by Jack London
“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 beercase, 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,” Henr
y 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.”
CHAPTER VIII
IT’S all right, skipper, it’s all right,” Henry assured the breed captain, who, standing on the beach with them, seemed loath to say farewell and pull back to the Angelique adrift half a mile away in the dead calm which had fallen on Juchitan Inlet.
“It is what we call a diversion,” Francis explained. “That is a nice word diversion. And it is even nicer when you see it work.”
“But if it don’t work,” Captain Trefethen protested, “then will it spell a confounded word, which I may name as catastrophe.”
“That is what happened to the Dolores when we tangled her propeller,” Henry laughed. “But we do not know the meaning of that word. We use diversion instead. The proof that it will work is that we are leaving Senor Solano’s two sons with you. Alvarado and Martinez know the passages like a book. They will pilot you out with the first favoring breeze. The Jefe is not interested in you. He is after us, and when we take to the hills he’ll be on our trail with every last man of his.”
“Don’t you see!” Francis broke in. “The Angelique is trapped. If we remain on board he will capture us and the Angelique as well. But we make the diversion of taking to the hills. He pursues us. The Angelique goes free. And of course he won’t catch us.”
“But suppose I do lose the schooner!” the swarthy skipper persisted. “If she goes on the rocks I will lose her, and the passages are very perilous.”
“Then you will be paid for her, as I’ve told you before,” Francis said, with a show of rising irritation.
“Also are there my numerous expenses-”
Francis pulled out a pad and pencil, scribbled a note, and passed it over, saying:
“Present that to Senor Melchor Gonzales at Bocas del Toro. It is for a thousand gold. He is the banker; he is my agent, and he will pay it to you.”
Captain Trefethen stared incredulously at the scrawled bit of paper.
“Oh, he’s good for it,” Henry said.
“Yes, sir, I know, sir, that Mr. Francis Morgan is a wealthy gentleman of renown. But how wealthy is he? Is he as wealthy as I modestly am? I own the Angelique, free of all debt. I own two town lots, unimproved, in Colon. And I own four water-front lots in Belen that will make me very wealthy when the Union Fruit Company begins the building of the warehouses-”
“How much, Francis, did your father leave you?” Henry quipped teasingly. “Or, rather, how many?”
Francis shrugged his shoulders as he answered vaguely: “More than I have fingers and toes.”
“Dollars, sir?” queried the captain.
Henry shook his head sharplv.
“Thousands, sir?”
Again Henry shook his head.
“Millions, sir?”
“Now you’re talking,” Henry answered. “Mr. Francis Morgan is rich enough to buy almost all of the Eepublic of Panama, with the Canal cut out of the deal.”
The negro ��� Indian mariner looked his unbelief to Enrico Solano, who replied:
“He is an honorable gentleman. I know. I have cashed his paper, drawn on Senor Melchor Gonzales at Bocas del Toro, for a thousand pesos. There it is in the bag there.”
He nodded his head up the beach to where Leoncia, in the midst of the dunnage landed with them, was toying with trying to slip cartridges into a Winchester rifle. The bag, which the skipper had long since noted, lay at her feet in the sand.
“I do hate to travel strapped,” Francis explained embarrassedly to the white men of the group. “One never knows when a dollar mayn’t come in handy. I got caught with a broken machine at Smith Biver Corners, up New York way, one night, with nothing but a check book, and, d’you know, I couldn’t get even a cigarette in the town.”
“I trusted a white gentleman in Barbadoes once, who chartered my boat to go fishing flying fish,” the captain began.
“Well, so long, skipper,” Henry shut him off. “You’d better be getting on board, because we’re going to hike.”
And for Captain Trefethen, staring at the backs of his departing passengers, remained naught but to obey. Helping to shove the boat oft, he climbed in, took the steering sweep, and directed his course toward the Angelique. Glancing back from time to time, he saw the party on the beach shoulder the baggage and disappear into the dense green wall of vegetation.
