"I kind of wondered why your father was so willing to let you go along with me on all these things we've been doing," Tony said. "That explains it."
Peter nodded. "He's urged me on—not that I needed any urging!" He grinned but sobered quickly. "This accident—it was my own darned carelessness," he said contritely. "You told me what to do but I thought I'd be all right, holding tight to the rail. I didn't want to miss anything! I stayed on the boat to try to help you, and I just made you more trouble."
"Well, it really wasn't your fault, Pedro. You haven't had too much experience yet, with the sea and with boats. I was to blame for not making sure you were safe. Now lie down for a while and take it easy. I want you to be completely over this before your father sees you!"
The Last Hope
As Peter obediently lay back on the bunk, closing his eyes, Tony felt depression closing over him again. This was just another one of his long list of mistakes, he thought dismally—letting Peter almost get drowned. Between his own bungling and the impersonal jinx that seemed to pursue him, everything he touched went wrong!
It shook his confidence all over again, filling him with new apprehension about the treasure hunting. Was bad luck going to follow him to the very end?
One thing was sure, now. He would have to keep Peter out of the second expedition to Puerto Marques. After this close brush with death, Tony didn't intend to expose him to any more danger, if he could help it. He and Armando would have to find some third boy who could be trusted. There had to be at least three. One to distract the guard and two to do the digging. . . .
"Ahoy, Albacora!"
The shout made Tony jump. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he had neither seen nor heard the speedboat approaching. It was not the one that had carried the
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Suttons and Captain Ruiz to the beach. This one was run by a boy whom Tony knew sHghtly.
"Hold, Manuel," he called back.
"Well, Tony! I didn't know you were on the Albacora! Are you all right? The port captain has been watching the bay and all the boats that were out, through binoculars. He thought he saw someone go overboard and he sent me to check on you first."
"All present and accounted for—now." Tony glanced at Peter, who had opened his eyes again, and heaved an inner sigh of relief that he could give that answer. Then he added curiously, "How did you manage to get out here? I thought most of the small boats—"
"You thought right," Manuel said grimly. "Most of them are banged up, one way or another. But mine happened to be high and dry, because I painted it yesterday. When they asked for volunteers, in the fishing oflBce, I offered to help, but it took a while to get the boat in the water and get the motor working."
"Is there a lot of damage on shore?" Tony asked.
"Quite a bit. But no people seriously hurt—that we know of. Two boats are still missing. If you're really okay, do you want to help me hunt them? How's your gasoline?"
Tony checked. There was plenty of fuel, but he hesitated before calling back an answer.
"How do vou feel, Pedro?" he asked in a low voice. "We really should get back to shore, after all you've been through."
"I'm fine," Peter said stoutly. "Only one thing wrong
with me—rm hungry! That ducking, and then losing my lunch, made me awfully empty."
Tony grinned a little. "Well, that's easy to remedy. There's plenty of food left from the Suttons' box lunches. Just the same, I think we ought to go back, now that the water's normal again."
"What do you say?" Manuel called up. "I told them on shore that I'd bring you straight back, if anything was wrong with you or the boat. Otherwise, I was to ask you to help search, since you're already out here."
Tony looked again at Peter, who nodded.
"All right, then," he called back. "Where do you want us to go? What boats are missing?"
"One's a private sailboat from the Yacht Club," Manuel answered. "The other is the Pelicano—a. glass-bottomed boat that works out of Caleta Beach. Something odd about that: it's been missing since late yesterday afternoon, and the owner. Captain Garcia, thinks it may have been stolen, instead of holed up on account of weather. It was last seen around sundown, heading east in the direction of Puerto Marques and the Costa Chica."
Peter sat up suddenly and he and Tony stared at each other, their minds meeting in a single thought.
"The Pelicano! Puerto Marques!" Tony's voice was stupefied. "Pedro, Lencho's beat us to it!"
"Looks like he's trying," Peter said. "We can't let him get away with that!"
