly hear the distant booms of the guns and furious cannonade. It was evident that the insurgents were already besieging Cap Hatien, as in the south the Government soldiers were attacking Jacmel, Jéréme and Les Cayes.

Biglow swore terrifically when he realised their position. Clensy and Adams placed themselves unreservedly in his hands. They knew that if there was a way of getting out of Hayti, Biglow would find that way. And so he did! for, in less than twenty-four hours after finding that the _Catholot_ had sailed, Biglow, Adams and Clensy found themselves on board a Government steamer outbound for South America. The reason they did get away so easily was because Biglow, through his gun-running exploits, was well in with the American Consul. He knew so much about the financial side of the gun-running business, that in the event of the Government overthrowing the insurgents and still retaining power, it would turn out more convenient for the officials to get a man like Biglow as far away from Hayti as possible.

“This is hell enough, without being worried out of my mind like this,” muttered Clensy as he stood by the bulwark side of the _S.S. Prince_, staring out to sea. The fact is, there was a terrible crush on the steamer which he and Biglow found themselves aboard. There were about two hundred refugees on board, mostly high-class Haytians who could afford to seek safety from the terrors of their war-stricken province. The weather was terrifically hot, too, and Clensy had to sleep in a stuffy cabin with ten refugees. Consequently, after the first night of unspeakable misery, he slept on deck. His whole thoughts were centred on Sestrina.

“She’ll know it wasn’t my fault,” he mused, as he thought of the girl’s disappointment when the _Catholot_ sailed before her time, thus making him unable to keep his promise to see her again.

“Don’t you worry, lad,” said Biglow, who had suddenly walked up to Clensy’s side. “We’ll find the girl!”

“But we don’t really know where she’s gone to,” said Clensy, as he realised how the Government steamers sailed away from Hayti and gave a false report as to the port they were really bound for.

“I’m sorry, lad, to have placed you in this pickle; it’s all my doings,” said Biglow, as he stood by Clensy’s side and stared across the starlit tropic seas. There was a tender, wistful note in the big man’s voice as he spoke to Clensy.

“You couldn’t help it. Sestrina would have had to fly from the palace if you had been ten thousand miles from Hayti when the revolution broke out,” said Clensy in a mournful voice.

“Perhaps you’re right, lad; anyway, I’ll stick to you.”

“Thank you,” replied Clensy. He wanted a genuine comrade. Adams wasn’t worth his salt. He had got mixed up with the crew of the steamer. In fact, he had got so drunk and uninteresting that Biglow and Clensy decided to have no more to do with him: and they, and the hidden voice behind these pages, were more than thankful to see the old reprobate Adams go out of the story altogether.

“As sure as my name’s Samuel Bilbao, you’ll see the girl again, lad. I’m one who believes in everything that no one else believes in,” said Biglow suddenly.

“Samuel Bilbao! Is that your real name?” said Clensy in an astonished voice.

The fact is, that Samuel Bilbao was notorious from Fiji to Terra del Fuego as one of the last of the wild, flamboyant traders who had hunted the blackbirders down in the South Seas slaving days of ten years before. Yes, it was Samuel Bilbao who stood beside Clensy; Bilbao who ran the blockade in the Haytian revolution of three years before; Bilbao who led the Marquesans in the great tribal battle at Taiohae; Bilbao who helped the Tahitian chiefs when they fought the French in 18—, and smashed a well-equipped garrison to smithereens. Yes, such things had been accomplished by that worthy in the splendour of his prime.

When Clensy discovered that he was on the high seas with Samuel Bilbao as his right hand, he blessed the fates. “Things could be worse,” he thought.

Samuel Bilbao, to give him his proper name, was the life of the _Prince_. The Haytian ladies on board tried hard to blush as he sang his rollicking songs, extemporising words in their own language as his versatile brain took in the degrees of temperament and the moral lassitude of the female company he sang to. He infused life and laughter into the hearts of the most woebegone refugees as he danced and made the _Prince’s_ deck like a moonlit ball-room as they steamed along under the stars. Yes, Samuel Bilbao was the best comrade Clensy could have found under the circumstances.

