CHAPTER XXXII.

THE FLAG OF CASTILE.

“Twelve hours from now, Miss Hathaway, you will have your first glimpse of Cuba. Then, our business transacted, a quick and uninterrupted run to Santiago, and to-morrow you will be on terra firma.”

“It has been a remarkably short voyage, Mr. Van Zandt.”

“Deplorably so. I never before regretted the speed of the Semiramis, but now—would that she were as snail-like as the old West Indian tub we overhauled yesterday. Can I prevail upon you, Miss Hathaway, to again favor me with my pet Chopin nocturne? The electric fans render the saloon as comfortable as the deck.”

“My poor playing is always at your service, Mr. Van Zandt. I assure you that I never expected to enjoy a voyage, to Cuba or elsewhere, as I have this. Your kindness in granting us—”

“My kindness was purely selfish,” interposes Van Zandt.

It is easy to see that for two people on board the yacht the last few days have swiftly sped. Van Zandt and Miss Hathaway have been much in each other’s company. Confidences have been neither asked nor given, but a mutual sympathy has taken root that might prove destructive to the reserve of one and the “marble” of the other were the voyage to the tropics to last many days longer.

Cyrus Felton is restricted to his stateroom most of the time, a victim of the malady of the sea and a gnawing, indefinable distrust of the owner of the yacht. As for Don Manada, he divides his attention between the huge cigars from which his fingers or teeth are never free, and a careful outlook for any of the Spanish squadron that is supposed to blockade the coast of the isle of Cuba.

But the sensuous indolence of the tropic day and the glories of the tropic night lure Van Zandt and Miss Hathaway into dreams of peace and hope and fulfillment. The days spent on the quarterdeck, sheltered by an awning from the rays of the sun, the speed of the yacht providing a delightful breeze, glide gently into the brief twilight. The great stars shoot out of the blue with quivering points of fire, and the wind sighs musically through the rigging as the tireless steam drives the boat through the phosphorescent waves.

“Consider what the voyage would have been to me without your presence,” continues Van Zandt, as he leads the way to the saloon. “With Don Manada there, engrossed in Quixotic schemes for achieving the independence of his beloved country, and Capt. Beals as communicative as a sphinx, your society has saved me from myself—a synonym for dreariness. And now for the nocturne.”

While Van Zandt is telling Miss Hathaway that she is the only woman he has ever heard play Chopin intelligently, and the latter is modestly disclaiming such ability, the musical echo of the lookout’s call is passed to the saloon:

“Sail ho!”

“Where away?” is the challenge.

“On the weather bow. A large steamer, judging from her smoke!”

Don Manada casts his cherished cigar to the waves and glues his eyes to the telescope.

As announced, the unknown vessel is directly on the weather bow and will pass within half a mile of the Semiramis, if the two craft hold to their present courses.

The captain intently watches the approaching vessel. The Semiramis is far beyond the five-mile limit of the Cuban coast, but if the unknown is a Spanish cruiser she may become suspicious of the trim yacht.

It therefore behooves the American steamer to insure the stranger a wide berth if the latter displays the arms of Castile; to show a clean pair of heels, in the vernacular of the sailor, if flight is necessary.

Again are preparations made to force the Semiramis to her highest speed. The awnings are removed, the boats once more unswung from the davits, the force of stokers in the engine-room augmented by half a score of sturdy seamen, and soon the roaring of the forced draught in the funnels again drowns the hum of the engines.

At rail or in rigging, from bridge or quarterdeck the people of the Semiramis watch intently the approaching vessel, whose funnels and upper works are now visible through the glass.

The Semiramis bears gradually to the westward, to afford the stranger at least three miles leeway. Suddenly Capt. Beals lays aside his glasses and rubs his chin thoughtfully.

“Do you care to show your papers to the Don?” he asks Van Zandt.

“To the Don? Is she a Spaniard, sure? But we shall pass a comfortable distance to windward of her and she will not attempt to interrupt us.”

“She has already changed her course and is bearing directly across our bows. See!”

The unknown, now less than ten miles distant, seems to be steaming at full speed for a point directly in the course of the Semiramis. Her broadside is now visible to the anxious watchers on the yacht. She is apparently an armored cruiser of perhaps 5,000 tons, her hull painted a dull and featureless gray. No flag or emblem is as yet displayed from her taut and business-like rigging.

“She is painted and cleared for action. She is—ah! I thought so!”

A flag is broken from the cruiser’s masthead, and Capt. Beals, as he focuses his binocular upon the streaming emblem, mutters between his teeth: “The flag of Castile!”

“’Tis a Spanish warship, Senor Van Zandt!” exclaims Manada, who has been studying the stranger. “Can your beautiful craft bear us from harm’s way? I fear that yonder ship is the Infanta Isabel, the latest and most formidable accession to the navy of our hated oppressors. She has been detailed to intercept vessels supposed to bear arms and re-enforcements to our friends, and especially to watch for and destroy our gallant Pearl of the Antilles.”

