Rodman was goaded into impatience by the necessity for haste. He was in no mood for debate.
“Yes, and a trained nurse!” he retorted, hotly. “We must do the best we can. If we don’t hurry, he will need an undertaker and a coroner. Medical attention isn’t very good in Puerto Frio prisons!”
The two men lifted Saxon between them, and carried the unconscious man toward the mole.
Their task was like that of many others. They passed a sorry procession of litters, stretchers, and bodies hanging limply in the arms of bearers. No one paid the slightest attention to them, except an occasional sentry who gazed on in stolid indifference.
At the tavern kept by the Chinaman, Juan, and frequented by the roughest elements that drift against a coast such as this, Rodman exchanged greetings with many acquaintances. There were several wounded officers of the Vegas contingent, taking advantage of the armistice to have their wounds dressed and discuss affairs over a bottle of wine. Evidently, they had come here instead of to more central and less squalid places, with the same idea that had driven Rodman. They were the rats about to leave the sinking ship—if they could find a way to leave.
The tavern was an adobe building with a corrugated-iron roof and a large open patio, where a dismal fountain tinkled feebly, and one or two frayed palms stood dusty and disconsolate in the tightly trodden earth. About the walls were flamboyant portraits of saints. From a small perch in one corner, a yellow and green parrot squawked incessantly.
But it was the life about the rough tables of the area that gave the picture its color and variety. Some had been pressed into service to support the wounded. About others gathered men in tattered uniforms; men with bandaged heads and arms in slings. Occasionally, one saw an alien, a sailor whose clothes declared him to have no place in the drama of the scene. These latter were usually bolstering up their bravado with aguardiente against the sense of impending uncertainty that freighted the atmosphere.
The Frenchman, sharing with Rodman the burden of the unconscious painter, instinctively halted as the place with its wavering shadows and flickering lights met his gaze at the door. It was a picture of color and dramatic intensity. He seemed to see these varied faces, upon which sat defeat and suffering, sketched on a broad canvas, as Marston or Saxon might have sketched them.
Then, he laid Saxon down on a corner table, and stood watching his chance companion who recognized brother intriguers. Suddenly, Rodman’s eyes brightened, and he beckoned his lean hand toward two men who stood apart. Both of them had faces that were in strong contrast to the swarthy Latin-American countenances about them. One was thin and blond, the other dark and heavy. The two came across the patio together, and after a hasty glance the slender man bent at once over the prostrate figure on the table. His deft fingers and manner proclaimed him the surgeon. His uniform was nondescript; hardly more a uniform than the riding clothes worn by Saxon himself, but on his shoulders he had pinned a major’s straps. This was Dr. Cornish, of the Foreign Legion, but for the moment he was absorbed in his work and forgetful of his disastrously adopted profession of arms.
He called for water and bandages, and, while he worked, Rodman was talking with the other man. Hervé stood silently looking on. He recognized that the dark man was a ship-captain—probably commanding a tramp freighter.