THE GREAT YELLOW TIGER
Sending a message to Señor Bazán was easier said than done. Pen and paper were not essential to the simple life of Palacio for the excellent reason that he had never learned to read or write. The hut was rummaged in vain. Much perturbed, Palacio limped into the chapel and returned with a tattered missal. Heaven knows how long this illuminated black-letter volume had reposed in a dusty niche of the pulpit. Sacrilege it might be to tear out a broad-margined leaf, but Palacio promised himself to do penance. With a sharp bit of charcoal the derelict mariner wrote on the margin:
My Dear Señor Bazán:
I am disabled and in serious trouble. If you feel like lending a hand, you will have to send somebody to get me down the hill of La Popa, and safely to your house. The Señorita Teresa Fernandez told me how to say ver las orejas del lobo. “To see the ears of the wolf” means to be in great danger, I take it. This seems to fit the case of
Yours sincerely
Richard Cary
Anxiously Palacio looked on and furiously rumpled his gray beard. He did not approve. To hear the name of old Ramon Bazán was enough. Some unpleasant gossip or other had lingered in his simple mind. He had not always been the hermit of La Popa. Timidly at first and then in a scolding humor he objected to the procedure. The beloved guest was safe, as things were, and rapidly regaining health and vigor. Leave it to Palacio to safeguard him against his enemies and, in due time, to devise some means of flight. It might be up the great river and across the mountains to the other ocean, such a journey as Palacio had made in his own youth.
Gently but stubbornly the guest persuaded his benefactor to undertake the mission. Consent was hard wrung, but in the last resort Palacio could not deny any wish of the mighty, fair-haired Ricardo, the apple of his eye. It was toward the middle of the afternoon when the reluctant messenger took his staff and said farewell.
“God willing,” he called back. “God willing,” he was repeating to himself as he trudged past the garden patch, “Como Dios es servido, ó si Dios es servido—ó siendo Dios servido.”
Shortly after the departure, Richard Cary concluded to essay walking out of his tunneled chamber, as far as a gap in the convent wall. It was necessary to know whether he was capable of this much effort. Very carefully he guided his uncertain steps across the cellar, like a child learning to walk. It seemed ridiculous. A touch would have pushed him over. His brawn had been so much fuel for the fever to feed upon.
Elated by the venture he sat down to rest on a broad stone slab from which he could see the slope of the hill toward Cartagena, and the sea flashing beyond the barrier of the Boca Grande. It filled him with a sense of buoyancy and freedom, with emotions too deep for words. Circumstances still shackled him, but once more he beheld wide horizons and felt the freshening trade wind brush his cheek, the wind that had blown so many stout ships across the Caribbean.
He was alive again, eager to follow wherever fickle fortune might beckon. If the odds should veer in his favor, would he want to go back to the monotonous trade of seafaring in a merchant steamer out of New York? It seemed incongruous, a world away. The Spanish Main had been cruel to him, but he had ceased to feel resentment. It had been a game of give-and-take. His was the winning score. The next turn of events was worth waiting for. Heads or tails?
The peaked straw hat of Palacio had long since bobbed down the hill and across the causeway to a gateway of the city wall. Gradually the violet shadows crept over the sward beside the melancholy pile of the convent. The goats raised their voices to notify the lonely watcher that something was wrong. It was time for them to trot in to shelter.
It was time also for Richard Cary to seek his own retreat before the dusk should make him stumble in the débris of the cellar. He was most loath to leave the open sky and the westering glow and the communion of the salt breeze. Laboriously he made his way to the darkened refuge in the earth and lighted a candle. The complaisant armadillo had sauntered off on some twilight errand of its own. Silly, but the solitary man wished he had the armadillo to talk to. Again immured, his spirits were overcast.
Out of doors, he had regained his large and placid indifference to whatever might impend. Now his nerves were tautening. The answer of Señor Ramon Bazán might be a file of Colombian soldiers hurrying up the hill. With a shrug, he thrust such fears aside. Win or lose, he must play his hand out. No more of that crazed torment which had bitten into his brain while he had crouched in the round watch-tower, whetting the machete on a rough stone.
