The young Colombian had hearkened to this harangue with strained attention. His slim fingers were playing a tattoo on the table. Forlorn and adrift he was, indeed. The cup of hope had been dashed from his lips. Again he was groping. He brushed a hand over his short, black hair so smoothly parted. The gesture was a tragic symbol. The sacrifice had been to no purpose.
“Did you ask him who was captain, Mr. Mike?” faltered Rubio. “Did any other officers come in?”
“Nary a one. And from what he said, the crew was held pretty close. I might have asked him more questions, but I was busy at the time. Somebody had shut him up tight. He heard his master’s voice, did Bradley Duff.”
“And you—you didn’t see a very big, splendid young man with bright yellow hair—a man you could never forget, Mr. Mike? He may have been the captain of the Valkyrie. A wonderful-looking man—there is nobody like him on this coast.”
“You lose, son,” said the sympathetic Mr. Mike. His expression betokened surprise. “To the best of me knowledge, there has been no young man like that hereabouts. It is him you’re after, an’ not the old monkey of an uncle?”
“He was very kind to me in a ship, Mr. Mike, when he was the second mate. I—I wish I could see him again.”
The profound wisdom of the veteran bartender prompted him to study the slender, drooping youth whose emotion was so unexpected. The boyish gunner’s mate had been keeping silent with the courtesy of a lad who had been taught to listen to his elders. Now, however, he eagerly exclaimed:
“All right, kid. I didn’t want to butt in. Now you pipe down and give me the deck. It seems to mean a whole lot to you to find that ship and the big guy that makes you cry. I’ve got some dope for you. The Valkyrie! Is that the hooker? A bum little tramp with red sides and a rusty funnel, that somebody resurrected from the bone-yard? Moseyin’ along in ballast, is she? Listen! My destroyer was coming south a few days ago, see, and we fetched a course away from the coast of Costa Rica to search for a seaplane that had engine trouble and was reported as blown offshore. We sighted a steamer steering almost due west. Our skipper thought perhaps she might have sighted the seaplane, so we tried her with radio and got no answer. We ran down to speak her. It was unusual to see a vessel as small as this tramp heading so far to the west’ard instead of following the coast. The Pacific Ocean looked awful large and wet for her to cross.
“The signal quartermaster tried her with a flag hoist in the international code. All he got back was a string of ragged bunting that looked as if the rats had chewed it. You couldn’t make out the code letters to save your soul. So we kept on to run close and hail her with a megaphone. Say, kid, the skipper of this Valkyrie was one whale of a big guy! He waved his straw hat, and he sure was a natural blond. Lazy and good-natured, too, like he was enjoying a life on the ocean wave. That’s how he looked when he grinned at us. The world was his buddy.
“He hollered over that he hadn’t seen any stray seaplanes, and would we please give him the correct Greenwich time because his owner had bought the chronometer in a junk-shop to save a dollar. We asked him where he thought he was going, but he laughed and said he was going to Davy Jones’s locker if the weather went back on him. It was nothing in our young lives, so we hauled on our course and wished him luck. Now, kid, I’ve found the big guy for you, but where he expects to head in is too much for me. What’s your guess?”