THE HAPPINESS OF PAPA BAZÁN
For once in his career, Don Miguel O’Donnell was a battered, defeated soldier of fortune. He had lost his schooner and was bound to accept whatever terms might be dictated, or face the unpleasant alternative of being marooned on Cocos Island. A prisoner in the cabin, he was stanching the blood from a cut on his cheek when Richard Cary came down from the deck and said:
“Here, let me fix that for you. My steward is coming aboard to help patch up your men. Sorry, but two or three of them are past mending. It was a dirty job you forced on me.”
“I wish I had left you alone, Captain Cary,” replied Don Miguel, without a trace of animosity. “I was the stupid one. It was in my mind that you might try to capture this vessel, but those machine guns made me feel easy. I lose and I must pay.”
Cary smiled. He could afford to. It was a waste of breath to denounce this veteran adventurer as a murderous blackguard who had brought disaster upon himself. He had behaved according to his own code which gave the spoils to the victor.
“Aye, you lose,” said Captain Cary. “You have until sundown to get your shore party and supplies aboard and make sail. If there is no breeze, I will tow you to sea.”
“And if I am not ready to sail by sundown, what then?”
“I shall sink your schooner. And I won’t feel at all backward about using the machine gun you made me a present of.”
“Machine guns are trumps,” said Don Miguel. “I am leaving Cocos Island before sundown. It will not be healthy to stay longer. To wait for another ship to take me off would be too much like Robinson Crusoe. Six months, a year? Quien sabe?”
“You are fed up with Cocos Island?” observed Cary. “I feel something like that myself, but I shall stick a while longer.”
“To find the treasure, my dear young man? Yes, I see you are in a hurry to go back to your camp and dig, just as soon as my schooner is on the ocean again.”
“Right you are. I expect to occupy the camp to-night. Señor Bazán will be fidgeting to get ashore again.”
“I hope you will find something,” very courteously replied Don Miguel. “Perhaps you will find something to-night. Señor Bazán seems to know exactly where to look for the treasure. I was not so lucky with my chart of Benito Bonito’s boatswain.”
Soon after this interview, Captain Cary returned to the Valkyrie. Mr. Duff was left as prize master with a guard of five men. Señor Bazán was found asleep in a deck-chair after wearing himself out with fears and anxieties. Ricardo felt his pulse. It relieved him to find that the old gentleman had survived such a racking night as this. His heart was behaving far better than could have been expected. Apparently the sea voyage had been good for it.
Well, there would be no more clashes and alarms on Cocos Island. The argonauts from Cartagena could remain as long as it should please Ramon Bazán to hunt for the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. They had found an awkward neighbor in Don Miguel O’Donnell, but he was departing bag and baggage.
Captain Cary slept late into the forenoon. The black cares had lifted. His own wounded men were on the way to recovery. His was the satisfaction of having fought and maneuvered his way out of an exceedingly tight corner, with the favoring aid of the goddess of chance. He felt a young man’s pride in defying the odds and smashing a way through adverse circumstances.
When he came out of his heavy slumber, Ramon Bazán hovered beside the bunk. His spectacles were on his nose. He was examining the chipped ear and the grazed arm which Ricardo had covered with strips of plaster.
“All’s well,” yawned the hero. “What do you say? Shall we shove off to the camp to-night?”
“I hope so,” chirruped Ramon, who was in high spirits. “The men have told me all. Do not trouble yourself to talk too much now. Do you know what I have decided? To give you half the treasure as soon as we find it. It will be my gift to you and Teresa, three millions besides the gold ingots. You must chase after that girl and marry her, Ricardo, if it will make you happy. With this treasure you can live quiet and safe. If you keep on fighting like this, Teresa will be a widow. Of course, when I die you will get my treasure, too, you and your sweetheart, except what I give to the splendid officers and sailors of the Valkyrie. There is nobody to leave it to, only you and Teresa. Now you will have some fun in digging up this Cocos Island.”
“Oh, I have had fun enough already, and a bully good run for my money,” Ricardo assured him. “It is very fine of you to feel this way, but what do I want with three million dollars? Supposing we let it rest until we turn up the treasure.”
“If we miss finding it,” uneasily pursued Papa Ramon, “I have not much to leave Teresa. There is my house in Cartagena, and some more land, but this steamer and the voyage have cost me many thousands of dollars.”
