Plotting in Pirate Seas

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

"Did you not hear Senor Cecil say that I was to be sure you did not get lost?" He smiled. "You might have dreams, Senor, and walk in your sleep. When Senor Cecil says 'Watch!' one stays awake."

At the same time, with a deft movement, he pinioned Stuart's arms, and searched him thoroughly, taking away his revolver and pocket knife. No roughness was shown, but the searching was done in a businesslike manner, and Stuart offered no resistance. As a matter of fact, he was too sleepy, and even the bravest hero might be cowed if he were fairly dropping for weariness. Stuart obediently sought the string-bed, and, a few seconds later, was fast asleep.

It was daylight when he awoke. Breakfast was on the table and the boy did as much justice to the breakfast as he had to the supper. With rest, his spirits and energy had returned, but he was practically helpless without his revolver. Besides, on this desolate bit of beach on the eastern end of Cuba, even if he could escape from his captor, he would be marooned. Such money as the boy possessed was secreted in Cap Haitien, most of his friends lived in Western Cuba. If this fisherman were indeed to aid him to get to Havana, nothing would suit him better. All through the meal he puzzled over the fisherman's rough mode of life, and yet his perfect Spanish and courtly manners.

"If the young Senor will accompany me to the stable?" suggested his host, when the meal was over, the mild words being backed by an undertone of considerable authority. Stuart would have liked to protest, for he was feeling chipper and lively, but, just as he was about to speak, he remembered Andy's remark, on board the motor boat, about "food for fishes." Probably Cecil's allies were ready for any kind of bloodshed, and the boy judged that he would be wise to avoid trouble. He followed without a word.

The stables were of good size and well kept, out of all proportion to the hut, confirming Stuart's suspicion that a house of some pretensions was hidden in the forest nearby. A fairly good horse was hitched to a stoutly-built light cart and the journey began. The driver took a rarely traveled trail, but, at one point, an opening in the trees showed a snug little town nestling by a landlocked harbor of unusual beauty.

"What place is that?" queried Stuart, though not expecting a response.

To his surprise, the driver answered promptly.

"That, Senor," he said, "is Baracoa, the oldest town in Cuba, and the only one that tourists seldom visit."

Whereupon, breaking a long silence, Vellano—for so he had given his name to Stuart—proceeded to tell the early history of Eastern Cuba with a wealth of imagery and a sense of romance that held the boy spellbound. He told of the peaceful Arawaks, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Greater Antilles, agriculturists and eaters of the cassava plant, growers and weavers of cotton, even workers of gold. He told of the invasion of the meat-eating and cannibal Caribs from the Lesser Antilles, of the wars between the Arawaks and Caribs, and of the hostility between the two races when Columbus first landed on the island. He told of the enslavement of the peaceful Arawaks by the Spaniards, and of the savage massacres by Caribs upon the earliest Spanish settlements.

From that point Vellano broke into a song of praise of the gallantry of the early Spanish adventurers and conquerors, the conquistadores of the West Indies, who carried the two banners of "Christianity" and "Civilization" to the islands of the Caribbean Sea. He lamented the going of the Spaniards, took occasion to fling reproach at France for her maladministration and loss of Haiti, and, as Stuart was careful to observe, he praised England and Holland as colonizing countries as heartily as he condemned the United States for her ignorance of colonization problems.