Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

RICARDO WRITES A LETTER

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 made him pepper it with Spanish phrases that had to be translated. The effort sorely taxed his vitality. As Richard Cary said to himself, it was like a boiling kettle. The lid had blown off.

Artfully the climax had been withheld. With the gloating affection of a miser in a melodrama, Señor Bazán spread his creased, soiled document upon the desk. He guarded it with both hands as if Cary might snatch it and bolt for the street. A chart, as the young man had anticipated—a ragged island roughly sketched—the depths of water marked in fathoms—shore elevations shown by fuzzy scratches like caterpillars—sundry crosses and arrows and notations in figures. Here and there the penmanship was almost illegible. Time had faded the ink. Dirt had smudged the sheet of yellowed paper ripped out of some old canvas-backed log-book which might have belonged in the doomed Mary Dear. Ramon Bazán poised a skinny finger over a symbol inked between two hills and piped exultantly:

“Six million dollars in gold and silver and jewels, Ricardo. And here is the cave where Benito Bonito hid the ingots.”

Cary picked up a reading-glass and studied the sheet of paper with the eye of a professional navigator. The chart was the handiwork of a seaman, this he speedily concluded. The compass bearings were properly marked, the anchorage for a vessel noted with particular care, and a channel between the reefs indicated by heavier lines of a pen. The rest of the chart was cryptic, impossible to make head or tail of without prolonged examination. It was interesting but not convincing to Richard Cary who had heard of similar treasure charts. Seafaring men gossiped about them. They turned up every now and again, in the possession of credulous dreamers who swore them to be authentic.

There were excellent reasons, however, for avoiding skepticism in discussing this prodigious marvel with Señor Bazán. Here was Richard Cary’s chance to put the walls of Cartagena behind him, his one tangible hope of salvation. And he was not a man to hang back from seeking Spanish treasure as his next gamble with destiny.

“WHERE IS THIS COCOS ISLAND?”

“Where is this Cocos Island?” he asked.

“Only two hundred miles from the coast of Costa Rica,” instantly answered Ramon. “You see, it is a short voyage through the Canal and into the Pacific. You will not have to climb a tree, like El Draque, to look at the great South Sea. You are wondering why I should have so much faith in this chart? I am easily fooled? Well, then, it will cost a great deal of money to pay for a ship and a crew to go to Cocos Island and dig up the treasure. Nobody ever saw Ramon Bazán spend a dollar unless he knew what he was doing. They call him the stingiest old tight-fist in Cartagena. To get ahead of him you must rise before the cock crows.”

“Yes, it will cost you a good many thousands,” agreed Cary. “Do you mind telling me why you feel you have a sure thing in this treasure chart?”

“It is fair to ask me that question, Ricardo. When did the Mary Dear sail away from Lima? One hundred years ago, and a little bit more. One hundred and three years ago. This chart was given to me by my father. He lived and died in Cartagena, and he was eighty-six years old when he died in this house. It was always mañana with him, and he had business that tied him to the grindstone. He had dreams of going to Cocos Island. Figure it for yourself, Ricardo. This chart came to him just one hundred years ago. Will you laugh at me if I say this chart was given to him by Captain Thompson himself?”

“In Cartagena I believe anything and everything,” gravely acquiesced Richard Cary. “You couldn’t make me bat an eye to save you. The fever downed this Captain Thompson, I presume, while he was dodging under cover, and your father befriended him. That is how it should work out.”

“Exactly that! Truth is funnier than fiction,” cried Ramon Bazán, bobbing up from the desk. “My father had the kindest heart in the world. This stranger was dumped on the beach from a Mexican privateer which came in for fresh water. The man was ill and almost dead. My father took him into this house. He died in the room where you now sleep, Ricardo. A merchant captain, he said, whose ship had been wrecked off the Isle of Pines. Just before he died he told the truth, which is a proper thing to do, Ricardo. One should always make his peace with God. Then it was that my father received the chart and learned the whole story of Captain Thompson and the Mary Dear and the partnership with the pirate Benito Bonito.”

“I’m in no position to pick flaws in it,” said Cary. “I could tell you wilder ones than that. And you actually have a ship in mind to sail for Cocos Island and you want me to take her there?”

