Chapter IV: Part 4

Captain O’Shea climbed the rampart and lashed an American ensign to a spar thrust into the sand. The bright flag was neither half-masted nor reversed as a signal of distress. The breeze flaunted it as a defiance, a message from men who had forfeited its protection, who cheered the sight of it for sentimental reasons which they could not have clearly explained. The governments of the United States and Spain were at peace. This was not an affair between the two Powers. It was a little private war, a singular incident. And yet it was somehow fitting, after all, that these outlaws should prefer to see the stars and stripes waving over their heads.

Presently Colonel Calvo planted beside this ensign the tricolor of the Cuban revolutionaries, with the lone star. It was done with a certain amount of ceremony which commanded respect and admiration. It signified that he, too, speaking for his men, was ready to make the last stand, to accept the decree of fortune. Johnny Kent grasped his hand and apologized.

The cruiser moved cautiously nearer the key, taking frequent soundings. The wreck of the _Fearless_ had been discovered and must have been identified, for the cruiser cleared for action, and the bugles trilled on her decks. The huge, four-sided mound of sand heaped upon the back of the key evidently puzzled the officers. After a long delay, the vessel let go an anchor a thousand yards from the beach and spitefully hurled several shells into the shattered hulk of the _Fearless_.

Then a pair of eight-inch turret-guns were trained at Captain O’Shea’s thick walls of sand. A string of small flags fluttered from the cruiser’s signal-yard. O’Shea comprehended the message without consulting the international code-book.

“She invites us to surrender,” he explained, “which I decline to do at present. Let her shoot away. Maybe she will tire of it and leave us.”

No white flag was displayed on the rampart, and the cruiser lost her temper. A projectile passed over the key with a noise like a derailed freight-train. Others followed until the sand was spurting in yellow geysers. Such shells as struck the earthwork burrowed deep holes without causing appreciable damage. The Spanish commander soon perceived that this impromptu fortification was costly to bombard. His gunners were merely burying shells in a large heap of sand, and his government had not been lavish in filling his magazines. A mortar battery was needed to discommode this insane crew of pirates. And undoubtedly, if a landing-party should be disembarked on the open beach, these rascals of Captain O’Shea would fight like devils. The cruiser had been ordered to fetch them back to Havana alive and they would be formally executed in the Cabañas fortress as a warning to other hardy seafarers in the filibustering trade. These men had not only fired on the Spanish flag, but they had also blown it out of water.

But how were they to be extracted from their refuge without sacrificing the lives of Spanish sailors and marines? _Carramba_, here was a tough problem!

It might be feasible to starve them out by means of a siege, but the cruiser had no abundance of coal and stores. A storm would compel her to steam out to sea, or run for the coast. And if the key were left unguarded a merchant-vessel might happen along and rescue O’Shea and his men. And for all the commander knew, they had already sent a boat to summon help.

The cruiser ceased firing. Thereupon Captain O’Shea convened a council of war within his defences. The enclosure had been deluged with flying sand, but there were no casualties.

“There will be no more bombardment,” he told his people. “The cruiser will do one of two things. She will lay off the key and wait for us to give in, or she will send her boats ashore to-night and try to rush us in the dark.”

“We’ll make it unhealthy for ’em,” stoutly declared Johnny Kent.

“Me and my men will die for _Cuba Libre_,” said Colonel Calvo, his theatrical manner fled, his words spoken with a fine simplicity.

“There don’t seem to be any way out,” observed Jack Gorham.

O’Shea gazed at them in silence. There was no reproach in their speech or manner, no thought of blaming him for this tragic predicament. And yet it was his responsibility and his alone. He might have abandoned the _Fearless_ in the bay and taken these people ashore where they could find refuge with the Cuban army of Gomez. If he had been guilty of an error of judgment, then he should pay the price. There dawned upon him a clear conception of his own private duty.

“We will stick it out as we are till sunset,” he said abruptly. “Nothing more can happen before then. How are the ladies, Johnny?”

“I’m afraid they’ll go under if we have many days like this, Cap’n Mike. This is an infernal place to be cooped up in.”

“I am ashamed to face them, Johnny. ’Tis all my fault that they are in this mess with us. I should have put them ashore when I had the chance. But a sailor will think of his ship when he can save her, and ’tis his chronic notion that he is safer at sea than anywhere else.”

Through the long, long day the sun poured wickedly into the fortification. The cruiser rolled lazily at her anchorage and made no sign of renewing the attack. O’Shea lay flat behind a small embrasure and vainly searched the sea for the sight of a merchant-steamer which might intervene in behalf of the castaways. This was his last hope.

With a weary sigh he watched the red sun slant lower and lower. His lucky star had failed him. He made his decision. Presently he beckoned Gerald Van Steen and asked him to go outside the fortification, where they could have speech in private. The young man was sullen, but O’Shea smiled with engaging friendliness and said:

“’Tis no time to nurse grudges, me lad. Let us shake hands and forget it.”

“Oh, I’m not thinking of that row of ours,” wearily muttered Van Steen. “It’s of no consequence now. I’m not such a howling cad as to consider myself in any way. What do you propose to do with Miss Forbes and Miss Hollister? I have kept my mouth shut all day, waiting for the great Captain Mike O’Shea to do what would have occurred to any man with his wits about him.”

“May I ask what it is that ye would call so plain to see?” patiently queried the shipmaster.

“Signal to the cruiser that you have in your company three persons who were picked up from their yacht. Or you could have sent us off on the life-raft, and given me a chance to explain matters to the commander and show him my credentials. I don’t want to be a quitter, you know, but really this is none of my affair, and my first duty is to get these ladies home in safety.”

