“About me?”
“Not exactly. I told him you felt sorry you had wounded the susceptibilities of his officer.”
Harper laughed. “Well,” he said, “there’s only one thing I’m sorry for, and that is that I let up before I’d put the contract through. Still, I guess there’s more behind it.”
“There is,” said Appleby gravely. “If you can keep quiet a minute or two I’ll tell you.”
He spoke rapidly and concisely, and Harper’s face flushed as he listened. “You let him go!” he said. “Pancho and I were hanging round on the stairway.”
Appleby smiled a trifle wearily. “I suspected it, but Morales is a good deal too cunning to take any unnecessary risks. If he had not come back we should have had half a company of cazadores turning up to ask what had become of him. Now I want you to understand the position. What are your countrymen likely to do about the ‘Maine’?”
Harper’s eyes gleamed, and his voice was hoarse. “Make the Spaniards lick our boots or wipe them off the earth!”
“Well,” said Appleby dryly, “you may do the last, but, if I know the Spaniards, you will never extort anything from them that would stain their national dignity. Still, I think you are right about your countrymen’s temper, and you see what it leads to. Every battalion of Spanish infantry will be wanted on the coast, and that will give the insurgents a free hand. It means they will once more be masters of this district, and that Santa Marta must fall. Believing that, I’m going to take a risk that almost frightens me.”
“I don’t quite understand,” said Harper.
“Harding is on his way to Cuba, and he has large sums sunk in San Cristoval and other places up and down the island. Once he gets here Morales will grind them out of him. Now, it is evident that Harding has as much sympathy with the insurgents as he has with the loyalists, and perhaps rather more, while just now he must stand in with one of them. It seems to me that if your people can’t be pacified the Spaniards will be driven out of Cuba.”