Ramon Bazán seemed to have some sudden difficulty with his articulation. He opened his mouth. His eyes bulged. His gestures were aimless as he faltered in a high key:

“The ship will be ready—the ship will be—will be—will be—”

His voice died in his throat. His face was contorted in a spasm of agony. He toppled across the desk, his hands drumming against it.

Richard Cary stood dumbfounded. This was the devil of a new complication! The possible consequences raced through his mind. Ramon Bazán dead in his library—El Tigre Amarillo Grande hiding in the house—a fatal snarl of circumstances from which there could be no possible release! Fantastically it occurred to him that the old man could not die in this tragic manner because the galleon bell had not intoned its ghostly forewarning.

Delaying only an instant, Cary ran to the kitchen shouting for the black woman who might know what should be done. She took it calmly, waddling into the library, making the terrified young man understand that Papa Ramon was subject to such seizures. In a small cabinet she found a vial and shook out two capsules. These she rammed between the suffering man’s lips and crushed them against his teeth. Like a miracle, the acute anguish subsided. It was his heart, mucho malo.

The corpulent negress picked him up in her arms like a baby and laid him upon the bed in his room. With a menacing finger under Cary’s nose, she dared to berate him. Topics of conversation more soothing were necessary to the welfare of the fragile old Papa Bazán.

Shunted aside, Richard Cary retired to a wicker divan in a cool corner and smoked his pipe while he took account of stock. He was nervous. Said he to himself:

“Big as I am and hard to jolt, I can stand just about so much. Here is one bet that I did overlook. Why didn’t the old boy tell me he had a balky heart? Supposing his clock stops before he gets me out of this jam? Whew!”

After some time, he tiptoed into the stricken man’s room. It was delightful beyond words to find him propped up with pillows and sipping a stiff glass of rum and lime-juice. He was a forlorn little object, more shriveled and brittle than ever, but his eye was brightening again and he mustered a shadowy grin. Soothingly Cary suggested:

“Thinking it over, sir, you ought to turn this business of the voyage over to me as soon as you can. You don’t want to pop off before we even sight Cocos Island. I agree to go, of course. Now where is your ship and what is she like? I am competent to take hold.”

“Thank you, Ricardo,” murmured Papa Bazán, with a long pull at the rum. “It was too much excitement. Sit down, if you please. We can talk quietly, like two pigeons. I knew you would agree to go with me, whether you wanted to or not. I had you by the hair of the head. But unless I have won your confidence, unless you go willingly, you can desert the ship at Colon and then where am I? I am bright enough to see that far.”

“I promise to stand by,” said Cary. “In the first place, it is a matter of honor. Perhaps you did kidnap me to serve your own ends, but that doesn’t lighten my obligation. I have no intention of getting out from under it. You have made a pampered guest of me, and now you offer me the one chance of oozing out of Cartagena with a whole skin. In the next place, I’m eager to go to Cocos Island with you. We’ll see the thing through. And there’s that.”

“Then I am a well man, as spry as a tarantula,” sputtered Ramon Bazán. “Have you a master’s license, Ricardo? It will concern the insurance on my steamer. I can’t afford to risk heavy loss. All the money I can scrape together will be in this voyage.”

“Yes, I hold a master’s ticket. And I’m fed up with twiddling my thumbs, so let’s go to it. What do you say?”

“But I can’t turn the ship over to you until she is ready to go to sea, at the very last minute,” lamented the owner. “You will have to be sneaked on board at night and hidden until the steamer is ready to sail, or the Colombians in the crew will jump over the side. One look at El Tigre Grande and—adios! Ten hundred things have I had on my hands to arrange, and do you wonder at my bad heart kicking a flip-flop?”

“I shall pray for your health, believe me,” devoutly returned the nervous young mariner. “Now about this steamer—”

“She is very awful to look at,” was the frank admission. “A German tramp that was interned four years at Cartagena! I bought her cheap, Ricardo. Rusty and afflicted with heart disease and other things, she will not sink if the weather is kind. But you yourself could never make the mistake of thinking she was the Tarragona. I have found a crew for my shabby harlot of a Valkyrie. Not such men as you will love, Ricardo, for I must take what I find. They must hear not a whisper of Cocos Island. It is a trading voyage to the west coast. The ship will clear for Buenaventura, a Pacific port of Colombia.”

