“All the same,” remarked his other friend, “I don’t think I’d—ar—put very long odds on you, old chappie. There’s nothing certain in this life, and widows are apt—ar—to keep a fellow dangling till a fellow gets tired. Finished? Then let’s go to the bar and throw for liqueurs. Mine’s crême de menthe.”
CHAPTER XX.
AT POINT SEBASTIAN.
Now the great rambling, wooden hotel in which Miss Elsie Kildare was staying under care of her friends, the Van Liews, though on the end of a telegraph-wire, and within easy day’s steam of a railroad, was not particularly far in crow’s-flight from that uncharted river where the Port Edes lay stranded on a sand-bar. The hotel, in fact, backed upon the Everglades, and faced the blue, crisping waters of the Mexican Gulf. At one side of it was a plantation of sisal hemp, and beyond that thickets of saw-grass, and beyond again cypress-trees and cabbage-palms sprouting from an undergrowth which was bound into an impenetrable cheveux de frise with wait-a-bit thorn. At the other side were newly planted umbrella-trees, two decrepit orange-bushes without fruit, twenty luxuriant chumps of elephants’ ears, and then straggles of palmetto-scrub right down to the soft white banks of Gulf sand. Beyond was clear blue water, with a rickety wooden wharf straddling a mile out into it, like some uncouth, gray-legged centipede. And beneath the water, dented rusty food-cans grew intimate with the coral polyp.
In winter time, Point Sebastian was a resting-place for nabobs of the north, and a congregation spot for those delightful American women who leave a convenient husband at work elsewhere on the dollar-mill. But, in the warmer months, these worthy people did their pleasure-living at the sea beaches of the north, or the hotels of the Alleghanies; and the rest-house at Point Sebastian locked and covered most of its glories. The Floridan who stays in Florida all summer does so usually because of a tightness in the exchequer; and for the few of him who came to dissipate a small but hardly scraped-up hoard in a spell of semi-civilization, a tenth of the available rooms made ample lodging place.
Still there was a summer season of sorts at Point Sebastian, which was merry enough in its way. Most nights, on the parquet of the hall, a cheery score danced under the glare of electric lights to the lilt of Teuton fiddles; and in the cool gloom of the piazzas outside, if straitened means did prevent the actual drafting of marriage contracts, even penury undisguised could enjoy the dallyings of the week’s flirtation. Mr. Kent-Williams and his tribe were entertaining fellows enough to meet for a limited time, and maidens, come into the hotel for an annual outing, basked in the odor of their pretty sayings, and frankly prepared themselves for nothing beyond temporary amusement.
Patrick Onslow met at least five men there he knew, which shows the great advantage of being a University man; because, since at Oxford and Cambridge they most successfully refrain from teaching anything that is of commercial use to any one except a parson or a doctor or a school-master, it naturally follows that many men from those seats of learning fail to make a living at home, and drift across the seas.
He did not make the smallest secret about his advent. As the newspapers had told them already, he had been on the unlucky Port Edes when she came to grief, but had managed to get ashore by a marvelous streak of luck, and found himself at a spot where, less than a year ago, he had been wandering about on a shooting expedition. Thence he had made his way in a dug-out, bought from a Seminole, to the hotel on Point Sebastian. V’la tout. There was nothing surprising about it. He had had several opportunities for drowning before that, but none of them had ever come off. So he supposed that the Parcæ marked him out to live. And—what would they have? His shout.
At that period Mr. Patrick Onslow was feeling extremely pleased with himself. He hated the work at which he had been engaged, as any man must hate being mixed with a swindle, be it great or small. And the end seemed near—the end, conjoined to full success.
He had had a struggle for it, because once more Captain Kettle had felt inclined to fight for his own hand rather than do all things for mere employers, who only paid him a small salary. It was when Onslow woke from that dead sleep on the wheel grating of the upper bridge, and came down to learn of the tragedy of the plume-hunters which had taken place during his unconsciousness, that he got the first hint of this. The little captain received him with cold stiffness, was wooden when asked for any suggestion, and snarled when Onslow inquired what ailed him. It was the donkeyman who put the difficulty into words.