Soldiers of Fortune

by Richard Harding Davis

  XV

  The steamer "Santiago," carrying "passengers, bullion, and coffee," washeaded to pass Porto Rico by midnight, when she would be free of landuntil she anchored at the quarantine station of the green hills ofStaten Island. She had not yet shaken off the contamination of theearth; a soft inland breeze still tantalized her with odors of tree andsoil, the smell of the fresh coat of paint that had followed hercoaling rose from her sides, and the odor of spilt coffee-grains thathung around the hatches had yet to be blown away by a jealous oceanbreeze, or washed by a welcoming cross sea.

  The captain stopped at the open entrance of the Social Hall. "If any ofyou ladies want to take your last look at Olancho you've got to comenow," he said. "We'll lose the Valencia light in the next quarterhour."

  Miss Langham and King looked up from their novels and smiled, and MissLangham shook her head. "I've taken three final farewells of Olanchoalready," she said: "before we went down to dinner, and when the sunset, and when the moon rose. I have no more sentiment left to draw on.Do you want to go?" she asked.

  "I'm very comfortable, thank you," King said, and returned to theconsideration of his novel.

  But Clay and Hope arose at the captain's suggestion with suspiciousalacrity, and stepped out upon the empty deck, and into theencompassing darkness, with a little sigh of relief.

  Alice Langham looked after them somewhat wistfully and bit the edges ofher book. She sat for some time with her brows knitted, glancingoccasionally and critically toward King and up with unseeing eyes atthe swinging lamps of the saloon. He caught her looking at him oncewhen he raised his eyes as he turned a page, and smiled back at her,and she nodded pleasantly and bent her head over her reading. Sheassured herself that after all King understood her and she him, andthat if they never rose to certain heights, they never sank below ahigh level of mutual esteem, and that perhaps was the best in the end.

  King had placed his yacht at the disposal of Madame Alvarez, and shehad sailed to Colon, where she could change to the steamers for Lisbon,while he accompanied the Langhams and the wedding party to New York.

  Clay recognized that the time had now arrived in his life when he couldgraduate from the position of manager-director and become theengineering expert, and that his services in Olancho were no longerneeded.

  With Rojas in power Mr. Langham had nothing further to fear from theGovernment, and with Kirkland in charge and young Langham returningafter a few months' absence to resume his work, he felt himself free toenjoy his holiday.

  They had taken the first steamer out, and the combined efforts of allhad been necessary to prevail upon MacWilliams to accompany them; andeven now the fact that he was to act as Clay's best man and, as Langhamassured him cheerfully, was to wear a frock coat and see his name inall the papers, brought on such sudden panics of fear that thefast-fading coast line filled his soul with regret, and a wilful desireto jump overboard and swim back.

  Clay and Hope stopped at the door of the chief engineer's cabin andsaid they had come to pay him a visit. The chief had but just comefrom the depths where the contamination of the earth was most evidentin the condition of his stokers; but his chin was now cleanly shaven,and his pipe was drawing as well as his engine fires, and he hadwrapped himself in an old P. & O. white duck jacket to show what he hadbeen before he sank to the level of a coasting steamer. They admiredthe clerk-like neatness of the report he had just finished, and inreturn he promised them the fastest run on record, and showed them theportrait of his wife, and of their tiny cottage on the Isle of Wight,and his jade idols from Corea, and carved cocoanut gourds from Brazil,and a picture from the "Graphic" of Lord Salisbury, tacked to thepartition and looking delightedly down between two highly coloredlithographs of Miss Ellen Terry and the Princess May.

  Then they called upon the captain, and Clay asked him why captainsalways hung so much lace about their beds when they invariably slept ona red velvet sofa with their boots on, and the captain ordered hisChinese steward to mix them a queer drink and offered them the choiceof a six months' accumulation of paper novels, and free admittance tohis bridge at all hours. And then they passed on to the door of thesmoking-room and beckoned MacWilliams to come out and join them. Hismanner as he did so bristled with importance, and he drew them eagerlyto the rail.

  "I've just been having a chat with Captain Burke," he said, in anundertone. "He's been telling Langham and me about a new game that'sbetter than running railroads. He says there's a country calledMacedonia that's got a native prince who wants to be free from Turkey,and the Turks won't let him, and Burke says if we'll each put up athousand dollars, he'll guarantee to get the prince free in six months.He's made an estimate of the cost and submitted it to the RussianEmbassy at Washington, and he says they will help him secretly, and heknows a man who has just patented a new rifle, and who will supply himwith a thousand of them for the sake of the advertisement. He saysit's a mountainous country, and all you have to do is to stand on thepasses and roll rocks down on the Turks as they come in. It soundseasy, doesn't it?"

  "Then you're thinking of turning professional filibuster yourself?"said Clay.