Once while he had stood with Teresa Fernandez at the rail of the Tarragona, she had hummed a verse or two of a song called the Breton Sailor’s Litany, remembered from a voyage to Brest in her girlhood. He had learned it as well as he could, for the pleasure of hearing her murmur the words over and over again.
“Dieu puissant, notre père,
Qui commandez aux flots,
Écoutez la prière
Des pauvres matelots.”
It came back to him now, with the translation she had also taught him to say. He found peace and comfort in it, as if Teresa herself were bidding him to hold fast to his courage:
“God all powerful, our Father,
Thou Who commandest the sea,
Listen to the prayer
Of the poor mariners.”
The first significant sound to catch his listening ear was the excited bleating of the goats tethered almost over his head. Nothing else than the return of Palacio could make them so suddenly vocal. A delay while he found his lantern, and the weary messenger came stumbling through the cellar, shouting to ask if Ricardo was alive and well. It was hard to find out what news he brought. There was no word in writing from Señor Ramon Bazán, and Palacio’s long narrative was poured out in Spanish so tumultuous that it meant very little to his guest.
It had something to do with a pile of wood and a mule and a muchacho. This much was picked out of the jumble. In Palacio’s croaking accents was also a violent distrust of the manners, morals, and motives of the aged Señor Bazán. Having simmered down, he made it comprehensible that Ricardo was to make ready to go at once, pronto, into Cartagena by night. Means had been provided. Much distraught, Palacio toddled to his hut to find and offer a patched tarpaulin cape and a new peaked straw hat woven by himself. He had already washed and mended Cary’s tattered shirt and trousers.
Lack of a razor contributed to the general effect of a Robinson Crusoe as the fugitive emerged from his earthy abode. It was, indeed, a venture in the darkness. Quien sabe? The riddle of Señor Bazán’s intentions was still unsolved.
“Here goes,” said Richard Cary, looking about him in the starlight. “I’ll soon find out whether I am putting my head in a trap or not. Where do we go from here? Donde?”
Palacio whistled. A gray mule came sidling into the lantern’s glow. Leading it by the bridle was the Indian lad whom Cary recalled seeing in the patio of Uncle Ramon. There was no saddle. A sack was tied across the mule’s back.
“What kind of foolishness is this?” objected the passenger. “I see myself parading through Cartagena on the quarterdeck of a flop-eared mule. Oiga! The Colombian infantry could never miss a target like that.”
The Indian lad caught the drift of this tirade and grinned a reassurance. Palacio volubly insisted that it was muy bueno, so far as the mule was concerned. Again he chattered about the mysterious pile of wood. He had labored with it himself. He lifted imaginary sticks and groaned with both hands clapped to his back. Richard Cary subsided. He was in no position to quibble over details.
His companions hoisted him astride the mule. It was a very strong mule or its legs would have bent. Palacio limped as far as the garden patch. Another journey down the hill and back again was too much for him. He embraced his guest, his splendid son, and fervently commended him to God and Nuestra Señora de La Popa. If he weathered the stormy gale of circumstances, Richard Cary pledged himself somehow to repay this humble recluse with the heart of gold.
The sure-footed mule picked its way down the broken path, the lithe Indian lad chirruping in its ear. Beyond the foot of the hill, where a road swung inland from the harbor, the lad turned aside. At the edge of the jungle was hidden a ponderous, two-wheeled cart. It was heaped high with cordwood. Stakes at the sides prevented it from spilling. The muchacho nudged Cary to dismount. The mule was backed into the shafts and a brass-bound harness slung on its back.
“I suspected a nigger in the woodpile,” reflected the dubious Cary, “and now I know it. Just where do I fit into this load of wood? Hi, boy! What about it? Qué es esto?”