“Please forget it,” urged Ricardo. “If I can find Teresa and she still loves me, what else in the world do I want?”
“That girl used to tease me and call me a horrid old monkey, but I will never scold her again,” said Papa Ramon. “Yes, Ricardo, perhaps there are more precious things than money. I have been learning it for myself. Loyalty? Is that the word? It is bigger than life itself. Why did you capture the schooner? Why will these men follow you anywhere you say? It is not for money at all.”
“It is never too late to learn,” smiled Ricardo. “I should call this a liberal education for all hands of us. Travel and entertainment, with frequent trips ashore. It puts it all over a cruise in a banana boat.”
It was late in the afternoon when the watchers on the Valkyrie saw Don Miguel’s party come down the road to the beach, dragging the last cart-loads of the stuff they wished to take with them. Their boats carried it off to the schooner. Prize-master Duff, at a signal from Captain Cary, withdrew his guard and returned to the steamer. A light breeze was sighing off the land. Shortly before sunset the tall sails were hoisted and the anchor weighed.
The schooner rippled slowly past the Valkyrie to trim her sheets and follow the fairway out beyond the headlands of the bay. Don Miguel O’Donnell paced the quarterdeck, a straight, vigorous figure of a man who bore himself gallantly. He raised his hat and bowed in courteous farewell. As he turned away, however, his hand went to his cheek, to touch the ugly cut that had marked him for life. It was a gesture which did not escape the scrutiny of Richard Cary. He made up his mind to steer clear of Ecuador. Soon the schooner caught a stronger draught of wind and heeled to its pressure as she made for the open sea.
Captain Cary mustered a landing party and beckoned Señor Bazán. Alas, the old gentleman was the picture of unhappiness. It had occurred to him, as an appalling possibility, that the piraticos of Don Miguel O’Donnell might have discovered the treasure during their one day in camp. Perhaps it was some of the bullion in canvas bags that they had been trundling in the carts. To soothe Papa Ramon it was advisable to lose not a moment in investigating the camp. And so they lugged him along in the hammock slung from a pole.
To his immense relief, the excavation which they had begun close to the face of the cliff was found to be no deeper, nor had the gravel been disturbed elsewhere. Captain Cary’s first task, after they had put the tents to rights, was to detail a burial party for the body of the Colombian sailor which had been hidden in the bushes during the forced retreat. Papa Ramon wept. He had turned quite sentimental. He would pay for many masses to be said in the cathedral of Cartagena for the soul of this valiant mariner.
The air was uncommonly cool at dusk. The wind suddenly shifted and swept in from the sea. It was a refreshing night for tired men to rest their bones in sleep. They were eager to be up with the dawn and resume the toil with pick and shovel. Therefore most of them were in their hammocks as soon as darkness fell. Señor Bazán was snoring in his tent, after pottering about until his legs rebelled. Richard Cary wandered to a smooth rock and sat down to smoke and ponder. His nerves were still taut. It was difficult to relax.
The camp became silent. The only sounds were the rustle of the cocoanut palms and the music of falling water. For some time he sat there, and then prowled to and fro. The sky presaged fair weather. The sky was brilliant with stars, and almost cloudless. Little by little he felt lazily at ease. He decided to go to his tent.
Just then he heard a bell. Its notes were sonorous. The air fairly hummed with them. They were lingeringly vibrant. They were the tones of such a bell as had hurled its mellow echoes against the walls of Cartagena when the galleons of the plate fleet had ridden to their hempen cables. To Richard Cary’s ears the sound of this bell seemed to come from a distance, and yet it throbbed all about him. It was the bell of the Nuestra Señora del Rosario which had been mounted upon the roof of the Valkyrie’s forecastle.
He was accustomed to hearing it daily on shipboard as it marked the passing hours and changing watches, but even there it never failed to thrill responsive chords in some dim recess of his soul. Until now, however, it had not been heard as far inland as the camp. The fresh breeze blowing across the bay and the silence of night were conditions peculiarly favorable, thought Cary, but he stood in an attitude of strained attention.
Dong-dong—dong-dong!
Four bells! Richard Cary scratched a match and looked at his watch. The hands pointed to a quarter after nine. By the ship’s time, two bells had struck and it was not yet three bells.