Tony set his jaw tightly. "Your launch is faster," he yelled down to Manuel. "You look for the sailboat. It's probably around by the Quebrada and it's more likely
to be in serious trouble. We'll go after the Pelicano. I have an idea I know where it is!"
"Okay! If anything happens and you need help, send up a flare!"
The speedboat raced away and Tony ran to pull in the anchors. His face was rigid and his hands were trembling with anger.
"If Lencho has found that treasure and made off with it," he muttered savagely, "I'll follow him and beat him to a pulp, no matter where he's gone!"
"I never thought he'd try again," Peter said. "I thought he was too scared—like Chico."
"So did I. I just counted him out completely after that earthquake scare. But I should have known his greed would get the better of his fright. He's tougher and more persistent than Chico."
Another mistake I made, Tony thought, underrating Lencho's nerve.
The two boys were silent as Tony ran the Alhacora at full speed toward Puerto Marques. Peter was wolfing down the leftover sandwiches nervously, as though to give himself strength for whatever might come. Tony was too angry, now, to feel either hunger or weariness. If Lencho had cheated him out of his last chance—!
They had barely entered the mouth of Puerto Marques Bay when they saw a canoa coming out to meet them. The boy in it half stood, gesturing with his paddle.
Tony killed the motor of the Alhacora. "It's Armando," he said, "signaling us to stay here."
The two boys waited impatiently while Armando
covered the distance between them with swift, expert strokes.
"What's happened?" Tony called sharply as the dugout approached. "Lencho's been here, hasn't he?"
"Yes." Armando wiped the perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. "But he's not the only one! Throw me a line and help me aboard. I've got a lot to tell you."
With the canoa tied, Tony and Peter pulled Armando into the cockpit and he sat down in one of the fishing chairs.
"It's all up, Tony. But not on account of Lencho, though he was going to try!"
"Who, then?" Tony demanded angrily. "Chico?"
Armando shook his head. "Let me start at the beginning. Yesterday morning a real sharp-looking car—a Cadillac—came into the village, driven by a middle-aged, well-dressed man who went at once to see the alcalde. I had a hunch—and I hung around, keeping my eyes and ears open. It wasn't long before the whole village knew that the man was old Adan's nephew, from Chihuahua, and that he had papers proving his right to all of Adan's property! In fact, he was the one who had the guard put on the place. He had telegraphed the alcalde, more than two weeks ago."
"Adan mentioned a nephew to Chico," Tony whispered numbly. "But he was sure he was dead."
"Well, he isn't." Armando's voice was grim. "He's very much ahve and his name is Don Guillermo Robles. He's definitely estabfished his claim on the property. I heard
him tell the alcalde that he might do some excavating but that he didn't think they'd find a thing in the way of treasure."
"Why? How does he know?" Peter broke in.
"He believes," Armando said slowly, "that his Uncle Adan had delusions about that treasure. Because his own father—Adan's brother—looked for it years ago, before he ever moved to Chihuahua, and he never found anything. Don Guillermo's going to extend the coconut plantation back onto that strip of land. Sa
ys there's always a good market for copra. He's a hardheaded businessman—not a dreamer, like Adan."
"And like me," Tony said bitterly.
"I wouldn't say you were exactly a dreamer, Tony."
"Not always, maybe." Tony stared down at the deck. "But in this case—I think I knew all along, deep down, that we were chasing a dream. Yet I kept on. I got 'treasure fever'—like you said, Pedro."
Peter changed the subject, trying to distract Tony from his disappointment. "When did Lencho come?" he asked Armando.
"Yesterday afternoon. When he found Don Guillermo already here, looking over his land, he was wild!"
"What did he do?" Peter asked, as Tony remained silent.
Armando shrugged. "What could he do? He stayed till this afternoon, to make sure there was absolutely no hope, and by that time the water was churning up, so he left the Pelicano here and took a bus back to Acapulco."
