When the squadron dropped anchor

By Thomson Burtis
Author of “The White Slacker,” “The Green Serpent God,” Etc.
Accused of the most dishonorable conduct, cast off from the navy and the life he loved, Graydon still found opportunity to serve his country and erase the stain on his honor.
The echoes of the ship’s bugle, calling away the second whaleboat, died softly in the still harbor of San Juan de Gracias. The boat crew ran out on the boom, down its swinging rope ladder to the thwarts beneath, and pulled out to the gangway. At the head of the gangway stood a man in blue civilian serge and wide-brimmed panama hat. The brim half hid the eyes that were held to the seam of the cruiser’s deck. His shoulders sagged like those of a fighter waiting the knock-out blow.
The curt announcement of the ensign on watch, “Your boat is alongside,” brought the man’s head up with a jerk. His shoulders braced and his heels met. Mechanically his hand went in salute to the brim of the panama. In the old formula of the quarter-deck he answered: “I have your permission to leave the ship, sir?”
There was no answer. For a moment he faced aft to where the colors rippled over the taffrail. Then, with head down, shoulders drooping, he turned and ran down the ladder to the waiting whaleboat. The ensign stepped to the rail.
“In the whaleboat there. Land Mr. Graydon on the beach and return to the ship!”
“Aye, aye, sir! Shove off for’ard! Out oars! Way together!”
Swirls of phosphorescence leaped away from the driving ash blades, to trail like ropes of pearl in the wake. On the low-lying beach to which they raced, slender palm trees, silver lances in the blazing sun, stabbed upward through the heat mirage that ran like white fire. The thatched roofs of the native village sprawled in untidy array before the blurred eyes of the man in blue serge.
The next stage by which Stanley Graydon, ex-captain of marines, severed his ties with the service was a schooner that warped alongside a wharf at Santander, capital of the Republic of Santander, three days later. To the beauty of those sea leagues and to the bizarre life on the schooner he was blind. His thoughts were elsewhere.