A west coast trading venture to make his old age something more than dry rot and stagnation, publicly explained Ramon Bazán. A whim of this erratic old codger, the Cartagena merchants found it mirthful. A guardian should interpose before he squandered all his money. A few critics argued to the contrary. In his prime Ramon Bazán had been famous for shrewdness. Who could tell? He might have something up his sleeve. The problem of raking a crew together caused more speculation. Cartagena was a languid seaport. Most of the commerce had been diverted to Porto Colombia. The American beach-combers who drifted in from the Canal Zone were more or less of a nuisance. It was one of these that Ramon Bazán had put in charge of his ship as chief officer while fitting for sea. A captain would join the Valkyrie later, he vouchsafed.
“What do you know about this chief officer, Señor Bazán?” asked Richard Cary.
“If I knew more I should like him less,” was the peevish reply. “He calls himself Captain Bradley Duff. Rough and tough, eh? He commanded ships, to hear him say so, but I think he lost his ticket somewhere. He had a job with the North American Mining Company at Calamar for a little while. A large, important man, Ricardo, with blossoms on his nose, and a very red face—his belly is round and his feet are flat. He has a big voice and a whiskey breath. But he knows a ship, and he can’t graft very much because I pay all the bills. He asks why he is not made captain of the Valkyrie? You will understand why when you know him, Ricardo.”
“I don’t have to know him, thank you. You can find a frowsy Captain Bradley Duff in almost any port. They make a loud noise and throw a chesty front. Is your chief engineer the same kind?”
“No. I was lucky to find him. A long, thin boy, younger than you, