“I say, go, by all means, my son, if Jack thinks that you will be of the slightest use to him,” answered Don Hermoso. “As for your bags, and so on, I will of course take care that they shall go forward with us to-morrow.”
“Very well, then,” said Jack, “in that case let Carlos go with me, for I cannot tell but that we may be glad enough to have him with us during our operations to-morrow. And now I suppose we had better see about making a start. What about horses, Carlos?”
“I will go and give instructions to have them saddled forthwith,” answered the latter; and he rose and went out to the patio, Jack meanwhile making a few final arrangements as to the hour and place of meeting on the morrow in Havana.
Five minutes later the horses were brought round to the front of the house, and the young men, having meanwhile said a word or two of explanation to the ladies and bidden them temporarily adieu, mounted, and, accompanied by Carnero as guide, cantered off down the long path leading to the main road. But ere they reached this their guide turned off to the right, and, following a path that led through the tobacco fields, took them over the fence that formed one of the boundaries of Don Hermoso’s property, and the party found themselves in the open country, over which Carnero led them in a bee-line, taking brooks, watercourses, and obstructions of various kinds as they came. The pace of the riders was by no means rapid, nothing more than a brisk canter, in fact, but, the route taken being practically the shortest possible distance between Señor Montijo’s hacienda and Pinar del Rio, the journey was accomplished in little over an hour; and when at length they pulled up at the railway station they had a good four minutes in hand.
“All right, Señores!” said Carnero, as he received the bridles of the two horses, “I will see that the nags are properly rubbed down and attended to, and that they shall be in readiness to go back with the coach and the servants to-morrow. Adios, Señores; luck go with you!”
The clocks in the city were just striking ten when, after a somewhat tedious journey, the train clattered and jolted into the Western Station at Havana; and, jumping out, the lads chartered a volante—the local hansom, which is an open vehicle, mounted upon a pair of enormously high wheels, and fitted with such long shafts that it can only be turned with the utmost difficulty in the narrow streets—and drove down to the wharf, where they hired a shore boat to take them off to the yacht, which was lying moored to a pair of the trunk buoys in the harbour.
The ships’ bells were chiming “five”, that is to say, half-past ten, as the boat, after having been challenged by the anchor watch, swept alongside the Thetis’s gangway ladder, and the two young men ascended to the deck. Somewhat to their surprise, they found Milsom on board; for, as they were not expected until the following day, they would not have been at all astonished to learn that the skipper was ashore, amusing himself at the theatre, or elsewhere. But Milsom explained that he had had enough of Havana: he had been to the theatre twice, and considered that it was not a patch upon the Alhambra in Leicester Square at home; he had been to the Cathedral, and had been shown the tomb of Christopher Columbus—the genuineness of which he greatly doubted; he had sauntered in the Alameda in the evenings, listening to the military bands, of which he thought nothing, and trying to discover a Spanish girl that could hold a candle to one of our own wholesome, handsome English lasses, and had failed; and he had also tried, and had failed, to determine the precise number of separate and distinct odours—“stinks”, he called them—which go to make up the characteristic smell of Havana. From all of which it will be gathered that the worthy man, with the restlessness characteristic of the sailor, was beginning to weary of his inactivity—although during the past week he had been anything but inactive, it may be mentioned—and was pining for something fresh in the way of excitement. It appeared that, finding himself with spare time on his hands notwithstanding his preparation of the yacht for the projected trip, he had amused himself by designing an elaborate disguise for the craft, under the impression that a time might very possibly arrive when such a disguise would be found exceedingly useful; and he proudly produced a sketch of the said disguise which, when unfolded before the astonished gaze of the two young men, showed the Thetis transmogrified into something resembling a two-funnelled torpedo gunboat, with ram stem and round, spoon-shaped stern all complete. It was a contraption most ingeniously built up of wood and canvas by the joint efforts and skill of Milsom, Macintyre, and the carpenter; and was so handily contrived that, according to the statement of its inventor or designer, given fine weather and smooth water for four hours, the vessel’s appearance could be so completely changed that “her own mother wouldn’t know her.”
Having duly admired Milsom’s ingenuity, Jack explained in detail the reason why he and Carlos had advanced the time of their arrival, and disclosed his scheme for the temporary disablement of the three men-o’-war in the harbour, into which scheme Milsom entered with the utmost gusto, even going to the length of rousing poor Macintyre out of his berth and ruthlessly breaking in upon his beauty sleep, in order that the parties might have the benefit of the chief engineer’s advice and assistance. And when at length the little band of conspirators broke up at midnight and turned in, the plan of campaign had been arranged, down to the last detail.
After all, there was not very much to be done in the way of preparation; a couple of hours’ work next day by Macintyre and his crew at the portable forge down in the stokehold, and everything was ready for the work which was to commence as soon as possible after ten o’clock that night. There was only one difficulty that still remained to be overcome, and that was the evading of the vigilance of the custom-house officers, who still remained on board the yacht. It is true that that vigilance had been very greatly relaxed of late, since it had been borne in upon even their limited intelligence that nothing remotely resembling an attempt to smuggle anything ashore had ever been made; still, it would be awkward in the extreme if one or more of them should happen to be troubled with insomnia on that particular night, and elect to pass the sleepless hours on deck: but Don Hermoso might be trusted to attend to that matter when he should arrive on board about four o’clock, or a little after, as he did, accompanied by Señora Montijo and Doña Isolda. The difficulty was explained to Don Hermoso during the progress of afternoon tea, which refreshment was partaken of on the top of the deck-house that adjoined the navigating bridge of the vessel; and after the meal was over, Carlos went ashore in the steam pinnace and brought off a small phial of liquid that looked and tasted like water. Then, the fact having been elicited from the chief steward that the custom-house officers had evinced a very marked preference for whisky over the aguardiente of their native land, a bottle of the former was opened and, half a wineglassful of the spirit having been poured from the bottle, a like quantity of the liquid from the phial was substituted for it, the cork replaced, and the bottle well shaken. It was then sent forward to the empleados de la aduana for their especial use, with the compliments of Don Hermoso, that they might drink his health and that of his family, and wish them a pleasant voyage, on this their last night on board, since the yacht would, weather permitting, go to sea some time on the morrow. Half an hour later the steward, with a knowing grin, reported to Milsom that the bottle was already three-parts empty.
“That is all right,” commented Don Hermoso, when the statement was passed on to him; “the gentlemen of the customs will not be troubled with sleeplessness to-night!” Nor were they; for four bells in the first watch had scarcely struck when, with many yawns, they retired below and—those who were supposed to be on watch as well as those who were off—in ten minutes were sleeping like logs.