The lad motioned him to examine for himself. A false bottom had been laid in the body of the cart. Between the floor that rested upon the axle and the upper platform of boards was a space perhaps a foot and a half deep. Into this the bulk of Richard Cary was expected to insert itself. He thanked his stars that illness had reduced his flesh. It was the utter helplessness of being flattened in there, underneath the pile of wood, that made him flinch. It was too much like being nailed in a coffin. To be discovered and hauled out by the heels would be a fate too absurd to contemplate.
However, if there was a beggar alive who could not be a chooser, it was this same Richard Cary. He had to admire the ingenuity of the contrivance. A belated countryman hauling a load of firewood to the city in the cool of the night would pass unnoticed, whereas a curtained carriage might invite scrutiny. The stratagem was worthy of the wizened little man of the patio, with the grimace of a clown and the eye of an inquisitor.
Very unhappy, Richard Cary inched himself in beneath the load of wood, flat on his back. The Indian lad, who had a wit of his own, hung over the rear of the cart two bags stuffed with fodder for the mule. These concealed the protruding feet of the melancholy stowaway. It was one way to enter Cartagena, but hurtful to the pride of an adventurer who had waged one hand-to-hand conflict after another in escaping from these same walls. There were precedents among other bold men, however, as far back in history as the wooden horse of Troy.
The springless cart bumped and shook him infernally. He swore at the mule, in muffled accents, and even more earnestly at the crafty Señor Bazán. He could not be blamed for a petulant humor. After an hour or a week or a year, over streets that seemed to be paved with boulders, the load of wood turned into an alley and halted. The muchacho was in no haste to extricate his passenger. First the wood had to be thrown off and the false bottom knocked apart. The lad was unequal to the task of hauling his human cargo out by the legs.
Released, at length, from the ignominious cart, Richard Cary was a prey to renewed qualms. The rear wall of Señor Bazán’s house was darkly uncommunicative. It told nothing whatever. Presently, however, a door opened on a crack. The Indian lad hissed, “Rapido.” The Americano was to remove himself from the alley. He obeyed as rapido as the cramps in his legs permitted. His senses were set on a hair-trigger for whatever emergency might leap at him.
The door opened far enough to admit him. He brushed through, into a shadowy hall, and collided with the shrunken figure of Señor Bazán who yelped dismay and retreated as if afraid of being trodden upon like a bug. The uneasy visitor tottered after him, having a fancy for quarters more spacious than this dim, confined hall. It was like a pursuit during which Señor Bazán scurried into a large room which to Richard Cary’s unaccustomed vision seemed ablaze with lights. He stood and goggled like an owl.
Many shelves of books, a desk littered with papers and more books, heavy furniture of mahogany and stamped leather—this was evidently a library in which the aged uncle of Teresa spent much of his time.
He, too, blinked bewilderment. The ragged scarecrow of a Cary, with the stubbled beard, the blanched color, and the drawn features, was tragically unlike the ruddy young giant in the crisp white uniform with the gold shoulder bars who had towered beside the galleon bell in the moonlit patio. The contrast was deeper than this. Then he had been easy and smiling, the massive embodiment of good-nature. Now his jaw was set, the haggard eyes somberly alert, and his whole demeanor that of a man on guard against an ambuscade. Still absorbed in studying him, Señor Bazán said not a word, but dragged a chair forward and thrust it behind the visitor.
Cary could not have stood on his feet much longer. He dropped into the chair. As a gesture of good-will the old gentleman patted his shoulder and silently vanished to reappear with a tray of cold chicken, salad, bread and cheese, and a bottle of port. Then he cocked his head like a bird and said in English:
“Make yourself easy, my dear young friend. It has been the devil to pay for you since I had the pleasure of meeting you in my house. I have no soldiers hiding behind the curtains, and I have not informed the department of police. There is a hot bath and a soft bed for you, and my poor company to-morrow.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it that I am in safe water,” sighed Richard Cary, his scowl fading. “Comfort like this is worth any trouble that may break later. There was no reason why I should feel sure of a friendly welcome, sir. I am an outlaw, as you know. It was taking a blind chance.”