“I grant ye that,” slowly replied O’Shea. “And I think no less of you for wishing to leave us to stew in our own juice. You have behaved very well, barring the one flare-up with me. Now I will explain why what ye suggest is not so easy. The cruiser would pay no heed to signals about you. ’Twould be looked at as some kind of a trick. Can ye not realize that the master of the navy vessel yonder is wild with rage to exterminate me and the rest of the _Fearless_ company? He sees red, man. As for sending ye on the life-raft, it means that several of me own men must go with you to handle the lubberly thing. And they would be dragged aboard the cruiser and held there. I was willing to go meself, but I could not navigate the raft so short-handed. And I hoped the luck might turn before night.”

Van Steen had lost his hostile expression. He regretted his hasty words of condemnation. The intonations of O’Shea’s voice strangely moved him. And the sailor’s face, no longer bold and reckless, held a certain quality of gentleness, one might almost call it sweetness.

“Oh, confound it!” cried Van Steen. “You put me in the wrong, as usual. And I’m damned if I can feel square in trying to quit you and leaving you to take your medicine. I am one of the crowd, don’t you see, and proud of it. They are a bully sort.”

“I have never been crowded into such a tight corner,” said O’Shea with a smile, “but ’tis the way of life that when a man is young and strong, and used to long chances, he thinks he will not be tripped. This is my affair, not yours, so trouble yourself no more.”

“What do you propose to do, Captain O’Shea? You have made up your mind, I can see that.”

“The cruiser will be in a mood to hold communication with us now. ’Twould have been useless to try it this morning. But they have discovered that ’tis not easy to smoke us out of our hole.”

Presently he unrolled a bundle of signal-flags saved from the _Fearless_, and selected those he wished to use. Knotting them together, he hoisted the string on the spar beneath the American ensign. The commander of the cruiser read the message requesting that a boat be sent ashore in order to discuss terms of surrender. He was in no mood to discuss terms of any kind, but it appeared necessary to parley with these unspeakable scoundrels on the key. Perhaps they realized the hopelessness of their obstinacy and their spirit was broken.

A cutter was manned, and as it skimmed over the calm sea and drew near the breakers Captain O’Shea walked to the beach, Colonel Calvo accompanying him as interpreter. Van Steen followed as a rightful participant in the conference. The ladies were requested to remain within the fortification. It was not to be taken for granted that the cruiser would respect a truce. The seamen and the Cubans behind the banks of sand were savage and desperate, as was to be expected of men for whom surrender meant the firing-squad.

The crew of the cutter held her off the beach as the part of caution. They were ready to pull out to sea at a moment’s notice. O’Shea and Colonel Calvo splashed into the water and stood beside the boat. The commander himself was in the stern-sheets, a corpulent, black-bearded man of an explosive temper. He waited, glowering, for O’Shea to speak. He would waste no courtesy on pirates.

“You will play fair with me,” said the shipmaster, and Colonel Calvo translated as well as he was able. “I have ye covered with fifty rifles. I am Captain Michael O’Shea. Ye may have heard tell of me.”

The commander nodded and profanely replied that he knew nothing good of Captain O’Shea or the _Fearless_. It was an act of God that they would make no more voyages.

“Much obliged for your kind wishes,” resumed O’Shea. “I am sorry to have put you to so much trouble. I will waste no more words. I have in me party the young man standing yonder on the beach and two ladies that I picked up adrift from a stranded American yacht. ’Tis not right for them to suffer any longer. I want ye to carry them to port.”

The commander had heard of no wrecked yacht in these waters. As for the women, it was most unfortunate for them. Captain O’Shea had only to surrender his force and the women would be taken on board the cruiser and properly provided for. Then the story could be investigated.

O’Shea broke in angrily to say to Colonel Calvo:

“He is like a mad bull. There is no reason in him at all. He will make us surrender sooner, he thinks, to save the ladies. He will use any weapon that comes to hand.”

The Spanish commander raised an arm in an impassioned gesture. As if unable longer to restrain himself, he shouted:

“My brother was the captain of the gun-boat that perished in Santa Marta Bay, and he died with his vessel. By the blood of God, shall I parley with you?”

Gerald Van Steen waded out to the boat. He would speak for himself. That there should be any question of rescuing Nora Forbes and Miss Hollister fairly stunned him. His bearing was intrepid, but his lip quivered as he imploringly exclaimed to Colonel Calvo:

“Tell him that I don’t care a hang about what happens to me if he will take the women off. And if money will tempt him, I’ll pay down my last dollar to save the lives of the whole party. He will be a rich man.”

The Spanish officer laughed with a contemptuous shrug. His heavy visage was inflamed. He was of that type of his race which regarded Americans as “Yankee pigs.” Personal hatred and the desire of private vengeance made him proof against bribery. Moreover, he had no faith in the protestations of Van Steen. As O’Shea had put it, he was a man who saw red. The futility of appealing to him was so obvious that O’Shea interfered to play his trump card.

“If you land your sailors to-night and try to take us,” said he, and his voice was hard and deliberate, “’twill be the toughest job ye ever tackled. We have nothing to lose, and we will be behind the earthworks yonder. You can gamble that there will be two dead Spaniards for every one of us ye wipe out. As for starving us, I have thought it over, and ye will not try it. You would be laughed at from Havana to Madrid for not daring to attack a handful of shipwrecked men. Ye have a dilemma by the horns. And your rage has made ye blind as a bat. You are all for giving us a short shrift, and no doubt your hot-headed officials in Havana have egged ye on to it. But it will make a big diplomatic row, and when the smoke clears ye will be sorry. It will sound very rotten that ye had no mercy on a crew of castaways. And I will say, for your own information, that Uncle Sam has been very touchy about these quick-action executions ever since the _Virginius_ affair.”

