Soon they could distinguish the galleon bell suspended between two upright timbers which swayed wildly to the thrust and swing of the waves. The timbers projected from a platform like a raft. Huddled between them was an object that moved. It was a man who waved something white to let the yacht know that a castaway was on the raft.
Teresa Fernandez needed no binocular. Inner vision told her that Richard Cary was found. It could be no one else. For whom else would the galleon bell have wrought this marvel?
She watched him very slowly haul himself to his feet, like one dead with exhaustion, but indomitable. He stood holding himself erect, his arms around the cross-piece from which the bell was hung. His shirt fluttered in rags. He was drenched and bruised and battered. As a young god he towered in the sight of Teresa Fernandez, and his yellow hair was like an aureole.
The yacht swept to leeward of the raft and slackened way. Captain Truscoe and two men jumped into the motor dory. Richard Cary paid them not the slightest attention. All he saw was a girl in an oilskin coat and sou’wester, a girl who unconsciously held out her arms to him. Ah, she knew Ricardo loved her! It illumined his face even before his voice came huskily down the wind:
“My girl ahoy! This is the luckiest treasure voyage that ever was.”
She blew him a kiss. Captain Truscoe watched his chance and jockeyed the motor dory close to the raft. Stiffly Richard Cary released his grip of the timber and poised himself with a seaman’s readiness. Into the boat he lurched and fell like a log. His tremendous vitality enabled him to revive and to gain the deck of the yacht with two sailors heaving at his shoulders. They helped him to the cabin where he sprawled upon a couch.
Teresa followed. Maternally her first desire was to have him warm and dry, and tucked in bed where she could nurse him. She stood aside while Captain Truscoe ordered the steward about, demanding hot whiskey, blankets, and clean clothes from the biggest man on board. Shakily, with a man to lean on, Richard Cary was able to reach the captain’s room.
“Please wait until the sea is smooth enough to hoist that bell aboard,” said he. “Don’t let it go adrift. It has been a good friend to me.”
While watching the door for Teresa, he fell blissfully asleep. She tiptoed in an hour later. She had felt no great impatience. It was enough to know that he was safe and near to her. Leaning over him, she let her fingers lightly brush his ruddy cheek. Brave and simple and honest he looked as when she had first known him. She wondered what he, too, had dared and suffered while they had been parted. In a word or two he had told Captain Truscoe of the loss of the Valkyrie. All hands saved in the boats. This would be like her Ricardo, preferring not himself.
She summoned her courage to meet the ordeal of her confession. The warm tint faded from her olive cheek. She was like the Teresa, grave and resigned, who had fingered a rosary in her room of the Tarragona before she had gone to the wharf to confront Colonel Fajardo, when she had been willing to pay the price as a woman who had loved and lost.