  "Well, I don't know. It sounds more interesting than engineering.Burke says I beat him on his last fight, and he'd like to have me withhim in the next one--sort of young-blood-in-the-firm idea--and hecalculates that we can go about setting people free and upsettinggovernments for some time to come. He says there is always somethingto fight about if you look for it. And I must say the condition ofthose poor Macedonians does appeal to me. Think of them all alone downthere bullied by that Sultan of Turkey, and wanting to be free andindependent. That's not right. You, as an American citizen, ought tobe the last person in the world to throw cold water on an undertakinglike that. In the name of Liberty now?"

  "I don't object; set them free, of course," laughed Clay. "But how longhave you entertained this feeling for the enslaved Macedonians, Mac?"

  "Well, I never heard of them until a quarter of an hour ago, but theyoughtn't to suffer through my ignorance."

  "Certainly not. Let me know when you're going to do it, and Hope and Iwill run over and look on. I should like to see you and Burke and thePrince of Macedonia rolling rocks down on the Turkish Empire."

  Hope and Clay passed on up the deck laughing, and MacWilliams lookedafter them with a fond and paternal smile. The lamp in the wheelhousethrew a broad belt of light across the forward deck as they passedthrough it into the darkness of the bow, where the lonely lookoutturned and stared at them suspiciously, and then resumed his sternwatch over the great waters.

  They leaned upon the rail and breathed the soft air which the rush ofthe steamer threw in their faces, and studied in silence the stars thatlay so low upon the horizon line that they looked like the harborlights of a great city.

  "Do you see that long line of lamps off our port bow?" asked Clay.

  Hope nodded.

  "Those are the electric lights along the ocean drive at Long Branch andup the Rumson Road, and those two stars a little higher up are fixed tothe mast-heads of the Scotland Lightship. And that mass of light thatyou think is the Milky Way, is the glare of the New York street lampsthrown up against the sky."

  "Are we so near as that?" said Hope, smiling. "And what lies overthere?" she asked, pointing to the east.

  "Over there is the coast of Africa. Don't you see the lighthouse onCape Bon? If it wasn't for Gibraltar being in the way, I could showyou the harbor lights of Bizerta, and the terraces of Algiers shininglike a cafe chantant in the night."

  "Algiers," sighed Hope, "where you were a soldier of Africa, and rodeacross the deserts. Will you take me there?"

  "There, of course, but to Gibraltar first, where we will drive alongthe Alameda by moonlight. I drove there once coming home from a messdinner with the Colonel. The drive lies between broad whitebalustrades, and the moon shone down on us between the leaves of theSpanish bayonet. It was like an Italian garden. But he did not seeit, and he would talk to me about
the Watkins range finder on the lowerramparts, and he puffed on a huge cigar. I tried to imagine I wasthere on my honeymoon, but the end of his cigar would light up and Iwould see his white mustache and the glow on his red jacket, so I vowedI would go over that drive again with the proper person. And we won'ttalk of range finders, will we?

  "There to the North is Paris; your Paris, and my Paris, with Londononly eight hours away. If you look very closely, you can see thethousands of hansom cab lamps flashing across the asphalt, and the opentheatres, and the fairy lamps in the gardens back of the houses inMayfair, where they are giving dances in your honor, in honor of thebeautiful American bride, whom every one wants to meet. And you willwear the finest tiara we can get on Bond Street, but no one will lookat it; they will only look at you. And I will feel very miserable andtease you to come home."

  Hope put her hand in his, and he held her finger-tips to his lips foran instant and closed his other hand upon hers.

  "And after that?" asked Hope.

  "After that we will go to work again, and take long journeys to Mexicoand Peru or wherever they want me, and I will sit in judgment on thework other chaps have done. And when we get back to our car at night,or to the section house, for it will be very rough sometimes,"--Hopepressed his hand gently in answer,--"I will tell you privately how verydifferently your husband would have done it, and you, knowing all aboutit, will say that had it been left to me, I would certainly haveaccomplished it in a vastly superior manner."

  "Well, so you would," said Hope, calmly.

  "That's what I said you'd say," laughed Clay. "Dearest," he begged,"promise me something. Promise me that you are going to be very happy."

  Hope raised her eyes and looked up at him in silence, and had the manin the wheelhouse been watching the stars, as he should have been, noone but the two foolish young people on the bow of the boat would haveknown her answer.

  The ship's bell sounded eight times, and Hope moved slightly.

  "So late as that," she sighed. "Come. We must be going back."

  A great wave struck the ship's side a friendly slap, and the windcaught up the spray and tossed it in their eyes, and blew a strand ofher hair loose so that it fell across Clay's face, and they laughedhappily together as she drew it back and he took her hand again tosteady her progress across the slanting deck.

  As they passed hand in hand out of the shadow into the light from thewheelhouse, the lookout in the bow counted the strokes of the bell tohimself, and then turned and shouted back his measured cry to thebridge above them. His voice seemed to be a part of the murmuring seaand the welcoming winds.

  "Listen," said Clay.

  "Eight bells," the voice sang from the darkness. "The for'ard light'sshining bright--and all's well."