It seemed like the memory of some feverish dream when Clensy, one month after flying from Hayti, sat in the Rio Grande café at M— and thought of all that he and Bilbao had gone through in their search for Sestrina. “And all for nothing! Sestrina might have been swallowed up by an earthquake for all we’ve heard to the contrary,” Clensy muttered, as he looked through the open window on to the palm groves that faced the veranda. “Thank heaven I’ve got enough money to take the next boat that sails for Honolulu,” he thought, as he counted out his notes and gold. He had only the day before received a generous remittance from England by cable. And, as he reflected and mused on, he murmured: “There’s still a good chance that we’ve missed her; there’s several ways of getting to Hawaii. She might have got on a schooner that sailed from the lower Californian seaboard harbours.” And as Clensy mused on and thought over all the possibilities, he became very hopeful.

Samuel Bilbao had kept his promise, had not deserted our hero, for that romantic worthy was just up the grove roaring forth a rollicking sea chanty in the De La Plaza grog-saloon. Even as Clensy listened he could hear the loud clapping and stumping and guttural cries of the delighted Mexicans and Spanish hidalgos. Bilbao had managed to cheer Clensy up many times during his fits of depression. For Royal Clensy had become a different man since he had left Hayti. His love for Sestrina and the uncertainty of the girl’s fate had strangely humbled him, had made him look out on life with wiser and sadder eyes. Just as drink and debauchery changes a man and debases his character, Clensy’s mind had been elevated and made sympathetic and thoughtful through sorrow.

When Clensy at last arrived at Honolulu and still no news of Sestrina, it wanted all the hilarity and flamboyant song of Bilbao’s cheerful personality to bring a ghost of a smile to our hero’s lips. Not once did the young Englishman’s faith in Sestrina waver. He was convinced that if Sestrina never turned up at Honolulu it was because she was either dead or very ill. As the weeks passed his hopes of seeing Sestrina again faded, but his desire for her presence increased. His imagination began to clothe his memory of her in all the beauty and the mystery which men of his temperament imagine a good woman possesses. His romantic passion for the girl transmuted his memory of her till her eyes sparkled as far-off stars shining on the horizon of his imagination. She became the unattainable, the mystery and spiritual wonder of the great undiscovered lands that must ever lie beyond the skylines of mortal dreams, filling human hearts with passionate longing and yearning for far-off divine things. All that was beautiful in sounds lingered in Clensy’s memory of Sestrina’s voice; her songs resolved into a dream, and became the unheard music of his own soul, till he seemed to hear the dim murmurings of the shells on the shores of the ocean that divides romance from reality. The sorrow and uncertainty of their parting became his calvary of anguish and the heart-crying creed which nourished a dim yearning hope of some future. He vaguely realised that, though he might never see Sestrina again, she had brought him boundless wealth; that he could kneel at the altar of his great faith in her love and get as near the realisation of his best ideals as man can get when he imagines the world holds things that will correspond with his soul’s conceptions of the beautiful. He knew well enough that his mind had got into that morbid state which worldly men term foolish and sentimental. But the happiness that his sentiment brought him and his knowledge of the little happiness he would get from such dreams as worldly men indulged in, inspired him with that wisdom which enables men to reign as king over their imagination.

Through reading the musty volumes which he discovered in his apartments in Honolulu, as he waited through weary months for Sestrina, he began to get quite philosophical. His outlook on life became cynical, yet was softened with the old sympathy of his earlier and happier days. “I was a fool to ever fall in love and get unhappy like this. I thought I was so wise, too!” The wisest men who ever lived are only little children crying in the dark for light as they throw pebbles into their little ponds of dreams and imagine they are sounding the depths of infinity, of human nature and the mystery of life and death. Men know nothing! The present is a chimera, the past a remembrance of it, and the dim future the uncertainty that is the soul of religion. Why, even that bedraggled old cockatoo on the palm outside my window might easily be some reincarnation of a dead disillusioned philosopher. Its dismal discordant cry sounds as though it curses the memory of some far-off day when its mad intellect soared above the yearnings of its digestive apparatus, when it fell into the abyss of its own thoughts and broke the backs of its faiths one by one.