Dong-dong—Dong-dong!
The galleon bell tolled again, Four bells! So far away and yet so dangerously insistent, as loud in his ears as though he stood upon the ship’s deck. He seemed also to hear Teresa’s voice attuned in harmony with it, to hear her saying in the patio:
“There is something about this old bell, very queer, but as true as true can be. If anything very bad is going to happen to the one it belongs to, this bell of the Nuestra Señora del Rosario strikes four times, dong-dong, dong-dong. Four bells, like on board a ship. When there is going to be death or some terrible bad luck! It has always been like that, ’way, ’way back to my ancestor Don Juan Diego Fernandez.”
While Richard Cary listened, the bell sounded its warning once more, and then was mute. He was not dreaming, nor was he under the spell of those visions which had so often disquieted him. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the tents, the bare cliff, the yellow streaks of gravel. The sailors were asleep in their tents. For a long moment he stood bewitched and helpless. He refused to believe and yet he dared not disobey. He was pulled two ways. Common sense flouted it. What shook him free of this trance was the voice of Ramon Bazán who called out piteously. Cary ran to the tent and found the old man sitting up in his cot.
“Thank God, you have come, Ricardo. In my sleep I had a fearful dream. Four bells! I heard it and then I was awake, and I thought I heard it again. I feel very sick. Has the time come for me to die? You didn’t hear any four bells, did you, Ricardo? I am shaking all over.”
“Nonsense, Papa Bazán,” exclaimed Ricardo, patting the bony little shoulder. “I heard the bell, but it just happened that the wind brought the sound to us. Four bells? Perhaps the ship rolled in a ground swell and swung the clapper.”
“Then you did hear it, too?” quavered Ramon, clutching Ricardo’s arm. “It is no nonsense, not when the bell sounds like that. We must get out of this camp and go back to the ship. It is the safest place to be. Not for six million dollars will I stay here to-night. We must all go to the ship, I tell you. Will you take care of me, Ricardo?”
“Back we go to the ship, Papa Ramon,” readily agreed Richard Cary. “I feel like a fool, but I’ll confess I am creepy. I am whistling to keep up my courage. If there is a curse on this Cocos Island, we may as well get out from under. When it comes to fighting with spirits, a machine gun is no use at all.”
“Quick, Ricardo! Get the sailors to carry me in the hammock. I cannot walk out of the tent.”
Cary lifted him from the cot. He clung like a frightened child. At the lusty shout of all hands, the men came boiling out of the tents. They slept with one eye open. Was it another attack? They crowded around their captain. He was at a loss to explain it. The thing seemed too preposterous for words. While he hesitated, Ramon Bazán plucked at his shirt and implored him to make haste.
“Jump out of this. Vamoose! To the ship! On your way, boys!” thundered Captain Cary.
They obeyed on the instant. Some new danger threatened. El Capitan was very much alarmed. When he gave an order like this, it meant something. Excitedly they straggled toward the trail. A grotesque exodus for brave men, if they had known it, and Richard Cary reproached himself as a womanish coward, but he was in a cold sweat of impatience, nevertheless, to set foot on the deck of his ship. Trudging behind his men, he found himself glancing back like an urchin in a haunted lane.
The pace slackened. One or two sailors ventured timid questions. He was still evasive. He gruffly mentioned a warning message. They inferred that perhaps Don Miguel O’Donnell had come sailing back to make a stealthy landing. Bewildered but trustful, they plodded on, swinging lanterns and sleepily chattering. The two who bore Señor Bazán in the hammock halted to ease their shoulders. The others waited.
A terrific explosion rocked the earth. The detonation stunned them. The first thought was that a volcanic eruption had blown up through the dead crater. They rushed to the nearest opening in the jungle. They could see the dark loom of the hill climbing to the little lake in the bowl at the top. It was undisturbed.
They turned to look in the direction of the camp. The sky was a glare of crimson. They could hear the crash of rock falling from the cliff, of débris raining from the air. Then came a roaring, grinding sound like a landslide. Huddled together, the fugitives were dumb until Captain Cary spoke up:
“I have a notion we pulled out just in time. Let’s go take a look.”
