Teresa Fernandez found a resting-place on the bench near the frame of the galleon bell. Her senses were awakened to their normal alertness. Who else than Richard Cary could have been smoking this pipe? Not her Uncle Ramon! He had forsaken his black, rank cigars after two or three heart seizures had almost popped him into his grave.
“Ricardo has been here,” she said to herself, “and he must have stayed some time. I could be no more certain of it if he told me himself.”
She tried to banish the specter of her own frightful situation with respect to the man she had slain on the wharf as an act of retribution. This must await its turn. Unless she could control her mind to this extent, she was hopelessly, helplessly befogged and adrift, without chart or compass. Why had Ricardo failed to return to the ship? Why and how and whither had he vanished again, from the house of Uncle Ramon Bazán? These were the questions she was first compelled to grope with. Her intuitions might be feminine, but life had taught her the logic of cause and effect. When the occasion required, she could be as practical as a navigator working out his sights.
“They went away together, Ricardo and Uncle Ramon,” she thought aloud. “It has to be so. Uncle Ramon knew better than to hire that worthless Bradley Duff to command his steamer. When so much money is risked, you can’t fool him as easy as all that. It is hard to find officers in Cartagena. In a pinch, Bradley Duff may have been signed as a mate, but not as a captain. I know my old uncle very well. He would never trust himself, much less his ship, to a notorious beach-comber who has nobody’s respect.
“It was Ricardo who went as captain. Señor de Mello is mistaken. How does it happen that he never mentioned Mr. Cary to me to-day? How could they be in the two houses side by side and Alonzo de Mello not know Mr. Cary was going to sail with my Uncle Ramon? The second officer of my old ship, the Tarragona? Why, it would have been at the end of Alonzo de Mello’s tongue to tell me how my uncle had such a fine officer with him. Nobody could forget Ricardo if they met him only once.”
Teresa ceased to be logical for the moment and veered to sentiment by way of shadowy consolation. She went on to say to herself:
“Buenaventura! A lucky omen, perhaps. It means good fortune. That is the west coast port they sailed for? One of the little English ships that captured the great galleon of my ancestor, Don Juan Diego Fernandez, in Cartagena harbor, was the Bonaventure. And how grand and fierce Ricardo looked when I was telling him how my brave ancestor fought in his golden armor. He frightened me. Bad luck for Don Juan Diego Fernandez, but good fortune for the Englishmen! And Ricardo is one of them. He is not like a Yankee at all.”
Good fortune? Could there be such a thing in God’s world for Teresa Fernandez? The spirit of Colonel Fajardo had indeed risen from the muddy waters of the harbor to claim its vengeance and reprisal. Teresa’s will was still strong enough to hold this issue in the background. Let it fasten a grip on her and she was lost. Time enough for that struggle.
Broodingly she considered another issue intimately more vital. Had Richard Cary truly loved her? Had she been more to him than a passing fancy, a pretty girl to kiss, another sweetheart in a new port?
With never a word to explain his desertion from the ship, with never a message of any kind during these intervening weeks, it would seem that he had forgotten her. He had left her to wonder and to grieve. What a tragic fool she would have been to write a letter to his mother, breaking the news that her precious son was dead in Cartagena!