The commander had ceased to fume. He was doing O’Shea the favor of listening to him. The stronger personality had made an impression. O’Shea perceived this and he went on to say:

“What I am leading up to is this:--I am ready to surrender meself and face the consequences if you will take my guests aboard and leave my men and the Cubans on the key. They will take chances of being found by a friendly vessel. You will lose no lives. I am the man your government wants. You will win the big reward offered for the capture of Captain Michael O’Shea. And there will be no complications between your government and mine. ’Tis me own fault that the party is stranded here. I will pay the price. ’Twill be easy enough for ye to explain it. You can keep your crew quiet, and the story will go out that ye took me off the wreck of my steamer and the others got away.”

This was a proposal which took the commander all aback. He considered it in silence and his gaze was less unfriendly. O’Shea concluded with dogged vehemence:

“You can take it or leave it. If you refuse, you must come and take us, and, so help me, as I tell ye, it will cost you a slather of men before ye wipe out my outfit.”

Here was a lawless castaway, a man beyond the pale, who insolently defied the arms and majesty of Spain. But there was a certain plausible method in his madness which caused the commander to waver. His implacable hostility had sensibly diminished. It would, without doubt, win him great distinction to return to Havana with the redoubtable Captain Michael O’Shea a prisoner. As for the men of the outlawed party, most of them had been invisible from the cruiser, and their number was a mere matter of conjecture. It was therefore possible for the commander to inform his officers that in accepting the surrender of Captain O’Shea he had captured all of the expedition that was worth while seizing. He had served thirty years in the Spanish navy without seeing a man slain by bullet or shell. The prospect of a fierce and bloody engagement with men who would fight like wolves failed to arouse his enthusiasm.

“I will signal my answer in one hour,” said he. “What you propose has surprised me. It is most unusual. It was not expected.”

O’Shea waded ashore and Colonel Calvo offered his hand as they stood on the beach and watched the cutter dip its flashing oars in the ground-swell.

“I have dislike’ you sometimes,” said the colonel. “But now I tell you I have been much wrong. I will be ver’ proud to go with you to Havana if it will save the lives of my braves’ of soldiers.”

“You are a good man yourself when ye have terra firma under you,” was the hearty response.

Johnny Kent came trotting to meet them, exclaiming beseechingly:

“What was it all about, Cap’n Mike? Why couldn’t you put me next before you flew the signals?”

O’Shea painstakingly retold the argument which he had unfolded to the Spanish commander, and the chief engineer listened with his chin propped in his hand. He breathed heavily and grunted disapproval.

“But what else was I to do?” impatiently demanded O’Shea. “I got you all into this, and I must get you out. And maybe I have found a way.”

“That ain’t what I’m growlin’ about,” strenuously protested Johnny Kent. “Why didn’t you let me in on this deal? Why not let me surrender with you? Doggone it, I’m no slouch of a pirate myself, with considerable of a reputation. Perhaps the Spaniards might think I was worth bargainin’ for, too.”

“I want to go it alone, Johnny. ’Tis the only square thing to do.”

“But you and me have been playin’ the game together, Cap’n Mike. And you don’t ketch me layin’ down on you just because you’ve come to the end of your rope.”

“Not this time, Johnny. ’Tis only making us feel bad to wrangle about it.”

The castaways had ceased to gaze at the encircling horizon for sight of smoke or sail. It came, therefore, as an incredible thing when a sentry at an embrasure yelled and capered like a lunatic. Every one rushed out and beheld the black hull and towering upper-works of a huge passenger steamer. She was coming up from the westward and had altered her track as though curious to discover why the Spanish cruiser should be at anchor near the key. Would she halt or pass on her way? Captain O’Shea, unable to credit his vision, told his men to fire volleys, and ran up the signal-flags to read:

“_Stand by. We need assistance._”

It was more than he dared hope that the steamer would read his call for help, but she drew nearer and nearer the key, slowed speed, and rounded to within a few hundred yards of the Spanish cruiser.

“It’s a British vessel, a White Star liner,” bawled Johnny Kent. “What is she doin’ in these waters?”

“One of those winter-excursion cruisers out of New York, I take it,” replied O’Shea. “She is making a short cut across from the Leeward Islands or somewhere below us, running from port to port. I hope she will realize that this is no holiday excursion for us.”

The refugees made little noise. They were no longer actors but spectators. They saw the liner exchange signals with the cruiser. Apparently this method of communication was unsatisfactory, for soon a boat passed between the two vessels. There followed a heart-breaking delay. Dusk was obscuring the sea when a yawl pulled by a dozen British seamen moved from the liner’s side and danced toward the key. The ramparts of sand were instantly deserted. O’Shea’s men and the Cubans ran wildly to the beach, no longer afraid, confident that salvation had come to them. They rushed into the water and dragged the stout yawl high and dry.

There stepped ashore a stalwart, energetic man in the smart uniform of a captain in the White Star service. The crowd fell back as he brusquely demanded:

“What kind of a queer business is this? Where is the chief pirate?”

“O’Shea is me name,” acknowledged the leader. “’Tis quite a yarn, if ye have time and patience to hear it.”