“ ‘Ver las orejas del lobo!’ ‘To see the ears of the wolf,’ ” gleefully quoted the old gentleman. “So this is the wolf’s den? First I must ask pardon for talking only Spanish when you called with Teresa. It was rude, a shabby trick. There is no better English scholar in Colombia than Ramon Bazán. That girl is so full of mischief that I thought she might lead you on to make fun of her venerable uncle. It would have amused me to listen. Where did I learn my English so well? It means nothing to Teresa—these things happened before she was born; but for several years I was the minister for my country in Washington and later in London. A withered old back-number now, with one foot in the grave, but Ramon Bazán was almost the president of Colombia. A revolution exploded under him. That was many years ago.”
A breast of chicken and a glass of port were not too diverting to prevent Richard Cary from paying keen attention. He surmised that Señor Bazán was eager to make a favorable impression, exerting himself to dispel the idea that he was a senile object of curiosity. He desired to awaken respect as well as gratitude. This might be laid to an old man’s childish vanity. At any rate, he had ceased to be merely grotesque.
There was no malice on the wrinkled, mobile features of the little old man in the flapping linen clothes. Furtive he was by nature, the beady black eyes glancing this way and that, the bald scalp twitching, but, for the present, at least, there was no harm in him. This was Richard Cary’s intuition. He also guessed that Señor Bazán was anxious to ingratiate himself. If there was a motive behind it, this could be left to divulge itself. The situation hinted of aspects unforeseen.
“You can sleep calmly to-night, Señor Cary,” said the host, with his twisted grin, “but many people in Cartagena would stay wide awake if they knew you were so near.”
“Am I as notorious as all that, sir? Of course I want to hear the news—”
“As they say, you stood this city on its head,” shrilly chuckled Ramon Bazán. “Revolutions have begun with less disturbance in some of our hot little republics of the Caribbean. Rumors flew about until your exploits were frightful. The children of Cartagena have never been so obedient to their parents. All they have to be told is that El Tigre Amarillo Grande, the Great Yellow Tiger, will catch them if they are naughty. It was this way—your dead body was not found, although you were on the edge of death when you escaped from the prison. You could not have fled far. This was why you were not looked for at La Popa. Therefore you were no man, but a wicked spirit from hell. The common people are very foolish and ignorant.”
“I never meant to upset the town when I came ashore that night,” said Cary, smiling in his turn. “You are good enough to shelter me and you ought to know the facts. It was just one thing after another. A gang of roughs tried to wipe me out. In self-defense I stretched two or three of them. My hunch was that Colonel Fajardo had put up the job. If I stayed in jail, he was bound to get me. And my ship was ready to sail. My duty was to join her. So I walked out of the prison, but was too late to get aboard the Tarragona. My head went wrong with fever. I don’t know how I climbed La Popa. Well, that’s the nubbin of the story.”
“Five of the bravoné and three soldiers of the prison,” grinned Señor Bazán, ticking them off on his fingers. “Am I not a valiant old man to sit alone in the same house with El Tigre Amarillo Grande?”
“Not while a word in the telephone yonder would cook my goose,” grimly answered the prisoner of fortune. “Please tell me one thing. Did I kill any of those poor devils at the prison? I didn’t want to. They got in my way and I had to treat ’em rough.”
“By the mercy of God, the corporal whose neck you wrung had a little breath left in him. The two other soldiers are also alive. The five bravoné who were serenading the ladies that night? Two were found very dead. Another whose shoulder felt the iron bar died after four days, I am happy to say. That iron bar? My dear young man, crowds of people still gather to look at the window from which El Tigre pulled the iron bar like a straw in his hands.”
Richard Cary blushed. He was never a braggart nor had he aspired to a reputation like this. “Then I am a bigger fool than I thought I was, to come into Cartagena,” said he.
“An amusing fool,” replied Señor Bazán, with a whimsical twinkle. “How you expect to get out again is too much for my feeble old wits. Not in a Colombian sailing boat of any kind. Every sailor of Cartagena crosses himself when he hears the name of El Tigre Amarillo Grande. The muleteers and men of the river are carrying it back into the mountains. It will soon spread as far away as Bogotá.”
