“Then three cheers fer yer cap’n––Cap’n Danbury.”
This time the cheers were given with a will, and the boat rang with the noise.
“Now then, lay low an’ take yer orders. An’ I wish yer luck.”
“Three cheers fer Cap’n Stubbs,” shouted someone.
And as Stubbs bashfully beat a hasty retreat, the cheers rang lustily in his ears.
But he reported to Danbury with his face beaming.
“Now,” he said, “ye’ve gut some men worth something. They’ll be fightin’ fer themselves––fightin’ to keep outern jail. Mutiny has its uses.”
The next morning the anchor clanked through blue 170 waters into golden sand and the throbbing engines stopped.
The land about Choco Bay is a pleasant land. It is surpassed only by the plains along the upper Orinoco where villages cluster in the bosom of the Andes in a season of never changing autumn. Nearer the coast the climate is more fitful and more drowsy. One wonders how history would have been changed had the early Puritans chanced upon such rich soil for their momentous conquering, instead of the rock-ribbed, barren coast of New England. The same energy, the same dauntless spirit, the same stubborn clinging to where the foot first fell, if expended here, would have gained for them and their progeny a country as near the Garden of Eden as any on earth. But perhaps the balmy breezes, the warming sun, the coaxing sensualism of Nature herself would have wheedled them away from their stern principles and turned them into a nation of dreamers. If so, what dreamers we should have had! We might have had a dozen more Keatses, perhaps another Shakespeare. For this is a poet’s land, where things are only half real. The birds sing about Choco Bay.
Rippling through the blue waters after dark, the yacht glided in as close to the shore as possible. The morning sun revealed a golden semicircle of sand rimming the turquoise waters of the bay. Across the blue sky above seagulls skimmed and darted and circled; so clear the waters beneath that the clean bottom showed like a floor of burnished gold. The harbor proper lay 171 ten miles beyond, where a smaller inlet with deeper soundings was protected from the open inrush of the sea by the promontory forming one tip of this broader crescent. Far, very far in the distance the lofty Andes raised their snowy crests––monarchs which, Jove-like, stood with their heads among the clouds. So they had stood while kings were born, fought their petty fights, died, and gave place to others; so they stood while men contended for their different gods; so they stood while men loved and followed their loves into other spheres. It was these same summits upon which Wilson now looked which had greeted Quesada, and these same summits at which Quesada had shaken his palsied fist. It was these same summits which but a short while before must have greeted Jo; it was possible that at their very base he might find her again, and with her a treasure which should make her a queen before men. It made them seem very intimate to him.