“This was a violent place to be. Blown up and shot up. Quite recent. Any sensible man would leave it in a hurry and put to sea. I guess it was too much for your uncle.”
Teresa was speechless. It was too much for her. She was frowning at a broken galvanized pail on which was stenciled S.S. Valkyrie. What was buried underneath those horrid masses of stone and earth from which uprooted trees protruded?
“I don’t blame you for feeling upset,” said the skipper. “This gets my goat.”
“Oh, I don’t want to stay here,” Teresa found voice to tell him. “Please help me get back to the yacht.”
She had been living in the hope that Cocos Island would be her journey’s end, but now the road was blinder, blacker than ever. Later in the day she ventured as far as the verdure near the beach and gathered fresh flowers to leave on the grave of Uncle Ramon Bazán. Captain Truscoe sturdily explored the road built by Don Miguel O’Donnell and returned with an extraordinary story of the abandoned hydraulic pipe-line and elaborate equipment.
“All hands scurried away, like rats from a hulk,” he reported, very hot and tired. “What next?”
“I wish I knew,” mourned Teresa. “I can tell you nothing. You are much wiser than I am. I am finished. Now my poor uncle is dead, there is nothing to guide me. Is Captain Cary in command of the Valkyrie, or is he also dead on Cocos Island?”
“It does look mighty random,” agreed Captain Truscoe. “There’s this comfort—somebody was alive and able to take the steamer to sea. She never rambled off by herself. When it comes to figuring where she went, your guess is as good as mine.”
“I can guess nothing. We had better go back to Panama. Is it not so? And I will thank Mr. Jerry Tobin and say good-bye.”
“Better stay with ’em until you get your bearings, Miss Fernandez. Maybe the Valkyrie will turn up there.”