“Then why in the name of common sense did you fetch me in from La Popa?” was the blunt question.
“How could I refuse, Señor Cary, when you appealed to my hospitality, you a friend of my niece, the Señorita Fernandez?”
This answer was palpably evasive. Here was a riddle which only time and the crotchety impulses of Ramon Bazán could disclose. The puzzled young man was in no mind to confide that his love for Teresa had urged him to this blind adventure. Cross-currents were already visible. The uncle of Teresa had some design of his own in harboring the sailor refugee. The situation was cleared of immediate peril, however, and Richard Cary concluded that he was not to be betrayed. The rasping voice of Ramon Bazán awoke him from a reverie.
“You suspected Colonel Fajardo of plotting to kill you? Why?”
“Jealousy,” was the admission. “And I was warned that he had a bad record.”
“Jealousy, Señor Cary?” twittered the old gentleman, highly diverted. “And the woman was that spitfire of a Teresa! I had my suspicions, but it is not politic to wag the tongue too much in Cartagena. As it turned out, this Colonel Fajardo convicted himself.”
“The deuce he did,” cried Richard Cary. “Then my conscience is clear from start to finish. What do you mean? How did he convict himself?”
“He fled next day—disappeared like smoke. Afraid because you were not dead? Perhaps. Afraid of a plot he had hatched while half-drunk? The fact is that he was seen for the last time on the wharf before the Tarragona sailed. Yes, he ran away somewhere, and so confessed himself a guilty man.”
“He was that kind,” said Cary. “The blackguard invited me to sit and drink with him in a café a little while before his gunmen attacked me. So he lost his nerve and decided to make himself scarce. How did he get away?”
“Possibly in the Tarragona. There was some talk that he might have bribed one of the crew to hide him for the short trip to Porto Colombia or Santa Marta. But he has not been seen in those ports. I have inquired of friends. He is very well known on this coast as a colonel of the army before he was appointed Comandante of the Port. There it is! Colonel Fajardo has most thoroughly disappeared. I regret you did not hit him with the terrible iron bar.”
“I shall always regret it,” said Richard Cary. “Doesn’t that make it more hopeful for me to climb out of this infernal scrape, Señor Bazán?”
“Not very much. You are charged with murder, assault, breaking prison, and the good God knows what else! And you are El Tigre Amarillo Grande! The Fruit Company’s agent has shown no interest in your behalf. That would be most useful.”
“Captain Sterry may have turned in a bad report in New York, sir. He was biased—there was a personal difference—a grudge of his. He signed on another second mate, I presume, and I was thrown in the discard.”
“Then you will have no employment as an officer, even if you are lucky enough to get away from Cartagena, Señor Cary?”
“It sounds ridiculous to look that far ahead,” lazily answered the prisoner who found it hard to stay awake. “At present I seem to be cast for the part of El Tigre, and it doesn’t appeal to me at all.”
Señor Bazán scolded himself for exhausting a guest already weak and in distress of mind. He took the young man by the arm and tried to steady him as they crossed the patio and entered a bedroom. The bath was near at hand.
“Pajamas to-morrow, Ricardo,” said the host. “The woman in my kitchen is sewing them together. She will also make some white clothes. There are none big enough in the shops. If I visit a tailor he will pass it around as a joke that Ramon Bazán must have El Tigre Amarillo in his house. Bolt your door, if it pleases you. The window has strong iron bars and nobody in Cartagena can pull them out to molest you. There are worse friends to have than old Ramon Bazán. That Teresa has called me a funny old guy to my face. You mustn’t believe all she tells you.”
The old gentleman went fluttering off in his hurried fashion as if shadows were forever chasing him. Richard Cary was awake for a long time. Sounds in the street disturbed him. Once he fancied he heard the distant voices of men singing and the melodious tinkle of a guitar. Again it was the pit-pat-pat of feet on the pavement outside the window. When sleep came to him, his dreams were unhappy.