As Clensy soliloquised over his mad metaphysics, he saw a tawny Hawaiian lift a gun to his shoulder, and prepared to aim at the very bird which had inspired him with such mad ideas. “Don’t shoot, for heaven’s sake,” he shouted, as he leaned out of the window and threw the Hawaiian a coin. “Thank God I’ve saved it,” he muttered, as the aged, dilapidated cockatoo looked sideways from its leafy perch, and muttered its deepest gratitude ere it took its flight. “Perhaps it’s some dismal thought of Sestrina’s reincarnated, now a cockatoo, hovering by my window to let me know the truth why she cannot come? Ah, it’s madness to encourage such fancies. Who would believe me were I to tell how I remember the harvest girls singing as they sat with sickle in hand by their golden sheaves in the cornfields of ancient Assyria? Why did the scent from the big dish of overripe yellow oranges in the drawing-room of my home in England send my thoughts adrift, make me go to sea—in search of what? They said I was a fool—had romantic notions. What are romantic notions? And why do millions of sensible and great-minded men and women kneel in true devotion before the shadowy altar of that Heaven which no living mortal since the birth of Time ever saw except in dreams.”

Crash! Some one had banged at Clensy’s door and had swept his peculiar imaginings and metaphysical speculations to the winds, which are the only elements that know how to deal with such wild fancies.

The next moment Samuel Bilbao’s huge personality and figure stood in our hero’s apartments.

“Well, how are things going along?” said Clensy, as he swiftly released his hand from the mighty grip of his comrade’s painful clasp.

Then Bilbao sat down and informed Clensy that trouble was brewing in one of the South American republics, and that he was wanted. “It’s something better than gun-running; there’s a wealthy president’s daughter waiting to be abducted, whipped off into another state _against her will_, so that she can marry the rival president’s only begotten son. There’s plenty of money in the game, too.” So spake our worthy friend Samuel Bilbao, giving out hints but leaving Clensy’s brain in the usual maze as to what the big man had on his mind.

“Do you mean that you are leaving Honolulu?” said Clensy.

“Yes, lad, keep your heart up, I must go,” said Bilbao. Nor was he leaving Clensy unduly, for he had stopped religiously with our hero in Honolulu for eight months, and eight months in a place like Honolulu was dead against the grain of a man like Samuel Bilbao.

“Eight months waiting in this hole of a place!” sighed Clensy. “I wish to heaven I’d never seen Port-au-Prince.”

“Cheer up, lad, as sure as God made little apples you’ll see the girl again some day,” said Bilbao. “If a girl with canny eyes like that Sestrina’s got loves a fellow she’ll find _some_ means of letting him know what’s become of her, I know!”

“But supposing she is dead,” said Clensy in a pathetic, mournful voice.

“Being dead makes no difference, lad, the dead are the only folk who are living as they walk before us,” said Bilbao, in a soft, earnest, almost religious voice!

“Well, _you_ of all men on earth!” thought Clensy, as he stared at the gun-runner’s flushed face and the large, grey, expressive eyes.

And as Samuel Bilbao spoke on, his voice became as tender as a girl’s, a troubled something wrinkling his fine brow. Then he laid his hand on Clensy’s shoulder, and said: “Lad, the girl I loved has been dead fifteen years, and it was only the other night she stood beside me. ‘Don’t drink that,’ she said, as she knocked the goblet full of rum from my hand, smashing it to atoms at my feet! And all the traders and shellbacks in the grog-shanty at Murrumbee Creek stared like blasted lunatics as I took her hand and laid my head on her shoulders and then looked into the eyes—of nothing! So the blind fools said!”

As Bilbao ceased, Clensy gazed in wonder on the expressive face before him. He hardly recognised the great blustering, boisterous Samuel Bilbao in the face of that superstitious, yet intellectual looking sunburnt man of the seas.

“Yes, lad, dead women don’t forget,” said Bilbao softly, as he sat there in Royal Clensy’s room in Honolulu, and the stars crept over the blue skies to the east of Mount Pepé.

Years afterwards every word Bilbao had uttered that night came back and lingered in Clensy’s memory, coming like echoes from the songs of the long dead nightingales that had once sung in the mahogany forests by the presidential palace in Hayti when he was a boy.

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