Part 8

“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: