THE CASTAWAY
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 its own rigid standards of appraisal, however, and by these he was rated as a person of solid integrity. He was on the level. This verdict is sometimes denied those who sit in higher and more sanctified places.
In the era before the darkness of prohibition had dimmed the bright lights of his café on the Broadway of Manhattan, he had enjoyed the esteem of politicians, actors, race-track magnates, prize-ring celebrities, and gentleman idlers who respected his opinions and often accepted his judgments.
Prosperity had attended his tropical exile, but dollars could not altogether solace a homesick heart. Mrs. Mary Tobin was even more unreconciled, but she was never one to complain. Seldom questioning Jerry about his own affairs, she lived her life apart from them. When she had first known him he was a serious-minded, athletic young policeman on a Sixth Avenue beat and she was the daughter of a desk sergeant of the precinct station. In that neighborhood were her friends, her church, and her lifelong associations. In middle age she had been pulled up by the roots, and it was hard adjusting herself to this remote, exotic environment.
Blown by the winds of chance, Teresa Fernandez had been borne in to her. Mary Tobin’s loneliness and unspoken discontent were banished. This dark-eyed, handsome girl from Cartagena, bright and sad by turn, who seemed to confide so much and yet paused on the brink of revelation, was a figure of fascinating romance. She flamed against Mary Tobin’s quiet background.
Jerry was tight-lipped by habit. Teresa felt grateful for his reticence. Finding her in trouble, he had befriended her. Nothing was said about an impetuous antique dagger which had literally stayed the hand of an intruder called Sheeney George. With a delicacy that did him credit, Jerry inferred that it wasn’t the kind of thing a lady liked to have told on herself.
It was distressing enough, as Mary Tobin viewed it, that Teresa had felt compelled to cut off her lovely hair and go wandering about as a young man. That Jerry proposed to find some way of sending her to Cocos Island did not seem quixotic. Mary Tobin was eager to aid and abet. This relieved Jerry’s mind. The situation might have been awkward.
“Of course you will be helping her to get to her lover, Jerry,” said sweet-voiced, motherly Mary Tobin. “And how can you manage it? ’Tis worth the money whatever it costs.”
“I have found a gasoline yacht that’s fit for to live in,” he replied. “All I want now is the right skipper, and I have sent word to Captain Ed Truscoe that had a Canal towboat and quit her last week. He’s a buddy of mine. You know him, Mary.”
“A fine man, Jerry, but will we want to let Teresa go alone? I was thinking I might ask myself along, but I’d be seasick every minute and—”
“And you’d be in the way after she meets up with this walloper of a sweetheart of hers. The old crab of an uncle will be chaperon enough and more too. They’ll want to wring his neck.”
“But does it seem right to send her off by herself, even with Captain Ed Truscoe?” persisted Mary. “An older woman ought to be kind of looking after her.”
Jerry permitted himself a grin as he gruffly exclaimed: “Miss Fernandez can look after herself, take it from me. Don’t let that worry you. So it’s all right to blow her to the trip, is it? It will set me back some berries. She wants to put her own money in it, but I said nothing doing. This is Jerry Tobin’s joy-ride. Drop in and see us when you come back, said I, and show us your prize exhibit. We’ll tell you whether he is worth it. If he isn’t the goods, I will have to go get you another one.”
“What do I care what it costs?” smiled Mary Tobin. “ ’Tis more real pleasure than I have got out of anything since we said good-bye to the flat on the West Side. From what Teresa tells me, this man of hers is the finest one that ever trod the green earth. Here’s a woman that said the same when Jerry Tobin was courting her.”
“ ’Tis worth something to have you blarney me like that,” said Jerry, whose harsh face could soften with tenderness. “Well, we are young but once, Mary girl, and when we’re young we want what we want when we want it. So I will get that gasoline yacht away from here in a couple of days if I have to shanghai Captain Ed Truscoe.”
Thus it happened that Teresa Fernandez was whisked away to sea with no say in the matter beyond the affectionate gratitude that welled from the depths of her heart. The gasoline cruiser was small for an offshore voyage, but Teresa was too seasoned a sailor to mind the long Pacific swell. Captain Truscoe, veteran towboat man, was unperturbed in anything that would stay afloat and kick a screw over. He was a thick-set, bow-legged chunk of a man, hard and brown, who seldom smiled, and talked with an effort. Teresa perplexed him. At table together in the little cabin, with a Japanese steward dodging about like a juggler, Captain Truscoe stared and pondered. Now and then he bit off a brief question or two.
“What about this uncle? Who let him loose?”
“He ran away from home like a naughty boy and I must coax him back,” replied the amused Teresa.
“Better had. They tuck ’em in padded cells for less. Jerry mentioned a young man, master of the ship. What about him?”
“I am sure I don’t know why he went away on this crazy trip, Captain Truscoe. That is one thing I must find out. It is all very much mixed up.”
“Sounds so. None of my business, I suppose. Known Jerry and his wife long?”
“Not very. They were wonderfully good to me.”
“They like you, Miss Fernandez. Jerry told me to keep on going if I missed your people at Cocos Island. The limit is off, says he.”
“But how will I know where to go next?” cried the troubled Teresa. “I am sure we shall find them there. Good gracious, Captain Truscoe, don’t you suggest such things to me.”
By way of diverting her, he brought out photographs of his wife and three young daughters in San Francisco. His comments were terse.
“Nice woman. Thrifty. She saves my money. Good kids. I meant to go home, but Jerry grabbed me. You ought to get married and settle down, Miss Fernandez. Best thing for a pretty young woman.”
Teresa blushed at this and turned the topic. There were long hours when she was solitary, and somber moods oppressed her. The sense of fear and uncertainty was like a crushing weight. Jealously guarded was the secret of the real purpose of her quest. She was afraid of murmuring it in her sleep. It stood beside her as a dark shadow in the likeness of Colonel Fajardo.
Such were her meditations when the yacht sighted the lofty hill of Cocos Island and stood in to approach the black headlands that guarded the bay. Soon the passage opened to view, and the sheltered water with the glistening beach, the jungle, and the cocoanut palms. Captain Truscoe was at the wheel. Teresa stood at his elbow. Tensely anxious, she dared not say what was in her mind. The skipper bit off a chew of tobacco and rapped out:
“No vessel in here. What about that? A wild-goose chase!”
“Is there no other anchorage?” implored Teresa. “Why, I was sure we would see the rusty old Valkyrie!”
“No other holding ground for steam or sail. Look at the chart for yourself.”
“But they were bound to Cocos Island,” panted Teresa. “My friend the gunner’s mate—the young man I met in The Broadway Front—he saw the Valkyrie heading this way when he spoke her in his destroyer. And Mr. Jerry Tobin was absolutely certain of it.”
“Come and gone, maybe,” said Captain Truscoe, “but I never heard of these treasure bugs scamperin’ off like that. We’ll take a look ashore.”
He ordered the motor dory made ready. No sooner had the yacht dropped anchor than he went to the beach with Teresa. She felt a quivering apprehension of misfortune.
They crossed the level sand and came to the boulders strewn in stark confusion. Teresa saw wreaths of flowers, black and withered, on a yellow mound and the name of Ramon Bazán cut in the face of a huge, rough stone.
With a cry she ran to kneel beside the grave, her face buried in her hands. Her grief was genuine, her remorse a torment that she had been no more affectionate toward this fretful old man who, in his own way, had been fond of her. It was incredible that he should have ceased to live. From childhood she had taken it for granted that he would always continue to sputter and to flit about on his furtive errands. He had seemed as permanent as the ancient house in which he dwelt.
She was bewildered, all adrift. There was nothing to explain it, merely this pitiful grave amid the primeval desolation of Cocos Island. Captain Truscoe was both sympathetic and observant. He was studying the inscription on the boulder. The date was chiseled beneath the name of Ramon Bazán.
“Only two days ago,” said he. “If your information checks up right, Miss Fernandez, they couldn’t have been here much more than a week. And we no more than just missed ’em. A kettle o’ fish and no mistake! Sorry about your uncle. You found him, didn’t you, but it’s a shock.”
“Yes, he will never run away any more,” sadly smiled Teresa. “He was very old, and I suppose it was time for him to rest. But how did he die, Captain Truscoe, and where is Captain Cary and the ship and all her people?”
