UPON THE CITY WALL
The prison of Cartagena consisted of a long row of arched, tomb-like apartments built against the inside of the city wall. Two centuries earlier, this series of stone caverns had been the barracks of the Spanish troops who had defended this treasure port against one furious assault after another. Here was a prison likely to hold the most desperate malefactor. Only an earthquake could have weakened such masonry as this.
Upon a cot in one of these gloomy rooms lay stretched the body of a young man of heroic proportions. He was not a native. The fair skin and yellow hair were alien to the coasts of the Caribbean. His hairy chest was bare. Around it was bound a strip of cloth as a hasty bandage. His head was half-swathed in other folds of cloth. It was perplexing to know whether he was alive or dead.
The door faced a small open yard in which was a rude shelter from the sun, a shack knocked together of poles and boards. It had a covered porch in which hammocks were slung. A Colombian soldier lolled in one of them. Two others squatted on the floor and languidly shook a leather dice-box. They were small, coffee-colored men wearing coarse straw hats and uniforms of blue cotton drilling much faded. Their rifles leaned against a plank table littered with dirty dishes and black with flies.
The soldier in the hammock was a corporal. He aroused himself to scuffle to an iron door and peer in at the silent figure upon the cot. It had not moved. A waste of time to have washed and bandaged this murderous prisoner. Now these poor soldiers would be put to the trouble of digging a grave, and such a devil of a big grave! The two privates, Francisco and Manuel, were shaking the dice to see who should wield the accursed shovel.
The corporal yawned and loafed back to the hammock to rest. The journey of a few yards to the iron door had fatigued him. The trio chewed sugar-cane and lazily discussed the huge Americano, a most uncommon fish to be landed in their net. Alive and vigorous, he would be most dangerous. It would be as much as a man’s life was worth to enter his cell. Fortunately he had been hit on the head and stabbed in the back when discovered in a street not far from the little plaza of the Church of San Pedro Clavér.
He had run amuck, loco with rum, not much doubt of that. He had attacked as many as five young men of Cartagena, a serenading party innocently singing and playing the guitar. He had broken the necks of two and smashed the shoulder of another. Like a flail he had swung an iron bar actually plucked from a window with the strength of a giant and the fury of a madman.
By chance, the Comandante of the Port, the famous Colonel Fajardo, walking home from the Café Dos Hermanos, had discovered the body of the Americano and his victims, a sight to wonder at in that respectable street of peaceful Cartagena. Colonel Fajardo had summoned the police. They had decided to keep the matter hushed until they could investigate. They had been annoyed to find a little life in him. Such a man was better dead. He was unknown to the police. Perhaps a sailor from a ship or one of those red-faced, hard-fisted Yankee foremen from the gold mines of the Magdalena.
It had been advisable to put him in the prison instead of the hospital. Think what he had done! Tried to kill five young men because he disliked the way they sang and played the guitar!
Richard Cary was not quite so near burial as they took for granted. His breath so faint that it would scarcely have fogged a mirror, he had remained in the black realm of unconsciousness until now. The return to life was blurred and glimmering, like a feeble light in this profound darkness. It refused to be snuffed out. At first like a mere spark, to his stupefied senses it seemed to become hotter and hotter until it glowed like a coal, burning inside his head and torturing him.
He did not try to move, but lay wondering why these fiery pains should dart and flicker through his brain. He raised his leaden eyelids and dimly, waveringly perceived the arched stone ceiling blotched with dampness. It was like a dungeon. Were these merely things he had read of in books that shocked and quickened the mysterious process of his awakening? His groping mind was ablaze with illusions which seemed intensely actual. Tenaciously he endeavored to banish them, but they poignantly persisted. The sweat ran down his face. He groaned aloud. Spasms of alarm shook him.
Was this a dungeon of the Holy Office of the Inquisition? The cord was already twisted around his temples. His head was almost bursting. The stake and the fagot were waiting for him in the courtyard. Such had been the cruel fate of many a stout seaman of Devon—burly James Bitfield twice racked and enduring the water torment until death eased him—young Bailey Vaughan slashed with two hundred stripes in the market-place and enslaved in the galleys for seven years—gray-haired John Carelesse dying of the strappado, the pulley that wrenched joint and sinew asunder.
The pains in his head were intolerable. The yellow-robed agents of the Holy Office were twisting the cord tighter, to bite into his skull. By God, they could never make him recant like a whining cur and a traitor to his faith. The torture of the cord wasn’t enough for them. The fiends were pressing the red-hot iron to his back, between the shoulder blades.
It was the agony of these hallucinations that roused him out of his coma, that held him from slipping back into the dark gulf. One hand moved and clenched the frame of the cot. His eyes remained open and wandered from the gray stone arch above his head. His chest rose and fell in normal suspiration. Mistily he recognized himself as the Richard Cary who was the second officer of the Tarragona. Cartagena in the moonlight and Teresa Fernandez—a galleon’s bell that foretold disaster, dong, dong—dong, dong—the twang and tinkle of a guitar, of an ominous guitar.