“So you are O’Shea,” and the skipper of the _Caronic_ chuckled. “Take me inside that extraordinary sand-heap of yours, if you please, and talk as long as you like.”

He grasped O’Shea’s arm and they vanished within the empty defences.

“I have come ashore to get at the bottom of this fantastical situation,” said Captain Henderson of the _Caronic_, whose smile was both friendly and humorous. “The commander of the Spanish cruiser told me to keep my hands off and to go about my business. Cheeky, wasn’t it? He swore he had a nest of bloody pirates cornered on this key, and he expected to capture them to-night.”

“So he decided to turn down my proposition,” muttered O’Shea.

“He referred to it. But his officers were keen to win a bit of glory for themselves, and they argued him the other way round, as I figured it from his heated remarks. He didn’t relish the job of sailing into you chaps. In fact, the black-whiskered don was in a state of mind. Are you, by any chance, a British subject?”

“No, Captain Henderson, but I might find ye a Britisher or two among me crew. I have an assorted company of gentlemen of fortune.”

O’Shea explained matters at some length, and Captain Henderson vehemently interrupted to say:

“I don’t know that it makes a lot of difference whether you are British subjects or not. Blood is thicker than water. Shall I steam away and leave you to be shot on the say-so of a raving Spanish skipper?”

“I should be disappointed in you if ye did,” gravely answered O’Shea. “’Tis not what I would do for you.”

The master of the _Caronic_ permitted O’Shea to finish his narrative.

“So you picked up the Van Steen party?” he rapped out. “We heard of the loss of the _Morning Star_. The Spanish skipper out yonder said I might take them off in my ship before he attacked you.”

“And what do ye propose to do about us?” wistfully asked O’Shea. “Of course this is none of your row, and your ship is not a British navy vessel----”

“But I am a British seaman,” snapped Captain Henderson. “And you are shipwrecked people who have asked me for assistance. That is all I have to know. And, by George, it’s all I want to know.”

“And ye will take us off?”

“At once. And I imagine I had better land you in a British port. What about Jamaica?”

“Jamaica will suit us, Captain Henderson. The United States will not be salubrious for us until this piracy charge blows over. And the Cubans can dodge across to their native land. But what will ye do if the Spanish cruiser objects?”

“She will not fire on my flag,” thundered the master of the _Caronic_, “nor will she dare to take shipwrecked men from my decks. Tell your people to be ready to go aboard. I will signal my chief officer to send more boats.”

Cheering and weeping, the company of the _Fearless_ abandoned their stronghold. It was an evacuation with the honors of war, and the American ensign was left flying above the huge heap of sand.

Disinclined to join the jubilation, Captain Michael O’Shea wandered away from his seamen and stood gazing at the liner whose lights were blazing like a great hotel. Nora Forbes walked along the beach until she came to him. He waited for her to speak.

“I saw you leave the crowd,” said she, “and I followed you. I wanted to talk to you this afternoon--to tell you--to try to tell you--what I thought of the sacrifice you were prepared to make. Were you going away, to your death, without saying good-by to me?”

He took her hand in his as he answered:

“It was hard enough to face my finish without bidding farewell to you, Nora Forbes. But this is our good-by, here on the beach to-night.”

“What do you mean?” she exclaimed unsteadily. “Must I say it all--must I tell you in so many words--are you afraid to--oh, can’t you understand what I want you to know?”

“Yes, I think I understand,” and his voice was very gentle. “Look at the liner yonder.” He raised his arm in an eloquent gesture. “You will be aboard soon, and ye will be among hundreds of people that belong to your own world. And ye will sit at dinner with them in the grand saloon, and they will talk to you about the things you have known and lived with all your life. And ye will find out that you belong with them.

“As the days go by, Nora Forbes, you will wonder more and more if this voyage of ours ever really happened. ’Twill be like a dream of romance and adventure, and moonshine, that could not have been at all.”

“But this is real and all the rest of my life has been just make-believe,” she mournfully whispered.

“’Tis the magic of the sea and the strong winds, and the free life, but it will pass and you will be grateful to me that I could see clearly.”

“Why are you so sure? Why do you speak for me?”

“Because I would have ye happy, Nora Forbes. ’Tis what God made you for. Look at me, a rover and a rough one, and never will I be anything else. I am not fit to be in your company at all. You have talked very plain to me, for a girl like yourself. You thought to yourself that I was afraid of your social station and your money and your friends, and so you would be telling me that I had a chance with you because I would not say it for meself. ’Tis wonderful to have you step down from your throne and be kind to the likes of me. And it will make your memory sweet and fair to me as long as the breath is in me. But you are dreaming dreams, and you will awake when the liner has carried ye back to your own people.”

“But I can never again be happy there,” she faltered.

“Ah, yes, you can, and you will. And you will thank me.”

She stayed to hear no more, but turned and hastened back to her friends, angry, humiliated, unreconciled. The master of the _Fearless_ pulled his straw hat over his eyes and turned in the direction of his hilarious sailors. He hated himself, but he had no regrets.

“I had sooner be shot,” he said to himself, “than to talk to her like that. But every word of it was true. And maybe she will find it out. ’Tis a strange, queer world, full of surprisin’ things, and ’tis hard to steer a course that will not fetch you on the rocks. But I held true to me compass bearings this night, and the light that guided me was the right one.”

He mustered his men and held them ready for the boats from the liner. An hour later the defenders were welcomed on board the _Caronic_, which promptly sailed without consulting the Spanish cruiser. They were received as heroes and nothing was too good for them. But O’Shea refused to accept the first-cabin state-room offered him.