They rushed back to the end of the trail and out into the clearing beyond the ravine where the tents had stood. There were no tents and no cocoanut palms. They had to climb over huge heaps of broken rock which had been jarred from the crumbling, fissured face of the cliff. Their excavation was buried many feet deep in earth and stones dislodged from the steep slopes above the cliff. Great ragged holes yawned in the gravel banks. Richard Cary took a lantern and explored the chaos. He returned to report to Señor Bazán who had been laid on a blanket found wrapped around the splintered stump of a tree.
“Four bells was right,” said Ricardo. “The camp is blown to glory. And a big piece of the hill is dumped on top of it. This Don Miguel was a poor loser. I wish I had killed him with his machine gun. It’s easy enough to figure how the trick was done. He had a lot of dynamite left, so he told his gang to mine the camp. They cut the fuse long enough to burn several hours. I stumbled over one of his iron pipes. They ran the fuse through it, I suppose. An excellent joke, said Don Miguel, eh, Papa Ramon? ‘Perhaps you will find something to-night,’ said he. He has a sense of humor.”
“He couldn’t forgive you for whipping him,” feebly piped the old man. “Four Bells, Ricardo! Now I do not have to die.”
“I should say not. Now you can live to be a hundred. And we’ll have to give you a vote of thanks for putting the galleon bell on the steamer. Not that I am convinced, but it was a most extraordinary coincidence.”
“You are a fool, Ricardo,” snapped Papa Ramon, with a flash of the old temper. “And Teresa would call you worse names than that. It was the intercession of the Blessed Lady of Rosario for whom the galleon was named.”
A sailor exploring the débris with a lantern suddenly went insane, or so it appeared. He screeched, slid into a hole on his stomach, and wildly waved his legs. His comrades scampered to haul him out. Instantly they, too, became afflicted with violent dementia. Cary went to investigate. He caught up a lantern and peered into this fresh excavation torn by the explosive. A frenzied sailor was filling his straw hat with tarnished coins. Another was struggling to lift a heavy lump of metal, but had to drop it for lack of elbow room. Cary reached down and jerked the two men out of the hole. They danced around him, spilling Spanish dollars from their hats and shirts. He slid down and tossed out the weighty lump which looked like bullion fused and roughened by heat.
He ran to fetch Papa Ramon and to spread his blanket close to this miraculous gravel pit. The sailors darted off to search for bits of board to dig with. One of them was lucky enough to find a broken shovel. By the light of the lanterns they made the gravel fly like infuriated terriers. They turned up more coins, hundreds of them, and a closely packed heap of those roughened lumps of bullion. They discovered rotten pieces of plank studded with iron bolts and braces. They piled the booty upon Señor Bazán’s blanket. He let the blackened Spanish dollars clink through his fingers. He fondled the shapeless lumps of bullion.
He was a supremely happy old man, nor was his emotion altogether sordid. He was happy for Ricardo and Teresa. And the spirit of romance, the enchantment of adventure had renewed, for this transient hour, the bright aspects of his youth.
“We have found it,” he gasped, his voice almost failing him.
“Don Miguel found it for us,” replied Ricardo. “The laugh is on him, after all. I wish I could send him the news. It would make this the end of a perfect day.”
Ramon Bazán chuckled and tried to say something. After a thickened, stammering word or two, his voice died in his throat. He swayed forward, his hands filled with Spanish dollars. They slid from his helpless fingers. Ricardo caught him in his arms and gently laid him down. The wizened brown face had turned ashen. It was pinched and very old.
In his shirt pocket was a little leather case with a vial in it. Richard Cary found it and forced a capsule between the bloodless lips. It failed to revive him. A second capsule was no more effectual.
The worn-out heart, which had been so often spurred by the powerful drug, had made its last rally. Presently Cary discovered that it had ceased to beat. He told the sailors that Señor Ramon Bazán was dead. They were shocked and very sorry. Crowding around the blanket, they bared their heads and crossed themselves, earnestly muttering the prayers of the Church.
Even their simple souls comprehended that fate had not been unkind to this aged man. His departure was not essentially mournful. It could even be regarded as a felicitous ending. He had achieved the goal of his desire, which bright fortune is vouchsafed to few. Most men spend their lives in search of some treasure, hidden or elusive, and rarely do they find it. Nor do they understand that the joy is in the quest and not in the possession.