He had been knocked out? Well, it was a mighty hard head to break. Solid above the ears, his young brother Bill had delicately hinted. The pain was terrific, but this didn’t necessarily mean a crack in it. That head had been banged before now.
Stabbed in the back, besides! That was more serious. It ought to have finished him. Such had been the bravo’s intention. But he had never thrust a knife into a back as broad and deep as this, with such thick ridges of muscles that overlaid it like armor. Also, in the flurry of haste, he may have driven the blade aslant.
Anxiously Richard Cary drew in his breath and expelled it. He concluded that his lungs were undamaged. That his heart was still beating proved that the knife had missed a vital part. A deep flesh wound and muscles that throbbed and burned! So much for that.
He was alive and not mortally hurt. He felt hazily thankful. This stone kennel was too much like a prison cell to be anything else. A rotten deal, to throw a man in jail after failing to kill him. This seemed like the fine hand of Colonel Fajardo. It was one way to finish the job. His five bravos had made a mess of it.
His disordered mind fitfully clearing, Richard Cary became aware of the one thing of supreme importance. His ship was to sail at noon. He fumbled in the pockets of his torn trousers. His watch and money were gone. What hour of the day was it now? He rolled his head and blinked at the little window set in the iron door. The sunlight blazed like a furnace in the yard outside. It was the breathless heat and brightness that smote the city near the middle of the day. Perhaps it was not yet noon.
His first voyage in the Tarragona and logged as a deserter? An officer who had earned promotion on his merits in the hard schooling of the North Atlantic trade? It was an imperative obligation to return to the ship. Had Captain Sterry made an effort to find him? Perhaps not. Good riddance might be his feeling in the matter. An official word from the Union Fruit Company would have set powerful influences at work in Cartagena. Political connections safeguarded its vast commercial interests on the Colombian coast. The inference was that Captain Sterry had been willing to let his too candid second mate go adrift.
The hope of getting back to the ship was another delusion. This the battered man on the cot presently realized. He was buried alive in this stone vault of a prison and lacked strength even to lift his head. Tears of weakness filled his eyes. He felt profound pity for himself. He was a forlorn derelict on a lee shore.
Soon, however, the sweat dried on his face. His skin grew dry and hot. His heart was beating faster. The burning sensation in his head was diffusing itself through his body. The air of the room was more stifling than ever. It was like a furnace. Strange, but he felt less inert, not so helpless to move. He was dizzy, light-headed, but this was preferable to the incessant waves of pain. He did not know that fever was taking hold of him. He mistook it for a resurgence of his tremendous vitality, evidence that he could pull himself together and break the bonds of his weakness.
He lay motionless, waiting, trying to think coherently, while the fever raced through his veins. He seemed to be floating off into space. The sensations were agreeable. No longer sorry for himself, he was unafraid of any odds. Keep him in a Cartagena jail? Nonsense. All he had to do was to use his wits. He laughed to himself, but he was careful to lock his lips. Not a sound escaped him. He was wary and cunning.
The Colombian corporal of the guard decided to pry himself from the hammock and ascertain whether the big Americano was dead by this time. Instead of peering through the window, the corporal thought best to make a closer investigation. He was impatient with this prisoner who had stubbornly refused to become a corpse. A clumsy iron key squeaked in the rusty lock of the door. The corporal walked in and stooped over the cot.
Yes, the Americano had about finished with the business of living. A hand held over his mouth detected no breath at all. The corporal was about to shift his hand to the naked chest to discover if the heart had ceased to beat.
Two mighty arms flew up. One of them wrapped itself around the corporal’s neck and pulled him down. Fingers like steel hooks squeezed his throat. He gurgled. He was pop-eyed. His grass sandals were kicking the stone floor. It was a small, scratching noise unheard on the porch of the shack where the two privates drowsed and rolled cigarettes.
The corporal’s toes ceased their rustling agitation. His lank body was as limp as an empty sack. It slid gently from the side of the cot. It sprawled so still that a green lizard ran over one twisted leg and paused close by to swell its ruby throat. The hour of the siesta appeared to have overtaken this luckless corporal somewhat earlier than usual.
His absence would cause comment. Richard Cary upheaved himself from the cot and almost toppled over. He struggled to keep his feet. Drunk with fever, he began to walk with a giddy, erratic motion in the direction of the door. He succeeded in reaching it. Grasping the timbered framework, he stood there half-blinded by the dazzle of the sun. The two Colombian soldiers looked up and saw him.
Body and blood of San Felipe! What an apparition! A man raised from the dead and such a man! What had befallen the corporal? It was easy to guess that. For the moment these two affrighted soldiers were incapable of motion. The love of life, however, pricked them to scramble for their rifles. Already the fearful specter of the Americano was lurching from the doorway, across the yard, straight at them.