“You have an officers’ mess-room,” he told Captain Henderson, “and if ye don’t mind, I will stay with them and find a spare bunk for’ard.”

For once Johnny Kent refused to follow the lead of his skipper. He was graciously pleased to take the quarters allotted him, and proposed to mingle with the passengers. Early next morning he wallowed in a tub, summoned the ship’s barber, and arrayed himself in clothes borrowed from the chief engineer of the _Caronic_, who chanced to be a person of ample dimensions. Thus transformed, Johnny Kent was no longer a ruffian of the high-seas. He had an aspect of dignified, mellowed respectability. His brick-red countenance radiated kindly interest and benevolence. Small children ran to him and instantly became his friends. The blustering note had gone from his voice. He checked his worst grammatical blunders and his shrewd eyes were quick to observe the manners of his fellow-passengers, which he sedulously set himself to copy. Strolling forward after breakfast, he discovered Captain O’Shea and confided:

“This touch of high life suits me down to the heels, Cap’n Mike. And I’m not such a bull in a china-shop as you might think. The passengers are crazy to meet you. They want to hear about your adventures.”

“I am comfortable right here, Johnny. You are welcome to the bouquets. Have ye seen Miss Hollister this morning?”

“No, she’s still abed, but the ship’s doctor says she will come around all right. I’ll surprise her some, won’t I? Honestly, Cap’n Mike, after I make two or three more voyages with you, if they’re risky enough to pay big wages, I’m goin’ to pick out that farm down in Maine and hand over a first payment on it.”

“Have ye consulted with Miss Hollister?”

“Of course. She’s my right bower when it comes to good advice. Not that she is personally interested--I was just dreamin’ dreams, you understand--but if I had the farm maybe I could see her again and talk about pigs and hens, and gardens and flowers.”

“You are not as down-hearted as when ye were on the key, Johnny,” smilingly quoth Captain O’Shea.

“It’s the clothes and the refined surroundin’s, Cap’n Mike. I take to ’em somehow more than I ever did before. I seem sort of changed.”

“’Tis likely a first-class marine engineer will be spoiled to make a lubber of a farmer,” returned O’Shea.

“It’s a rough life we lead, Cap’n Mike, and a man of my age hadn’t ought to stick to it too long.”

Jack Gorham joined them, looking even leaner and sadder than when he had been in the _Fearless_.

“And what will you be doing with yourself?” cordially inquired O’Shea.

“Mr. Van Steen offers me an easy job in New York, sir, and a salary, whether I work or not. But I’m on nobody’s pension-roll. I shall get out of Jamaica in a sail-boat and sneak over to Cuba and join the rebels.”

“And will big Jiminez go with ye?”

“He is sort of tore up in his mind, sir, between following you on the chance of another fancy voyage and duckin’ into the jungle with me.”

“Tell him to go with you, Jack.”

“Well, Captain O’Shea, I hope I’ll have the pleasure of sailing with you again. I’ve enjoyed it,” exclaimed the soldier.

“If you need money, Jack, what I have is yours. I have a bit stowed away for emergencies.”

“You can stake Jiminez and me to a meal-ticket in Jamaica and the price of a little boat, sir, and I’ll pay the loan out of the first Spanish officer I pot with the old Springfield.”

When the stately _Caronic_ steamed into the harbor of Kingston the passengers crowded her rail to admire the verdure-clad mountains and the lovely vales lush with palms and bananas. The excursionists planned to spend the day ashore, and after they had disembarked, the crew of the _Fearless_ and Colonel Calvo’s Cubans filed down the gangway. Miss Hollister, Nora Forbes, and Gerald Van Steen were waiting to bid them farewell and God-speed. They had lived and suffered so many things together that it was difficult to realize that this was the journey’s end.

Gerald Van Steen spoke awkwardly and with much feeling.

“You have been very good to us, Captain O’Shea. I shall not make an ass of myself by offering you money. But perhaps I can help you to find another ship, and the house of Van Steen & Van Steen will always be at your service.”

“I have me doubts that a highly respectable banking-house will care to back my enterprises,” replied O’Shea. “But now that Johnny Kent has violent symptoms of mendin’ his ways there may be hope for me. You were a good shipmate, Mr. Van Steen. If ever ye want a job, I will be glad to sign you on as a stoker.”

“Will you dine with us at the hotel to-day?”

“Thank you, but I must look after my men.”

The farewell between Nora Forbes and Captain O’Shea had been said on the beach in the starlight. Now their glances met.

“Good-by and God bless ye,” said he. “The voyage seems like a dream, no doubt.”

“Perhaps it may some day, but not yet,” she told him.

“My dear friends, that voyage was the realest thing that ever happened,” was the earnest declaration of Johnny Kent, and no dissent was heard from that shipwrecked and marooned spinster, Miss Katharine Hollister.

THE KING OF TRINADARO

I

Captain Michael O’Shea and Johnny Kent sat by a window of the Jolly Mermaid tavern at Blackwall on the Thames below London. These two leisurely drank mugs of bitter-beer and gazed with professional interest at the crowded shipping of that great seaport thoroughfare which sailor-folk call London River.

The Jolly Mermaid was one of a jostling row of ancient buildings with bow-windows and balconies painted in bright hues which overhung the tide at Blackwall, to remind one of the maritime London of towering frigates and high-pooped galleons and stout seamen of Devon. The near-by shore was filled with ship-yards and weedy wharves, and a little way down river was the entrance of the vast inland basin called the East India Docks, where soared a wonderful confusion of spars and rigging, and the red funnels of the Union Castle liners lay side by side.

