A week later, toward sundown, the Sarah came up the half-mile channel and dropped her hook in Havana Harbor close to the old anchorage of the Maine. A Royal Mail boat passing out gave her the kick of its wash as she settled down to her moorings, a customs boat dropped alongside, and the customs men, hailing Satan as a friend and brother, came aboard and transacted business with him in the cabin. The wind blew warm, bringing scents and sounds across the vast harbor, fluttering the flags of the shipping, and Ratcliffe, standing at the rail, dazzled by the brilliance of the scene before him, knew that his cruise was over.
It was like coming to the end of a book,—a volume suddenly handed to him by Fate to read, and of which he was condemned to write the sequel.
He remembered the morning at Palm Island when he boarded the Sarah first, and the picture was still fresh in his mind of the Haliotis as they had left her in the lagoon at Cormorant, Sellers and Cleary and their men swarming about her and tinkering her up. They intended to ship the spare propeller and bring her along under her own motive power to the nearest port, Nassau in the Bahamas.
They had been so busy with the engines and the hull that they had never noticed how completely she had been stripped. They were unconscious of the fact that she had been left with her anchor down—unfortunates! He could still see them like ants laboring in the sun, at the task set to them by the grimly humorous Satan.
Satan had won the game they had forced on him, holding, as he did, a thousand and forty dollars, the “tripes” of the Haliotis, and the secret of the mug trap, to be disposed of, perhaps, later on for a consideration. Satan would, no doubt, set other unfortunates digging for the Nombre just as he had set Cleary and Sellers tinkering and towing at the Haliotis, just as he had held up freighters for a bunch of bananas, just as he had made Thelusson and his crew careen and scrape the Sarah, just as he had made Ratcliffe an accomplice in his plans and a handy man to help him in his works; yet the funny thing about the scamp was the fact that he was absolutely dependable, when not dealing with companies or governments or derelicts. Ratcliffe would have trusted him with his last penny.
Dependable if you took hold of him by his handle and not by his cutting edge! Trustable if you trusted him!
Then Jude came up in her harbor rig; that is to say, boots and a coat.
“Satan’s clacking away with the customs an’ the port doctor man,” said Jude. “You can’t see across the cabin with the smoke, and I had to change my rig in the galley.”
“You going ashore?” asked Ratcliffe.
“No,” said Jude, “Satan’s going. I’ve got to keep ship. You going with him?”