Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

In the American bar of The Broadway Front, the mahogany counter ran the length of the room. Mirrors glittered behind it. Here was a shrine of Bacchus, extinct in its native land...

Twenty-four hours sufficed to cut a trail with machetes, and pitch the tents in the cocoanut grove. One of them was promptly occupied by Señor Bazán, who was elated at seeing th...

They wrapped the body of Ramon Bazán in the blanket, and Richard Cary took the light burden in his arms to carry it back to the ship. It was right and proper that he should be t...

Joy in the belief that Richard Cary had not died that night in Cartagena! Anguish that she, Teresa Fernandez, had stained her hands with blood for which there had been no justif...

Only to Mr. McClement, chief engineer of the _Tarragona_, had Teresa Fernandez made known her intention of leaving the ship at the end of the voyage. Never again did she wish to...

The master of the _Valkyrie_ prowled on deck for some time. The two or three men in the forecastle had ceased their noise and were presumably in their bunks. The steamer was qui...

The cloth bound round his tousled head, the torn shirt that bared his chest, the pongee trousers soiled with sweat and dust, the strips of canvas wrapped about his feet, made th...

Richard Cary’s younger brother William was waiting at the railroad station with a noisy little automobile in need of paint. The New Hampshire hills were no longer blanketed with...

It was the opinion of Señor Bazán that the bell of the galleon _Nuestra Señora del Rosario_ should be mounted on the deck of his own vessel. The ancient bell had once sounded th...

By conventional standards, Jerry Tobin, owner of The Broadway Front on the liveliest street of Panama, was a disreputable person. The queer, turbid world in which he moved had i...

Teresa Fernandez, the trim, immaculate stewardess, on her way to a passenger’s room with a breakfast tray glanced into the dining-saloon. Richard Cary’s chair was vacant. He had...

Sending a message to Señor Bazán was easier said than done. Pen and paper were not essential to the simple life of Palacio for the excellent reason that he had never learned to...

A different man in fresh white pajamas and straw slippers, Richard Cary idled in a shady corner of the _patio_. A razor had reaped the heavy stubble clean. Not in the least rese...

The steamer sighted Cartagena in the rosy mists of dawn. It seemed to rise from the sea and float like a mirage. It was a mass of towers, domes, and battlements, of stone houses...

They were gazing at a lofty, rounded hill that lifted from the sea like the cone of a dead volcano. For the most part its slopes were green, with bare cliffs here and there or y...

A wisp of an elderly man appeared in the moonlit _patio_, with no more sound than the rustle of a dry leaf. He seemed to move with an habitual air of stealth. Bent and meager, h...

The romance of the sea! Damned rubbish, he called it. The trade of seafaring was one way to earn a living. This was about all you could say for it. He had been lured into the me...

These last hours before the sailing of the _Tarragona_ made the indolent wharf bestir itself against its inclination. It was a pity to disturb the tranquil noontide when all Car...

For once in his career, Don Miguel O’Donnell was a battered, defeated soldier of fortune. He had lost his schooner and was bound to accept whatever terms might be dictated, or f...

Such was the narrative as old Ramon Bazán poured it forth with various impassioned digressions which included cursing the souls of Captain Thompson and Benito Bonito. Excitement...

Across the Isthmus to Panama! It had been a golden road for the ancestors of Teresa Fernandez to follow to the South Sea. It seemed a propitious road for her to follow in quest...

The _Tarragona_, of the Union Fruit Company’s fleet, was steaming to the southward, away from harsh winds and ice-fettered harbors. It was sheer magic, this sea change that brou...

The prison of Cartagena consisted of a long row of arched, tomb-like apartments built against the inside of the city wall. Two centuries earlier, this series of stone caverns ha...

Señorita Teresa Fernandez was the stewardess of the _Tarragona_. A dark, handsome young woman, she wore a cap and uniform of white, severely plain, that were singularly becoming...

“Not a word, Ricardo. All I had to tell me anything was the briar pipe you left there. Then I knew you were alive, and so I followed you. It was because I could not understand—b...