On the turbid river moved in procession a singular variety of craft: drifting Thames barges with dyed sails, square-riggers in tow, Norwegian tramps half hidden beneath uncouth deck-loads of lumber, rusty Spanish fruiters, coastwise schooners, spray-stained steam-trawlers from the Dogger Bank, stubby Dutch eel-schuits, stately mail-boats homeward bound from the tropics, sooty colliers from Cardiff.

They slid past with an incessant din of whistles which, warning, expostulating, shouted the rules of the road in the language of the sea.

These familiar sights and sounds pleased Captain O’Shea, and he was contented with his seat by the window of the Jolly Mermaid and the excellent brew dispensed by the apple-cheeked young woman behind the bar. Amphibious loafers drifted in and out or cast anchor on the wharf alongside, riggers, watermen, dock-laborers, sailors, who seemed to have a world of time on their hands. Their gait was slouching, their attire careless, and their conversation peppered with sanguinary references to their eyes.

“’Tis a restful place, Johnny, and as diverting as a theatre,” observed O’Shea.

The chief engineer returned rather fretfully:

“I’m willing to be idle in this bit of slack-water for a while, and sort of pull myself together, Cap’n Mike. But this don’t earn wages, and I ain’t makin’ much headway toward buyin’ that farm down in the State o’ Maine.”

Whimsical amusement lighted O’Shea’s bold, smooth-shaven features as he replied:

“I am not a man to seek a humdrum life afloat or ashore, you impatient old pirate. There was a lot of fuss kicked up at home about that Cuban voyage of ours, as ye well know. And there was a strong chance that we would be laid by the heels in one of Uncle Sam’s jails for breaking the laws between nations. We are better off where we are.”

“That Spanish gun-boat got in our way and her intentions was plain blood-thirsty,” grumbled Johnny Kent. “What if we did ram her and then blow her up? She interfered with men who were tryin’ to make an honest livin’ on the high-seas.”

“Argue as far as ye like, Johnny. It won’t alter the fact that it was healthier for you and me to make ourselves hard to find.”

“But it’s discouragin’ to look for another ship here in England, Cap’n Mike. We’re fish out of water.”

“’Tis not easy to find our kind of a ship anywhere,” O’Shea reminded him. “There are no revolutions poppin’ the lid off in Central or South America, and we will sit tight and trust in me lucky star. I have a gold piece or two left in the toe of the sock where I stowed it against times like this. And we have not sunk so low that we must sign on for a lawful voyage.”

Johnny Kent crooked a finger at the bar-maid and sought consolation in another mug of bitter, while Captain O’Shea turned to a morning newspaper and ran his eye down the ship-news column to note the arrivals and departures. Then he cast a cursory glance at the foreign despatches, which might, perchance, disclose some disturbance of the world’s peace and an opportunity for venturesome men used to alarms and stratagems.

Johnny Kent was moved to begin an aimless yarn about a certain wicked skipper of Yankee clipper fame who fetched his second mate all the way home from Cape Town doubled up in a hen-coop as a punishment for impertinence. O’Shea listened politely, but with a manner slightly absent-minded, having heard the tale of the unfortunate second mate and the hen-coop in at least five different ports.

The yarn was cut short, and the two men screwed around in their chairs to stare at a visitor whose presence in the humble longshore tavern of the Jolly Mermaid was most extraordinary.

He was an elderly and very dignified gentleman, of a spare figure and the stiffly erect carriage of an army officer. His features, thin and rather refined than forceful, were given an air of distinction by a white mustache and imperial. From the silk hat and frock-coat, with the ribbon of an order in the lapel, to the tan gaiters and patent-leather shoes, he was dressed with fastidious nicety. In the dingy tap-room of the Jolly Mermaid he was startlingly incongruous.

The stranger had the grand manner and it fitted him like a glove. He was not offensively self-important, but one conjectured him to be a personage who expected the world to show him deference. The bar-maid, who was no dunce at reading human nature, bobbed a courtesy and withheld the flippant persiflage which was wont to delight the nautical patrons of the place.

A moment later there entered the tavern a brisk young man with a sandy complexion and a roving eye, who was smartly but showily attired, a keen, up-to-snuff young man who knew his way about. With a respectful bow he addressed the impressive elderly gentleman.

“I told him to meet us here, if Your Majesty pleases.”

The apple-cheeked bar-maid was threatened with a fainting spell at the intimation that royalty stood within the tavern walls, but rallied bravely to suggest in a fluttered voice:

“There’s a tidy little back room, your royal ’ighness, where you can set down private-like without common folks starin’ and gawkin’ at your Worship.”

“Thanks. I am rather tired after tramping about the docks,” amiably replied the personage in the pleasantly modulated accents of the cultivated Englishman. To the brisk young man he said:

“Let us sit down, my dear baron, and look over some of the memoranda while we are waiting.”

“Certainly, Your Majesty,” quoth the young man, and with this they passed into the little back room and closed the door. A dock-laborer ripped out an oath of amazement and clattered from the bar to tell his friends that “one o’ them blighted, bleedin’ kings was in the Jolly Mermaid, large as life, so ’elp me Gawd.”

That brace of exiled mariners, Captain O’Shea and Johnny Kent, gazed blankly at each other, and tacitly agreed to wait and try to fathom the riddle. They had dealt with presidents of uneasy republics near the equator, but a real king, to be surveyed at close range, was a fascinating novelty.