“We’ll drive that condemned old crock along somehow,” cheerfully responded Richard Cary. “When do we sail?”

“A few days more, my captain. A little coal to put in and boiler tubes to be plugged. Coal is cheaper at Balboa. We can fill the bunkers there. As Heaven hears my voice, Ricardo, unless we find the treasure this voyage will ruin poor old Ramon Bazán.”

The interview had taken a turn that was not good for a damaged heart. The owner of the Valkyrie was growing excited. Cary thought it best to let the details rest. The old gentleman’s health interested him enormously. It was like carrying a basket of eggs along a very rough road.

The breakable Papa Bazán insisted on getting into his clothes next morning and seemed little the worse for wear. It was quite apparent that he had not been running around in aimless circles while preparing for his romantic voyage. He was amazingly capable of getting what he wanted, and without the eternal delays of his native clime. Those who now did business with him found his pertinacity as vexing as the itch.

The Valkyrie was a small vessel, of nine hundred tons, which had flown the German flag in the coasting trade of Colombia and Venezuela until gripped by the greedy hand of war. Corroded and blistering, a sad orphan of the sea, she had slumbered at an anchor chain in the lagoon of Cartagena until rashly purchased by Ramon Bazán after a season of dickering and bickering to make a New England horse-trader jealous. When he found how much repair work was unavoidable, his heart almost stopped forever. What made it beat again was the stimulus, more potent than capsules, of the six millions of treasure of the brig Mary Dear, besides those seven hundred and thirty-three gold ingots piled in the cave by the arithmetical Benito Bonito.

A west coast trading venture to make his old age something more than dry rot and stagnation, publicly explained Ramon Bazán. A whim of this erratic old codger, the Cartagena merchants found it mirthful. A guardian should interpose before he squandered all his money. A few critics argued to the contrary. In his prime Ramon Bazán had been famous for shrewdness. Who could tell? He might have something up his sleeve. The problem of raking a crew together caused more speculation. Cartagena was a languid seaport. Most of the commerce had been diverted to Porto Colombia. The American beach-combers who drifted in from the Canal Zone were more or less of a nuisance. It was one of these that Ramon Bazán had put in charge of his ship as chief officer while fitting for sea. A captain would join the Valkyrie later, he vouchsafed.

“What do you know about this chief officer, Señor Bazán?” asked Richard Cary.

“If I knew more I should like him less,” was the peevish reply. “He calls himself Captain Bradley Duff. Rough and tough, eh? He commanded ships, to hear him say so, but I think he lost his ticket somewhere. He had a job with the North American Mining Company at Calamar for a little while. A large, important man, Ricardo, with blossoms on his nose, and a very red face—his belly is round and his feet are flat. He has a big voice and a whiskey breath. But he knows a ship, and he can’t graft very much because I pay all the bills. He asks why he is not made captain of the Valkyrie? You will understand why when you know him, Ricardo.”

“I don’t have to know him, thank you. You can find a frowsy Captain Bradley Duff in almost any port. They make a loud noise and throw a chesty front. Is your chief engineer the same kind?”

“No. I was lucky to find him. A long, thin boy, younger than you, Ricardo, and with manners courteous to an old man. He wandered to Colombia from Boston because he had the loose foot. You know. To take a look at the tropics. Nothing wrong with him. He was an assistant engineer in steamers between Boston and Norfolk. Down this way he was in charge of the ice plant at Barranquilla until his foot felt loose again. For two weeks he has been sweating with the engines of the Valkyrie, always cheerful, and he says he will hammer seven knots out of the old contraption or blow her to the middle of next week. Contraption? He made me laugh. The Valkyrie is just that.”

For Richard Cary it was a game of blind-man’s buff, with such random echoes as these to make him call it a choice between being shot in Cartagena or drowned in a coffin of a ship. It was a mad world and daily growing madder. However, he liked it, and would not have exchanged lots with the spruce Captain Jordan Sterry and the immaculate Tarragona punctually running her lawful schedule.

