Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

By chance, the Comandante of the Port, the famous Colonel Fajardo, walking home from the Café Dos Hermanos, had discovered the body of the Americano and his victims, a sight to wonder at in that respectable street of peaceful Cartagena. Colonel Fajardo had summoned the police. They had decided to keep the matter hushed until they could investigate. They had been annoyed to find a little life in him. Such a man was better dead. He was unknown to the police. Perhaps a sailor from a ship or one of those red-faced, hard-fisted Yankee foremen from the gold mines of the Magdalena.

It had been advisable to put him in the prison instead of the hospital. Think what he had done! Tried to kill five young men because he disliked the way they sang and played the guitar!

Richard Cary was not quite so near burial as they took for granted. His breath so faint that it would scarcely have fogged a mirror, he had remained in the black realm of unconsciousness until now. The return to life was blurred and glimmering, like a feeble light in this profound darkness. It refused to be snuffed out. At first like a mere spark, to his stupefied senses it seemed to become hotter and hotter until it glowed like a coal, burning inside his head and torturing him.

He did not try to move, but lay wondering why these fiery pains should dart and flicker through his brain. He raised his leaden eyelids and dimly, waveringly perceived the arched stone ceiling blotched with dampness. It was like a dungeon. Were these merely things he had read of in books that shocked and quickened the mysterious process of his awakening? His groping mind was ablaze with illusions which seemed intensely actual. Tenaciously he endeavored to banish them, but they poignantly persisted. The sweat ran down his face. He groaned aloud. Spasms of alarm shook him.

Was this a dungeon of the Holy Office of the Inquisition? The cord was already twisted around his temples. His head was almost bursting. The stake and the fagot were waiting for him in the courtyard. Such had been the cruel fate of many a stout seaman of Devon—burly James Bitfield twice racked and enduring the water torment until death eased him—young Bailey Vaughan slashed with two hundred stripes in the market-place and enslaved in the galleys for seven years—gray-haired John Carelesse dying of the strappado, the pulley that wrenched joint and sinew asunder.

The pains in his head were intolerable. The yellow-robed agents of the Holy Office were twisting the cord tighter, to bite into his skull. By God, they could never make him recant like a whining cur and a traitor to his faith. The torture of the cord wasn’t enough for them. The fiends were pressing the red-hot iron to his back, between the shoulder blades.

It was the agony of these hallucinations that roused him out of his coma, that held him from slipping back into the dark gulf. One hand moved and clenched the frame of the cot. His eyes remained open and wandered from the gray stone arch above his head. His chest rose and fell in normal suspiration. Mistily he recognized himself as the Richard Cary who was the second officer of the Tarragona. Cartagena in the moonlight and Teresa Fernandez—a galleon’s bell that foretold disaster, dong, dong—dong, dong—the twang and tinkle of a guitar, of an ominous guitar.

He had been knocked out? Well, it was a mighty hard head to break. Solid above the ears, his young brother Bill had delicately hinted. The pain was terrific, but this didn’t necessarily mean a crack in it. That head had been banged before now.

Stabbed in the back, besides! That was more serious. It ought to have finished him. Such had been the bravo’s intention. But he had never thrust a knife into a back as broad and deep as this, with such thick ridges of muscles that overlaid it like armor. Also, in the flurry of haste, he may have driven the blade aslant.

Anxiously Richard Cary drew in his breath and expelled it. He concluded that his lungs were undamaged. That his heart was still beating proved that the knife had missed a vital part. A deep flesh wound and muscles that throbbed and burned! So much for that.