Johnny Kent had carefully adjusted his spectacles to survey this rare object, and he now shoved them up beyond his bushy brows before he hoarsely confided to his comrade:

“I thought they went about disguised, Cap’n Mike, same as we run a blockade with no lights and the steamer’s name-boards covered up. Is he the real thing or is it just play-actin’?”

“Europe is full of kings that have been kicked out of their berths,” answered O’Shea. “Maybe this one is a has-been, but he doesn’t look to me like a counterfeit. And I would not set him down for a lunatic out for a stroll with his keeper.”

“He handles himself as sane as you or me,” agreed the chief engineer. “But this is surely a doggoned queer place to find a stray king.”

“’Tis worth watching, Johnny. I’m on me beam-ends for puzzlement.”

Ere long there appeared from the street a bow-legged, barrel-chested, hairy-fisted man with a rolling gait, whom a landlubber might have classified as a rough-and-hearty British seaman accustomed to command vessels in the merchant trade. A captious critic would have perhaps surmised that he had been pickled in rum as well as in brine. Glancing at a card held between a grimy thumb and finger, he asked the bar-maid:

“Is Baron Frederick Martin Strothers hereabouts, my girl? Captain Handy’s compliments.”

“If you mean the dashin’ young man with a red weskit, ’e is settin’ in yonder with His Majesty.”

“Right you are!” exclaimed Captain Handy. “My business is with His Majesty, but the baron has charge of the arrangements as minister of finance. A nipper of Scotch whiskey, neat, miss, before I talk to ’em.”

“What sort of a king is ’e, and what’s his bloomin’ handle?” she eagerly besought him. “Are you makin’ gyme of me?”

The hearty British shipmaster looked inscrutable, tossed the whiskey into his heated coppers, and slowly assured her:

“Women’s curiosity is the fatal weakness of the sex, my dear. A king is a king wherever you find him. And my advice to you is not to go braggin’ about and telling all hands that His Majesty has patronized the Jolly Mermaid.”

He trudged to the rear room, hat in hand, and timidly knocked on the door. As it was opened, the quick ear of Captain O’Shea heard the mysterious personage saying to the brisk young man:

“A steamer of the tonnage of this _Tyneshire Glen_ is what I wish. If your investigation has satisfied you that she is thoroughly sea-worthy and in good repair and Captain Handy also recommends her----”

The door closed behind Captain Handy, and O’Shea, glancing in that direction, smiled cynically and observed to Johnny Kent:

“Did ye size up this Handy man? You know the kind. Every big port has them: broken shipmasters, disrated mates, that aren’t fit to take a scow to sea.”

“Sure! They’ve borrowed money off me from Baltimore to Singapore. This Captain Handy must have sighted an easy mark in the offing.”

O’Shea pondered for a moment and asked:

“Did ye hear mention of the _Tyneshire Glen_ steamer just now? Do you happen to know the vessel? I can’t place her.”

Johnny Kent grunted as if he had sat upon a tack and answered with heated emphasis:

“Maybe it’s the old _Tyneshire Glen_ that was carryin’ cotton out of Savannah years ago. I went aboard to see her chief once and her plates was rusted so thin that I could have thrown a wrench through ’em.”

Captain Handy had left the door of the back room unlatched and a gusty draught of sea-breeze blew it partly open. The watchful pair in the tap-room had a glimpse of Captain Handy standing stolidly between His Majesty and the minister of finance, and heard him huskily declaim:

“The _Tyneshire Glen_ is a bargain at thirty thousand pounds, and you needn’t take my word for it. Baron Strothers here has interviewed the brokers that have her for sale, and he knows the price they put on her.”

“I have full confidence in the judgment of my minister of finance, with Captain Handy’s expert opinion to assist him,” easily replied His Majesty.

“Most of my papers were lost at sea,” hastily put in Captain Handy, as if to forestall an awkward question. “They were tied up together, your Royal ’ighness, when the _Falls of Clyde_ steamer went down and I saved the lives of forty-seven passengers and was the last man to leave her when she foundered under my feet. The newspapers praised me so that a modest man ’ud blush to repeat it.”

“Baron Strothers has investigated your record, so he informs me, and he advises me that you are to be depended upon,” was the warm assurance.

In the tap-room O’Shea chuckled skeptically and said to Johnny Kent:

“’Tis likely enough he lost his papers, but I mistrust his version of the story. What kind of a flim-flam is this, anyhow? The king and the minister of finance are discussing a rotten ship and a rotten skipper as if the both of them were to be taken seriously.”

After more conversation which the listeners failed to catch, the trio in the back room ended the session and prepared to leave the tavern. As they walked out past the bar Captain Handy was arguing with awkward gestures, the elderly personage was listening courteously, and the brisk young man alertly kept an eye on both, as though he had an absorbing interest in the interview. In front of the tavern they parted, Captain Handy to turn in the direction of the East India Docks, the puzzling pair of notables to seek the railroad station to London.

Upon O’Shea and Johnny Kent there fell a prolonged spell of silence. Each was piecing theories together and discarding them as unsatisfactory. Of one thing they were convinced. This royal visitation had not been an elaborate hoax, and the explanation of lunacy was finally and emphatically dismissed.

“’Tis no case of barnacles on the intellect,” was the verdict of O’Shea, “barrin’ the fact that he ought to have more sense than to listen to the palaver of a rascal like this Captain Handy. Why didn’t we think to follow them up and see where they went?”

“I’m too short-winded to make a good sleuth-hound, Cap’n Mike, and it ain’t dignified for a man of my years.”