“Gone somewhere, Miss Fernandez. Would it be back to the Isthmus? How do you feel? Want to go aboard or shall we rummage about?”
They moved away from Ramon Bazán’s boulder and discovered the well-worn road with the wheel ruts, and a clutter of small carts and lumber. In so short a time this road could not have been made by the Valkyrie party.
“Another crowd, but their vessel has gone, too,” said Captain Truscoe. “Here’s a trail off to the left that is fresh cut. That looks more like your outfit.”
They entered the leafy path which had been chopped by the Colombian sailors. They advanced slowly with a certain caution. At length they discovered the devastated camp close to the shattered cliff, a torn upheaved waste of rock and gravel. They found fragments of canvas, bits of clothing, battered cooking-utensils, broken tools scattered far and wide. Captain Truscoe picked up an empty brass shell from a magazine rifle. He tossed it in his hand as he said:
“This was a violent place to be. Blown up and shot up. Quite recent. Any sensible man would leave it in a hurry and put to sea. I guess it was too much for your uncle.”
Teresa was speechless. It was too much for her. She was frowning at a broken galvanized pail on which was stenciled S.S. Valkyrie. What was buried underneath those horrid masses of stone and earth from which uprooted trees protruded?
“I don’t blame you for feeling upset,” said the skipper. “This gets my goat.”
“Oh, I don’t want to stay here,” Teresa found voice to tell him. “Please help me get back to the yacht.”
She had been living in the hope that Cocos Island would be her journey’s end, but now the road was blinder, blacker than ever. Later in the day she ventured as far as the verdure near the beach and gathered fresh flowers to leave on the grave of Uncle Ramon Bazán. Captain Truscoe sturdily explored the road built by Don Miguel O’Donnell and returned with an extraordinary story of the abandoned hydraulic pipe-line and elaborate equipment.
“All hands scurried away, like rats from a hulk,” he reported, very hot and tired. “What next?”
“I wish I knew,” mourned Teresa. “I can tell you nothing. You are much wiser than I am. I am finished. Now my poor uncle is dead, there is nothing to guide me. Is Captain Cary in command of the Valkyrie, or is he also dead on Cocos Island?”
“It does look mighty random,” agreed Captain Truscoe. “There’s this comfort—somebody was alive and able to take the steamer to sea. She never rambled off by herself. When it comes to figuring where she went, your guess is as good as mine.”
“I can guess nothing. We had better go back to Panama. Is it not so? And I will thank Mr. Jerry Tobin and say good-bye.”
“Better stay with ’em until you get your bearings, Miss Fernandez. Maybe the Valkyrie will turn up there.”
“Perhaps. If not, I won’t try to find the ship and Captain Cary any more. I have done all I could. If the ship does not come to Panama, I must go back to Cartagena. It is where I belong. I thought I could get away from Cartagena—from something very unpleasant for me—but it is no use. It must be as God wills.”
“Stay away, if it’s as bad as that, Miss Fernandez. All right, we sail first thing in the morning. Homeward bound means better luck sometimes.”
They made a smooth run of it until a thick night with rain and a boisterous wind compelled the small cruiser to reduce her speed. She was tossed about more and more until Captain Truscoe hove to before his decks were swept.
Toward morning, Teresa Fernandez was in the drowsy state between waking and dreaming. She heard a bell. It was distant, almost inaudible. Her heart throbbed painfully as she listened. The sound came to her again, the ghostly whisper of a bell, but deep-toned and familiar. It was like no other bell in all the world, by land or sea.
Was she dreaming? No, this was the stateroom of the yacht, with the water surging against the round ports. After some time, the far-away lament of the galleon bell came to her ears again. It seemed as though its intervals were cadenced, that it was tolling a message which she dreaded to hear. Four bells! Dong-dong—dong-dong!
She could interpret it. Uncle Ramon Bazán was gone. To her had been bequeathed the galleon bell. It was sending her its warning of some impending disaster. It meant that she was fated to return to Cartagena and so accept the penalty for the deed she had done. The bell had been taken from its frame in the patio and carried to sea on the Valkyrie. No matter where the ship might be, she would hear the bell sound its tidings at the appointed time. How could she doubt it? The legend had dwelt among her kinfolk for centuries. It was interwoven in the fabric of her inherited beliefs. And now that she heard the bell, she felt certain she would never see Richard Cary again.
The little stateroom suffocated her. She resolved to go on deck in spite of wind and weather. She dressed and snatched an oilskin coat and sou’wester from a hook. Sliding back the cabin hatch, she crawled out into the welter of rain and spray. The yacht was still hove to, riding buoyantly. Teresa groped her way forward to the wheel-house and wrenched open the door. Beside the hooded binnacle lamp stood Captain Truscoe steadying himself while the flying water swashed against the windows. He grasped Teresa’s arm as he said:
“Lonesome down below? Nothing to worry about. This flurry will blow itself out with daylight.”
“Did you hear a bell?” besought Teresa, trying to speak calmly. “A ship’s bell? No, you would not hear it. The bell was for me and nobody else.”
“I can’t hear much in here. Too much racket outside. What’s this about a bell, young lady?”
“I heard it,” she answered. “And then I thought—perhaps it might be just ringing inside my head—”
“I’ll step on deck. There is nothing in sight,” he replied, willing to humor her.
They went out together and held fast to a railing. In a vessel as small as this, the sea was very near and clamorous. Stolidly Captain Truscoe waited and listened, but he could hear no distant bell.
“You imagined it,” he shouted in Teresa’s ear. “Dishes and glasses banging about in the pantry, possibly.”
“It is not ringing now,” said she. “Yes, it may have been imagination. It was a strange thing to hear. It frightened me.”
“Better go back to bed. The sea is quieting. I’ll be shoving her along soon.”
She hesitated and then went aft to the cabin, the captain escorting her. As yet there was no sign of dawn in the watery obscurity of the sky.
“If you hear a bell, you will call me?” she asked.
“Sure thing, Miss Fernandez. Hope you get to sleep. Your berth is the most comfortable place to be.”
Troubled sleep came to her nor did she hear the phantom bell again. The sea was turning gray outside the ports when she felt the engines pick up speed. Rolling heavily, the yacht swung off to resume the course to Panama. To Teresa it seemed fantastic that she should have paid such serious heed to the fancied message of the galleon bell. It was a warning of another kind, that her nerves were all jangled. The hallucination ought to be dismissed.
This she was trying to do when there came a knock on the door and Captain Truscoe was saying:
“You were right. I heard the bell just now, off the starboard bow. It’s not bright enough to see far, but I’ll try to find out what that bell is.”
“But I never heard it again,” she exclaimed. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. You are all battened down like a bottle, inside here. There is no trouble about picking up the sound of the bell on deck.”
Teresa flew into the oilskin coat. She was out of the cabin in a twinkling. Clear and musical came the voice of the galleon bell. It was ringing persistently, flinging out a brazen appeal, nor could Teresa detect the cadenced and ominous intervals of four bells. She understood why she alone had heard it so faintly in the night. Her ear was sensitively attuned to its vibrations. They had been an intimate part of her existence.
Now the bell was ringing for all to hear. It was somewhere in the gray waste of sea, mysterious and invisible. Teresa was reminded of the miracle of the marble pulpit which had been wonderfully borne up to float with the fickle currents until it was cast ashore under the wall of Cartagena, to be carried to the cathedral in devout procession.
“Santa Marta and the angels!” she piously exclaimed, crossing herself. “But I can see no ship at all, Captain Truscoe, and what is the bell of Nuestra Señor del Rosario doing out there in the ocean and making so much noise?”
“Gone mad, I should say. It may be on the bottom and a mermaid is pulling the clapper.”
“It is floating, I tell you!” joyously cried Teresa, who was not mad at all. “For once it rings good news. You can know that by the way it sounds. It is time for a blessed miracle to happen to poor Teresa.”
Captain Truscoe wiped his binocular and gazed again. Daylight was driving the mists away. The lowering clouds were lifting. A clear sunrise was heralded. A dark speck was discovered against the heaving sea. The yacht plunged toward it, flinging the green water aside. The speck grew larger. Underneath it was a white ruffle of foam like surf playing on the back of a reef.
Soon they could distinguish the galleon bell suspended between two upright timbers which swayed wildly to the thrust and swing of the waves. The timbers projected from a platform like a raft. Huddled between them was an object that moved. It was a man who waved something white to let the yacht know that a castaway was on the raft.
Teresa Fernandez needed no binocular. Inner vision told her that Richard Cary was found. It could be no one else. For whom else would the galleon bell have wrought this marvel?
She watched him very slowly haul himself to his feet, like one dead with exhaustion, but indomitable. He stood holding himself erect, his arms around the cross-piece from which the bell was hung. His shirt fluttered in rags. He was drenched and bruised and battered. As a young god he towered in the sight of Teresa Fernandez, and his yellow hair was like an aureole.
The yacht swept to leeward of the raft and slackened way. Captain Truscoe and two men jumped into the motor dory. Richard Cary paid them not the slightest attention. All he saw was a girl in an oilskin coat and sou’wester, a girl who unconsciously held out her arms to him. Ah, she knew Ricardo loved her! It illumined his face even before his voice came huskily down the wind:
“My girl ahoy! This is the luckiest treasure voyage that ever was.”
She blew him a kiss. Captain Truscoe watched his chance and jockeyed the motor dory close to the raft. Stiffly Richard Cary released his grip of the timber and poised himself with a seaman’s readiness. Into the boat he lurched and fell like a log. His tremendous vitality enabled him to revive and to gain the deck of the yacht with two sailors heaving at his shoulders. They helped him to the cabin where he sprawled upon a couch.
Teresa followed. Maternally her first desire was to have him warm and dry, and tucked in bed where she could nurse him. She stood aside while Captain Truscoe ordered the steward about, demanding hot whiskey, blankets, and clean clothes from the biggest man on board. Shakily, with a man to lean on, Richard Cary was able to reach the captain’s room.
“Please wait until the sea is smooth enough to hoist that bell aboard,” said he. “Don’t let it go adrift. It has been a good friend to me.”
While watching the door for Teresa, he fell blissfully asleep. She tiptoed in an hour later. She had felt no great impatience. It was enough to know that he was safe and near to her. Leaning over him, she let her fingers lightly brush his ruddy cheek. Brave and simple and honest he looked as when she had first known him. She wondered what he, too, had dared and suffered while they had been parted. In a word or two he had told Captain Truscoe of the loss of the Valkyrie. All hands saved in the boats. This would be like her Ricardo, preferring not himself.
She summoned her courage to meet the ordeal of her confession. The warm tint faded from her olive cheek. She was like the Teresa, grave and resigned, who had fingered a rosary in her room of the Tarragona before she had gone to the wharf to confront Colonel Fajardo, when she had been willing to pay the price as a woman who had loved and lost.
Ricardo opened his eyes and smiled. He was not too weak to open wide his arms and draw her close, so that her head was pillowed upon his mighty shoulder. She sighed and whispered:
“You do love me, Ricardo, everything and always? As I love you?”
“More than when I loved you and lost you in Cartagena, Teresa mine,” he told her.
“And are you too tired to talk to me?” she anxiously entreated him.
“I had a rough night, but I feel strong enough to start a riot if you dare to leave me,” he replied with the laugh that she so delighted to hear.
“Please don’t look at my hair,” she implored. “It is all gone. Now I look like an ugly black-headed boy. But I cut it off for you. Will that make you forgive me?”
“All I can see is that you are beautiful, Teresa dear. I thought you might have been ill with fever.”
“Yes, Ricardo, if love is a fever. And I am not cured of that. I was trying to find you. And in Panama I was a young man in a bar-room hunting for news of you and your ship.”
“The Lord save us!” he exclaimed in dismay. “Is that my reputation? And I got into all this trouble trying to find you in Cartagena! You went to Cocos Island, I hear, so you know Señor Bazán is dead. But how did you know where to look for me? What did you think? Did you get the letter I wrote in your uncle’s house?”