Tony looked up dully. "Where is the Pelicano? I don't
see it in the cove. We're supposed to be searching for it. That's how we happened to come over here."
"Lencho got some natives to help him pull it up on the beach when the water began to rough up, and it was lucky he did. We didn't get much of that tidal wave-Puerto Marques is too landlocked. But the water rose, just the same."
"Well, I'll tell Captain Garcia that his boat's here," Tony muttered, "but I'll let Lencho explain how it got here."
"He's going to have quite a bit to explain," Armando said. "He looked really beat when he left here—and I doubt that he'll bother you from now on, Tony."
Tony shrugged. The feud between himself and Lencho no longer mattered. He'd be leaving Acapulco in a few days, anyway, he thought with despair.
"Well, we better get back," he said, "or they'll be sending out another boat to look for us."
"I was going to come to Acapulco tonight, to tell you what happened. Since you came over, I won't have to."
Armando hauled on the rope, pulling the canoa close to the Alhacora. Tony and Peter held it while he jumped in.
"I'm awfully sorry, Tony, that things didn't work out —for all of us."
Tony nodded without speaking and waved good-by. He watched Armando pulling away toward the beach with rapid strokes, and then went to start the engine of the Alhacora.
"It's all over, Pedro," he said lifelessly. "This is the
end. Everything I've been connected with for the last three months has gone wrong. I've failed."
"Don't say that, Tony." Peter tried to be heartening, but his eyes were clouded with distress. "You didn't fail. It was just—circumstances."
Tony stood at the wheel in moody silence for a while.
"I believe the whole trouble, Pedro, is the money part," he said sadly. "It seems to me that as soon as a person begins to work only for money—with a kind of desperation—then things are bound to get twisted. I wouldn't have had anything to do with this treasure hunting, if Uncle Juan hadn't insisted on my raising money fast. I really felt guilty about it, all along."
He paused and then said something which he believed profoundly, with all his heart, "The real treasure of Acapulco isrit buried gold, Pedro. It's the place itself— partly the beauty the tourists rave about, but even more, for me, a certain way of life."
Peter nodded, understanding perfectly.
"It seems it isn't enough, though," Tony went on, almost in a whisper, "to love a place so much that you'd rather starve than leave it. . . ."
His voice trailed off as he thought of the many things he loved: the pearl-colored dawns . . . the beat of the hot sun on his skin and the cool sting of salt water . . . diving through the fairyland jungles under the surface . . . the low-hanging, orange tropical moons . . . the solitude of the night fishing ... or the long days like those he had spent on the Alhacora, hunting the big game fish. . . .
He realized that his eyes were wet and he ran the back
of his hand over them, ashamed. It was bad enough to have to leave all this. He didn't have to cry like a baby about it!
With a quick side glance, he saw that Peter was not looking at him. The troubled blue eyes were fixed pensively on the open ocean.
Tony ran the Albacora at low speed. He was in no hurry to get back to Acapulco. He knew that now there was no escape from the prospect that had haunted him these last three months: visions of that chilly, nerve-racking, laby-rinthian city of four and a half million struggling humans . . . himself, in a bellboy's uniform, jumping to the sound of a desk clerk's clanging bell . . . the hotel school at night: a different kind of school, more severe and exacting than any he'd known before, where he would have to learn the thousand tedious details of dealing with a long succession of tourists.
The thought of it made him physically ill. And he somehow knew, with a strong and terrible conviction, that once he got into it, there would be no escape—ever.
Escape. The word Hngered in his mind. What if he did just that—right now—while he still had a chance?
What if he landed Peter on Roqueta Island, where he could easily get transportation back to the mainland, while he, Tony, ran the Albacora up the coast to a town far enough away so that he wouldn't be known? He could get someone to return the cruiser to its owner, while he hid out for a while, until his uncle's family gave him up and left for Mexico City without him. There were lots of places where he could make a Hving, fishing and skin diving.