“Well, then, who is this Captain Handy?” demanded O’Shea. “We’ll try another tack.”

He questioned the bar-maid, who was disappointing.

“The man never showed hisself in ’ere before,” said she. “You’re more likely to find out about ’im at the docks.”

“Say, Cap’n Mike,” exclaimed Johnny Kent with puckered brow, “ain’t there some kind of a book written about kings, their habits and their names, and the various breeds of ’em? And where you’re most apt to find ’em? Do they generally run around loose?”

“I’m not personally acquainted with a whole lot of them, Johnny; but as a rule ’tis safe to bet they don’t come wanderin’ into sailors’ taverns convoyed by the minister of finance.”

“Suppose we take his word for it,” was the suggestion. “Call him a king. He’s lookin’ for a ship and a captain, ain’t he?”

“Now you talk hard sense, Johnny. That’s where I pricked up my ears. Maybe we can cross his bows again if we look sharp.”

Next morning they carefully scrutinized the “Court Circular” of the London _Times_, and were more at sea than ever at discovering that the only visiting royalty comprised an unimportant cousin of the house of Hanover from a German duchy and the dusky ruler of a native state of India. That a full-fledged king and a minister of his cabinet, both indubitably Englishmen, could be strolling about London unnoticed by the newspapers and unknown to the public was fairly incredible, and yet no mention could anywhere be found of the illustrious patrons of the Jolly Mermaid, although O’Shea bought the morning journals by the fistful.

It occurred to him to pay a call at a ship-brokers’ office down in Leadenhall Street, and Johnny Kent rode with him on top of a ’bus. They had made the acquaintance of the managing partner of the firm under the palms of a Venezuelan seaport, and he cherished a strong friendship for this pair of adventurous rovers. He was anxious to find a ship for O’Shea, and the latter dropped in now and then in search of news.

The comrades twain were about to dodge through the traffic of Leadenhall Street and enter the office of their friend when O’Shea plucked Johnny Kent by the sleeve and pulled him back into an adjacent door-way. A brisk, sandy-haired young man was also doubling among the stream of vehicles which roared from curb to curb and aiming his course for the ship-brokers’ office.

“’Tis the minister of finance, Johnny,” cautiously spoke O’Shea. “Look at him. There he goes, right into Tavistock & Huntley’s, the same destination as ours.”

“Why not go in and meet him, Cap’n Mike? Maybe George Huntley will introduce us and we can slip in a few questions.”

“Because I do not like this sprightly right bower of royalty, Johnny. I took a violent dislike to the Baron Frederick Martin Strothers at first sight. And me hunches about people are worth heeding when they take hold of me as strong as this one did.”

They surmised that the brisk young man with the red waistcoat must have business to transact with Tavistock & Huntley, for he remained inside a good half-hour. Then the watchers caught no more than a farewell glimpse of him as he hastily emerged and popped into a passing hansom. Thereupon they sauntered into the ship-brokers’ office and were cordially greeted by George Huntley, managing partner, a stocky, bald-headed person who looked as substantial as a brick house. The spirit of romance was in him, however, and he secretly envied O’Shea his illogical pursuit of hazards for sheer love of them.

Steering them into a small private room, he plumped himself into the chair at the desk, waved them to a leather-covered lounge, and inquired with much gusto:

“And how are my disreputable friends this morning? Anything in the wind?”

“’Tis still blowing dead calm for us, but the weather is suspicious in one quarter of the compass,” answered O’Shea. “Tell me, George, what do you know about the young man that just now whisked out of here--the fancy lad with the loud vest and the high-steppin’ manner?”

Huntley tilted his chair, clasped his hands across a comfortable waistband, and replied in his deliberate way:

“I have laid eyes on him only twice. His name is Strothers, I believe, and he calls himself a baron. One of those Continental titles, I fancy. You buy them, you know. This day of last week he came into our place with Captain Handy, who used to sail in the Blue Anchor service.”

“Got into trouble with his owners, didn’t he?” interrupted O’Shea, at a guess.

“Yes. He lost a steamer in the Bay of Biscay, and the evidence went to show that he was drunk at the time. His certificate was taken away or suspended; I forget the details. A rather shabby lot is Handy. As I was about to tell you, O’Shea, the pair of them, Captain Handy and this spruce young man, Strothers, came in to ask our cash selling-price for the _Tyneshire Glen_, which is laid up in the East India Docks. We have no interest in the vessel beyond representing the owners, who want to get rid of her.”

“And did you give the precious pair of two-spots a price on her?” blandly inquired O’Shea.

“I offered them the _Tyneshire Glen_ for twenty-four thousand pounds as she stands,” replied Huntley. “It’s all she’s worth. She is a big steamer, almost five thousand tons, but she will need a lot of repairs. Captain Handy claimed that he had found a possible buyer in whose interests young Strothers was acting. Of course we were willing to pay Handy a decent commission if the deal went through.”

O’Shea looked sidewise at Johnny Kent, who, on occasions, was bright enough to see through a hole in a grindstone. They kept their thoughts to themselves, and O’Shea commented non-committally:

“Of course Captain Handy is entitled to a commission if he finds ye a customer for the steamer, George. ’Tis an honest chance for the poor divil to pick up a few dollars. And so the young man, Strothers, came back this morning? Do I show too much curiosity in asking what he had to say?”

“You are welcome to all I know. He told me that the gentleman whose interests he represented had inspected the _Tyneshire Glen_ yesterday and thought she would answer his purpose. The price was satisfactory and he would like a three-days’ option, which I was very willing to give him.”