One thing troubled him, and one thing only. He could not bear to go surging off into this uncertain escapade without sending some word to Teresa Fernandez. Wherever she might be, a letter would probably be forwarded if addressed in care of the Union Fruit Company’s offices in New York. He could not disclose his plans, but he could ask her to wait for him. So straitly was he fettered by circumstances that he felt bound to say to Señor Bazán:

“It is your secret, this voyage to Cocos Island. I have no idea of giving it away, but I must write Teresa before we sail. There is no harm in telling her that I have found a good berth in a ship in the west coast trade for two or three months. She knows how dull shipping is at home. I disappeared from the Tarragona, you remember, and I want her to understand that it wasn’t my fault.”

“Write her that much, then,” cried her waspish uncle, “but no more, on your honor, Ricardo. Fill that girl with all the beautiful lies you like about love and separations, but not one word about the Valkyrie and Ramon Bazán. By my soul and breeches, we must keep Teresa quiet. Nobody knows what she will do next. Put your letter on the desk with my letters. I will take them to the post-office when I go out to-morrow.”

For a young man naturally candid and unversed in evasions, it was a mortally difficult letter to write. He hated the web of secrecy which had inexorably enmeshed him. Besides this, he was writing his first love letter, and to a girl who had vanished from his ken, beyond horizons of her own. The situation was intricate, wretchedly confused. For the time he had given hostages to fortune and was not his own free man. To tell the whole truth, to explain to Teresa that, for love of her, he had sought a hiding-place in Cartagena with a price on his head and was now off for a fling at pirate’s gold to pour into her lap, this would have satisfied the normal impulses of a young man who desired to stand well in the eyes of his sweetheart.

With a sigh and a frown, and a smile now and then, he finished the task. The letter he laid on the desk of Uncle Ramon Bazán, as instructed. It was gone next morning, he was particular to notice, when the owner of the Valkyrie hastily departed in a carriage to pursue his harassing affairs.

What Richard Cary did not know was that his letter was not among those which Señor Bazán had casually tucked in a pocket after observing that all of them bore stamps. He may have inferred that the young man had changed his mind. At any rate, it was a detail which soon slipped from an aged and heavily laden mind. All the letters found on the desk were deposited at the post-office and this was the end of the transaction for Ramon Bazán.

The perversity of fate had assumed the guise of a little brown monkey of morbidly inquisitive habits. Early in the morning he had strayed in from the patio. The library was forbidden hunting-ground and therefore alluring. No doubt he was searching for Cary’s briar pipe as the especial quest. From a chair he had easily hopped to the top of the flat desk. The pile of letters ready for mailing arrested his errant fancy. First he shuffled them as though playing solitaire. Then he selected an envelope at random. It crackled as he squeezed it.

The stamp in the corner caught his eye. A paw with sharp nails peeled off a corner of the stamp. He tasted it. The flavor was agreeable. Some sound in the hall just then disturbed his pastime. He tucked the one letter under his arm and took it along for leisurely investigation. It might be worth chewing for more of that pleasant flavor.

Lightly the little brown monkey frisked from the library and galloped across the patio. In a far corner were two large tubs, painted green, which held young date palms. Behind them was a secluded nook where the astute monkey had often hidden such objects as appealed to his fickle fancy.

Into this snug retreat he retired with the crackling envelope. Gravely intent, he tore the envelope open. He crammed a piece of it into his cheek. The taste was disappointing. He was angry. He had been hoaxed. He chattered profanely. With a grimace he tore the sheets of paper into strips. Then he tore the strips into very little bits of paper. They fluttered down behind the green tubs.

The brown monkey looked pleased. He raked the bits of paper together and tossed them in air. They floated down like petals of the white flowers when he shook a bush in the patio. Some of them stuck to his hairy hide. Very carefully he picked them off. He scooped another handful of these bits of paper and flung them up.

Soon tiring of this frolic, he swept all the bits of paper into a wide crack of the masonry wall behind the tubs. He had learned to be discreet. It was unwise to leave any traces of a foray into that forbidden library. Once it had resulted in a little brown monkey with a very sore head. Papa Bazán had used the flat of a brass paper-cutter.