“Have no fears, Don Manada. Your cargo is safe. We will show the Spaniard a trick or two; eh, Beals?”

Capt. Beals does not reply in words to his employer’s confident assertion, but an observant man might distinguish a slight relaxation of the muscles about his mouth.

The Semiramis holds steadily on her course. Only the increasing clouds of smoke that pour from her funnels indicate that anything out of the ordinary is expected of the yacht.

Only six miles distant! Five! Four!

A puff of white that rolls lazily from the forward deck of the cruiser is succeeded by a dull roar.

“Show the Don our colors,” Capt. Beals orders the second officer.

While the smoke from the cannon yet lingers above the Spaniard’s deck the glorious stars and stripes unfurl from the mainmast of the Semiramis, and snap gayly, defiantly, upon the breeze. And still the American yacht continues to steadily lessen the distance that separates the two craft.

Boom!

Another puff of white, followed a few seconds later by the report; and this time the watchers on the yacht can see the flash of the gun.

Only two miles distant now, and the Spanish warship, apparently convinced that the American understands and designs to obey the peremptory summons to heave to, has slowed her engines until the cruiser has barely headway on the long swells.

Calmly pacing the bridge, as if a thousand miles separated the vessels—nearly equal in size, but how dissimilar in destructive power!—Capt. Beals has not indicated a slowing of the yacht’s engines, although the bow of the Semiramis points at the steep side of the Spaniard, directly amidship.

Not half a dozen lengths away!

The officers and men on the man-of-war are clearly visible to those on the yacht. The captain and his subalterns are grouped on the quarterdeck, the marines amidship, the blue-jackets crowding the rail and adjacent rigging. The cruiser is stationary on the water.

But with no sensible diminution of speed the Semiramis bears upon the Spaniard, the white foam dashing high on either side of her bow. Capt. Beals is fingering the electric buttons that regulate the speed and course of the yacht.

The Spanish captain nearly drops his speaking trumpet. What is El Americano thinking of? He cannot stop in five times his own length at such a frightful speed! Is he mad? Ah! Dios! Caramba! And a dozen more Castilian expletives poured forth in a torrent of astonishment, rage and chagrin.

For with a sudden turn to the windward that causes the yacht to careen until her white sides below the water line gleam for an instant in the sunlight, with an accession of speed that sends her forward as a whip would a nervous horse, the Semiramis darts by the stern of the Spanish man-of-war, the smoke from her furnaces enveloping for a moment the cruiser’s afterdeck.

Two minutes later she is a mile astern of the warship, her long white trail sparkling in the sunlight, and the red, white and blue still snapping defiantly at the masthead.

“I wonder if the Don can turn in five times his own length,” observes the sententious Mr. Beals, as he watches the warship slowly getting under way.

Whether he can or cannot is not at this time to be demonstrated. The cruiser makes no attempt to about ship, but another report booms from the forward gun, followed a second or two later by one from the aft barbette, and a solid shot ricochets along the waves astern of the Semiramis and plunges beneath the water an eighth of a mile distant.

Van Zandt grows grave as he realizes the significance of this last shot, but a glance at the receding cruiser convinces him of the futility of the cannonade. The Spaniard, too, appears convinced, and the cruiser is soon lost to view in the expanse of ocean.

The rest of the day the Semiramis holds unmolested her course for the mountain-girth shores of Cuba. As night draws on the engines are slowed, and, with fires banked and double watch posted, the yacht quietly rocks on the bosom of the deep. A wavy outline on the horizon indicates the southern coast of the revolution-racked isle and somewhere on that outline is the sequestered little harbor of Cantero.

It is a weary, an unnerving vigil, for Don Manada at least. For hours his anxious gaze sweeps the horizon, while the Semiramis rides the breasting waves as gracefully as a summer bird soars into the blue.

As the first shafts of light radiate from the emerging disk, Louise Hathaway, whom the unwonted excitement of the preceding day has driven early from her pillow, cries out with a girlish enthusiasm that brings a smile to the face of Capt. Beals: “Sail ho! Sail ho!”

Every one springs to rail or rigging. “Where away?” is the quick challenge of Mr. Beals.

“Right there, sir,” is the unnautical response of Miss Hathaway, and she indicates a point not five degrees north of the rising orb of day.

With the glass at his eyes, the taciturn commander of the Semiramis watches intently the speck on the glowing horizon that means much to the excited Manada at his elbow and to the latter’s struggling fellow-patriots on the isle whose outlines are now bathed in the flood of sunlight.

Is it another Spanish warship, or is it the looked-for Cuban cruiser, the doughty Pearl of the Antilles?