“You certainly do not seem like yourself, Papa Bazán,” gravely returned Ricardo. The symptoms were as alarming as one of those sudden heart seizures. “I’m glad you appreciate the loyalty of your ship’s company. And it is very decent of you to make it easy for me. What it amounts to, though, is that Don Miguel O’Donnell was too wise and bold for me. You were afraid of it, remember?”
“You will try to make him pay for it, Ricardo. I see it in your eyes. More men will be bleeding with bullets. You yourself may be dead. I made you come on this voyage when you wished to get out of Cartagena and find your sweetheart, that girl of mine, Teresa Fernandez.”
“I shall find my girl. The world isn’t big enough to keep us apart,” said Ricardo, his scowl fading. “But I am not ready to quit Cocos Island. The only curse on the treasure is Don Miguel O’Donnell. You must let me work it out, sir. You don’t have to strike your colors yet.”
“Promise me you will not get yourself killed, Ricardo,” implored the affectionate Papa Bazán. “I would not leave you buried on Cocos Island, not for the riches of Captain Thompson and Benito Bonito.”
“My own funeral is not on the programme,” replied Ricardo to whom this was an unfamiliar Papa Bazán. “Please don’t interfere with my orders. I shall have a good deal on my hands. Don Miguel rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t like the way he did it.”
The old gentleman consented to go to bed. Captain Cary made a tour of his patients. With luck he expected to pull them all through. He found the steward faithfully on duty as nurse. Climbing to the bridge, he stood gazing at the shadowy outline of the hostile schooner, only a few hundred feet away. His solid composure of mind had returned. He was putting his shattered self-confidence together again. It made him wince to know that Don Miguel was laughing at him. It was his first humiliating defeat. His men deserved better of him than this.
While he stood musing in the starlit night, he seemed to hear the voice of Teresa Fernandez as she had told him the tale of the great galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario and her ancestor Don Diego Fernandez—the tale of the two little English ships that had throttled the galleon like bulldogs.
The little ships of Devon, lubberly, as round as an apple, gaudy pennants floating from their stumpy masts, wallowing off to leeward, daring the devil and the deep sea!
The blood coursed through Richard Cary’s veins. He paced to and fro, head erect, heart beating high. Was he to be balked of Spanish treasure? He was a Cary of Devon.
This Don Miguel O’Donnell was a worthy foeman. How many of his men were aboard the schooner? To-night was the time to carry her by boarding, before Don Miguel could entrench the camp and send more men to his vessel to hold her against surprise.