No one would ever find him. He could disappear completely, staying for a time in small villages like Papanoa and Petatlan, and then going on later to Zihuatanejo. Those places were always warm, their waters always teeming with fish. He could live forever in bathing trunks. He could eat sea food, selling enough of it to the villagers to buy a few tortillas and beans.
Eventually, he might go on to Manzanillo and Mazatlan and get work on freighters, in order to buy a small boat of his own.
Or he could go down the coast—along the Costa Chica —where the towns were even fewer and more inaccessible. There were places there, he had heard, that were like indescribable dream worlds: fabulously beautiful and untouched small bays; isolated, powder-white beaches where no one had walked before; unfrequented waters that would be a skin diver's paradise.
The people of the villages just inland on the Costa Chica were not sea people. They didn't know what wealth lay at their doorstep. They were farmers, earning a scrubby living from corn patches, raising a few chickens and pigs. A skin diver who worked the Costa Chica could eventually get rich, if he wanted to. And when he was not diving, he could roam in virgin jungle where the trees still harbored chattering monkeys and rare, multicolored birds, or climb the rocky cliffs of mountains that rose straight out of the blue, blue sea.
Tony's fingers tightened on the wheel as he struggled with the temptation. There was nothing impossible about the plan. It could be done.
But he knew, sorrowfully, that he couldn't do it. Right
or wiong, Uncle Juan had tried to be good to him and to his sister Marta. He just couldn't do a sneaky thing now, like running away and hiding. And certainly he had no right to borrow the Albacora, even for a couple of days.
"Tony, what are you going to do?" Peter's voice broke in, sounding as though he had been following Tony's thoughts all the way.
"The only thing there is to do." Tony tried to keep his voice steady. "Go back to Acapulco and face up to the future as well as I can."
Insurance for the Future
Neither boy spoke as Tony ran the Alhacora into the bay. Nearing the docks, they could see the damage done by the tidal wave: some of the small boats were smashed beyond repair, and debris of various kinds covered the narrow park which separated the wharf from the coast boulevard.
It seemed to Tony as though a week had passed since they had started out in the morning, on a routine fishing trip. After all their harrowing experiences of the past few hours, he rather expected that several people would be on the dock to meet them. But as he anchored the boat and threw the mooring line ashore, the on
ly person who appeared to be waiting for the Alhacora was JuHo.
The older boy wrung their hands after they had jumped out onto the dock.
"Welcome to Acapulco!" he shouted, his homely face splitting in an ear-to-ear grin. "You boys have sure been gone a long time! Caramha, it's nice to see you again!"
Peter grinned back weakly, but for once Tony found himself unable to respond to his friend's good humor. Julio knew that Tony's days in Acapulco were numbered,
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and although he didn't know about the fiasco of the treasure hunting, still he should have guessed that the tidal wave, alone, would be the last straw. It wasn't anything to joke and grin about, Tony thought resentfully.
Then he saw Peter's father coming toward them from the fishing headquarters.
"Well, Pete!" Mr. Carson put his hands on his son's shoulders and held him off for inspection. "You look a little done in, but not too bad—under the circumstances."
Did he know that Peter had almost drowned? Tony wondered.
Mr. Carson answered the unspoken question. "Thanks, Tony," he said in a voice that was rather unsteady, "for bringing Peter back—aHve."
"I—wouldn't have come back without him," Tony said, embarrassed. "Did the port captain tell you?"
"He told Julio and I heard. We both got here about the same time—just after that boy, Manuel, had left here to check up on you. I wouldn't care to go through again what I went through until I saw you start out to look for the missing boats. I knew, then, that Pete was absolutely okay, or you wouldn't have gone."
Tony looked down at his feet, embarrassed by the gratitude and confidence implied in Mr. Carson's words.
Julio broke in lightly, ignoring the emotion-charged atmosphere. "I take it you found the Pelicano, by the way. Captain Garcia caught up with Lencho, a little while ago, and I believe your former enemy is on his way to jail again, for borrowing a boat without permission."
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