They came out upon an inchoate clearing, and saw gangs of peons at work chopping down and grubbing out the roots of the virgin tropic forest so that rubber trees for the manufacture of automobile tires might be planted to replace it. Leoncia, beside her father, walked in the lead. Her brothers, Ricardo and Alesandro, in the middle, were burdened with the dunnage, as were Francis and Henry, who brought up the rear. And this strange procession was met by a slender, straight-backed, hidalgo-appearing, elderly gentleman, who leaped his horse across tree-trunks and stump-holes in order to gain to them.
He was off his horse, at sight of Enrico, sombrero in hand in recognition of Leoncia, his hand extended to Enrico in greeting of ancient friendship, his lips wording words and his eyes expressing admiration to Enrico’s daughter.
The talk was in rapid-fire Spanish, and the request for horses preferred and qualifiedly granted, ere the introduction of the two Morgans took place. The haciendado’s horse, after the Latin fashion, was immediately Leoncia’s, and, without ado, he shortened the stirrups and placed her astride in the saddle. A murrain, he explained, had swept his plantation of riding animals; but his chief overseer still possessed a fair-conditioned one which was Enrico’s as soon as it could be procured.
His handshake to Henry and Francis was hearty as well as dignified, as he took two full minutes ornately to state that any friend of his dear friend Enrico was his friend. When Enrico asked the haciendado about the trails up toward the Cordilleras and mentioned oil, Francis pricked up his ears.
“Don’t tell me, Senor,” he began, “that they have located oil in Panama?”
“They have,” the haciendado nodded gravely. ‘We knew of the oil ooze, and had known of it for generations. But it was the Hermosillo Company that sent its Gringo engineers in secretly and then bought up the land. They say it is a great field. But I know nothing of oil myself. They have many wells, and have bored much, and so much oil have they that it is running away over the landscape. They say they cannot choke it entirely down, such is the volume and pressure. What they need is the pipe-line to ocean-carriage, which they have begun to build. In the meantime it flows away down the canyons, an utter loss of incredible proportion.”
“Have they built any tanks?” Francis demanded, his mind running eagerly on Tampico Petroleum, to which most of his own fortune was pledged, and of which, despite the rising stock-market, he had heard nothing since his departure from New York.
The haciendado shook his hea
d.
“Transportation,” he explained. “The freight from tide-water to the gushers by mule-back has been prohibitive. But they have impounded much of it. They have lakes of oil, great reservoirs in the hollows of the hills, earthendammed, and still they cannot choke down the flow, and still the precious substance flows down the canyons.”
“Have they roofed these reservoirs?” Francis inquired, remembering a disastrous fire in the early days of Tampico Petroleum.
“No, Senor.”
Francis shook his head disapprovingly.
“They should be roofed,” he said. “A match from the drunken or revengeful hand of any peon could set the whole works off. It’s poor business, poor business.”
“But I am not the Hermosillo,” the haciendado said.
“For the Hermosillo Company, I meant, Senor,” Francis explained. “I am an oil-man. I have paid through the nose to the tune of hundreds of thousands for similar accidents or crimes. One never knows just how they happen What one does know is that they do happen-”
What more Francis might have said about the expediency of protecting oil reservoirs from stupid or wilful peons, was never to be known; for, at the moment, the chief overseer of the plantation, stick in hand, rode up, half his interest devoted to the newcomers, the other half to the squad of peons working close at hand.
“Senor Ramirez, will you favor me by dismounting,” his employer, the haciendado, politely addressed him, at the same time introducing him to the strangers as soon as he had dismounted. “The animal is yours, friend Enrico,” the haciendado said. “If it dies, please return at your easy convenience the saddle and gear. And if your convenience be not easy, please do not remember that there is to be any return, save ever and always, of your love for me. I regret that you and your party cannot now partake of my hospitality. But the Jefe is a bloodhound, I know. We shall do our best to send him astray.”
With Leoncia and Enrico mounted, and the gear made fast to the saddles by. leather thongs, the cavalcade started, Alesandro and Ricardo clinging each to a stirrup of their father’s saddle and trotting alongside. This was for making greater haste, and was emulated by Francis and Henry, who clung to Leoncia’s stirrups. Fast to the pommel of her saddle was the bag of silver dollars.