Without further parley he hurried the girl into the closed carriage and with a yell over his shoulder for the two men to follow, clambered back upon the box.
“The boat’s at the dock,” he shouted. “Steam all up. Get on behind!”
The two men had their hands full to keep pace on foot with those wild horses, but the distance was short. In less than an hour the group was all on board the yacht which had her nose pointed straight for the open sea.
CHAPTER XXIX
The Open Door Closes
It was an excited but happy group of people who sat down that night in the cozy cabin of the yacht after a good day’s rest. Each of them had more than he could tell, for no one would allow the other to omit any details of these last adventurous weeks. Each had been held in the clutch of a widely differing set of circumstances and each had been forced to make something of a lone fight of it. Here in the calm and luxury of this cabin their lives, by the grace of God, had come to a focus. First Danbury, as the host, was forced to begin from the time he was lost at the gate to the palace.
He told of how he awoke in a certain house and found himself under the care of the best nurse in the world. But that didn’t last long, for the next thing he knew he was on board his yacht and fifty miles out at sea with a mutinous captain––a captain who refused to put back to port when ordered to do so at once. Instead of that, the fellow ran him into a strange port, took on board a surgeon (shanghaied him, in fact) and refused to obey orders until three weeks later Danbury was himself again plus a limp. Then he had come back to Bogova only to be refused permission to anchor in the 342 harbor. He had come ashore one night in a dory, been arrested and carried before Otaballo who refused to recognize him and gave him the alternative of going to jail or leaving the coast at once. It had all been an incomprehensible mystery to him; the only explanation he could think of being that the Queen was seized by the General who had usurped the throne. He tried once more to land and this time learned of the movement afoot by the Republican party. He had made a dash for the palace, forced his way through the guards, and reached the Queen. Now he’d like an explanation from her Majesty of the unfair advantage she had taken of a wounded prisoner.
Her Majesty with an excited, happy laugh said that if boys would get excited and act foolishly, the only thing to do was to keep them out of trouble by force. It was true that she had conspired to have him transported and kept safe aboard his ship, because she knew that if he came back, he would resent a great many things she was forced to bear as a matter of diplomacy, and would end by getting stabbed in the back. She thought it was better to have a live lover, even though he were a hundred miles away, than a dead soldier. He scowled in disgust, but she reached his hand under the table. She had given orders to Otaballo and then she had lain awake all night crying because he had carried them out. Her plan had been to get the kingdom all straightened out and at peace, and then to abdicate. But things had gone wrong and she told them a story of plots and counterplots, of strange men arrested at 343 her very door with knives in their hands, of a bomb found in the palace, that held them breathless. Danbury fairly boiled over with excitement.