But the night passed; and day—the fourth day since Marshall had left them, and the last of their prescribed sojourn where they were—dawned without sign of the absentee; and when at length Dick Chichester awakened and this fact was borne in upon him, all his former apprehensions returned with redoubled force. Something had gone wrong with the Captain; he was convinced of it; Marshall would never deliberately tarry so long in a town, every man, woman, and child in which was an enemy; his identity as an Englishman had been discovered, and he had been taken, without a doubt. Yet, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, Dick remembered that one trait of his Captain’s character was a certain daredevil recklessness which made peril, or rather the overcoming of it, a joy and a delight, and caused him actually to court danger for the pleasurable excitement which the evasion of it afforded him. Might it not be, then, that Marshall, knowing the fate that awaited him in the event of detection, was deliberately lingering in Cartagena in order that he might enjoy to the fullest possible extent the gratification of hoodwinking his enemies and moving freely among them unsuspected?
Swayed thus between hope and fear, the harassed young lieutenant once more, and for the last time, mounted the hill and resumed his anxious watch of the town and harbour. But no indication of any happening of an unusual character, either in the town or in the harbour, was perceptible; everything seemed to be going forward precisely as usual; the only occurrence that in the slightest degree interested the watcher being that the crew of the galleon resumed their occupation of bending sails, which operation, proceeding with the same deliberation as before, they contrived to complete about half an hour before sunset; when Dick, unutterably weary and discouraged with his long and fruitless watch, arose and made his way down the hill to the place where the longboat lay hidden.
Chapter Five.
How they disarmed the Batteries on Tierra Bomba.
As Chichester neared the now familiar spot where he had left the longboat, he suffered himself to indulge in a returning feeling of elation, for the notion somehow came to him that he would find Marshall in the boat calmly awaiting his return; and this feeling presently grew so strong within him that he could scarcely credit his eyes when, upon passing through the screen of concealing foliage, he saw only the three seamen curled up in the boat. They roused themselves from their semi-somnolent condition and sat up to receive him, with glances of mute enquiry in their eyes.
For a few moments Dick remained silent, absolutely speechless with disappointment. Then he remarked:
“What, lads, has the Captain not yet returned, then?”
“No, sir,” they answered in chorus. “We have seen naught of him, or indeed of anybody else, since you left us this morning.”