With chattering teeth, Private Francisco dived to clutch a rifle. Private Manuel tripped and rammed into him. They clawed each other, with bitter words. The sturdier Francisco was first to lay hands on a rifle. He pulled trigger. Nothing but a foolish click. It was the corporal’s rifle, unloaded because he had intended cleaning it mañana. Francisco flung the useless thing aside. He could run faster without it.
The Americano picked up the discarded rifle and wheeled in pursuit of him. For a dead man, this yellow-haired ogre could be as quick as a tiger. As if the rifle were no heavier than a pebble, he hurled it, butt foremost, at the fleeing Francisco. It struck him on the hip. He turned a somersault. So fast was he running that his heels flipped over his head. When he fell, the dust whirled like brown smoke. He tried to crawl away on hands and knees.
The Americano turned to find the other soldier. He was on the porch, about to fire his rifle. The barrel waved like a leaf in a gale. Here was enough to disturb the bravest soldier. The first bullet went singing off into the blue sky. Before Manuel could shoot again, something like a house fell upon him and flattened him out. His head whacked a plank. A fist drove his jaw askew. He was instantly as peaceful as the corporal who slumbered with a green lizard for a comrade.
The disabled Francisco had not crawled far on hands and knees. Richard Cary tottered after him and dragged him to the timbered doorway of the vaulted cell. A thrust of the foot and Francisco rolled inside like a bale. It was better to stay there, he thought, than to try to run away again. And now Manuel was dumped in on top of him. The iron door closed and the key squeaked in the rusty lock. Richard Cary tossed the key over the roof of the shack.
Thus far he had behaved with normal promptitude and efficiency. Now he reeled to the bench on the porch and fought against utter collapse. His head spun like a top as he groped for a coffee pot on the table and drained the black brew to the dregs. It seemed to steady his quivering nerves, to clear the mists of fever from his brain. He would go and search for his ship until he dropped in his tracks.
One of the discarded rifles caught his eye, but he found it too heavy to carry. A machete hung from a peg in the wall. It was a handy weapon, with a straight blade. With it he slashed strips from the hammock and tied them around his bare feet. There was a grain of method in his madness.
The machete in his hand, he moved out into the yard and gazed up at the city wall. Here and there were easy ascents, he knew, built for the passage of troops and vehicles. One of these sloping roadways ought to be somewhere near the prison which had once been the barracks of the Spanish garrison. From the lofty parapets he should be able to see the harbor and the wharf where the Tarragona berthed. Then he could perhaps make his way thither before an alarm was raised. If they tried to stop him, he would hack a path with the machete.
Rocking on his feet and muttering aloud, he walked out of the yard and turned at random. Unseen, he passed into a paved alley and saw in front of him a wide ramp leading to the top of the wall. Fortune had not deserted him. Very slowly he climbed the rutted, crumbling slope, panting for breath, his face a bright crimson, his knees crippling under him. He could not finish the ascent, and yet he did. He was broken in body, but his will urged him on.
Gaining the broad esplanade he made for the nearest parapet. It was at the corner of a bastion where stood a small, round sentry tower. With arms outspread he clung to this support while his swimming gaze raked the harbor. It was not yet noon, for the white hull and the yellow funnel of the Tarragona glistened alongside the cargo sheds. The distance was not far. Through a gateway in the wall he might reach the beach and so leave the city behind him. Unless his strength should utterly forsake him, a merciful deliverance was beckoning.
He found it much easier, however, to cling to the small round sentry tower than to resume his pitiable pilgrimage. He tried it once, twice, and stumbled drunkenly. But he was not beaten—he could not be—while the blessed sight of the Tarragona compelled him. He tried again and advanced toward a square, grim mass of stone that marked the nearest gateway.
Then he heard three blasts blown on a steamer’s whistle, deep-throated and prolonged. He knew the Tarragona’s voice and what this signal meant. It was her courteous adieu to Cartagena. She was outward bound, through the Boca Chica and to the rolling spaces of the Caribbean. Richard Cary dragged himself to the parapet and stood looking at his ship, but only for a moment. Then he buried his face in his arms. Sobs shook him. It was the cruelest joke that ever a man had played on him. He damned Captain Sterry for a dirty hound that would leave his second mate in a fix like this.
Ashamed of crying like a silly woman, he retraced his steps to the sentry tower. It was shady inside, with deep slits of windows. He did not wish to see the Tarragona move away from the wharf. He slid to the floor and sat propped against the wall, his chin against his breast. His ruling impulse had kept delirium under for a little while. Now he became a prey to all manner of curious thoughts. Dominant was the resolve that they should not take him alive. He whetted the edge of the machete on a rough stone, and tested the balance of it and the grip of the hilt. He would give a good account of himself on the wall of Cartagena.