“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—because I had to find you—”
Her solemn demeanor perplexed him. She drew away and took a chair, her hands clasped, one little shoe tapping the rug. For his own part he had so much to explain that he burst out:
“No wonder you couldn’t understand. It is a long story, and I can give you only the first chapter of it now. That night when I failed to come back to the ship? You warned me to be careful, and so did old McClement, the chief engineer, but I had a grand opinion of myself. Colonel Fajardo decided to blow out my light. I annoyed him. His bravos bungled the job. They left me dead in the street, or so they thought.”
“Did Colonel Fajardo think so? Tell me, did he think he had killed you, Ricardo?” asked Teresa in a tense voice.
“He must have felt upset about it that night, because I wasn’t quite as dead as a mackerel. But I was supposed to die in jail where they threw me. So he must have been cheerful enough next morning. Did he show up at the ship before she sailed?”
Teresa’s body relaxed. A tremulous sigh fluttered from her lips before she said:
“Yes, Ricardo, he came down to the ship. I asked him and he lied to me. I knew he lied.”
Her eyes were so wistful, so profoundly tragic, that Ricardo, greatly mystified, clasped both her cold hands in one of his and forbore to break her silence. She was struggling with the temptation to withhold the secret from her lover, now that her justification had been vouchsafed. Why tarnish her fair name in his sight and perhaps repel him? Men were very jealous of the goodness of the women whom they truly loved. She fought down the temptation. Better to live without Ricardo than to live with a shadow between them. She was about to speak when Ricardo said, with visible embarrassment:
“It will never trouble me, but you ought to know. I can’t go back to Cartagena. I suppose you might call me a fugitive from justice. The world is big enough to get away from it, but I was not very gentle with Colonel Fajardo’s bravos. Two or three of them are not singing and playing the guitar any more. And there was a fight on Cocos Island, but that incident is closed. I can forget it all if you can, Teresa darling, but I have to confess to you.”
“You are a strong man who was fighting for his life, Ricardo,” firmly returned Teresa Fernandez. “And I am only a woman who saw her lover dead and knew there was no other way to punish the wicked one who had killed him. If you say I should go back to Cartagena and suffer the punishment of the law, I will go. You have only to say one little word. There is no more Colonel Fajardo. Do you understand?”
Richard Cary gazed at her in great pity and love and admiration. Who was he to judge? Had he not taken justice into his own hands when he had boarded Don Miguel O’Donnell’s schooner and courted fatal conflict? Had he slept any more uneasily for it? He had waged private war from the galleried streets of Cartagena to the palm-fringed bay of Cocos Island, like a roving Cary of Devon. Was there one law of justification for a man and another for a woman?
“If you believe in your heart that you did wrong and ought to pay for it, Teresa,” he slowly responded, “then we will go back to Cartagena together. You and I walk hand-in-hand from now on. But for the life of me, I can’t see it that way. Is it going to make you remorseful and unhappy? Mind, I go with you if it ought to be done.”
“Ricardo, I am not a bad woman,” she earnestly answered, “but I swear to you I feel no sorrow or shame. When it happened, I was willing and ready to pay the price, but it was not asked of me. And it was doing penance when I went back to Cartagena, just because I had to find out about you. What you have told me, that death did strike at you in the dark, is enough to make me at peace with myself and with God who must judge me. You know how you felt and what you said when you sailed across the Caribbean in the Tarragona, and saw my old city of Cartagena. It was just like you had lived and loved and fought there long ago. Perhaps it was that same Richard Cary that went to Cocos Island. And who knows but what I was another Teresa Fernandez, of the very long ago, that took it into her hands to punish the man who had killed her lover? If it had not been for her, there would have been no punishment for him at all. Does it make a difference, Ricardo, in what you think of me?”
“Only to make me love you more,” said Ricardo. “We are not going back to Cartagena. Life begins now. We have had enough of the past.”
“Then I can be happy,” smiled Teresa, but she also sighed. “If I have been wicked and must suffer for it, there is something that will tell me, and it is not my own conscience. Some day and somewhere, we will have a home, with a garden, Ricardo, and the galleon bell will hang there as it did in my uncle’s patio. It is a joyful bell now, for it has learned to ring good news. But if the day ever comes when Teresa hears it toll four bells for her, then she will know it is time for her to go. And she will go very gladly, for it will be enough, my precious, my splendid Ricardo, to have lived and loved with you.”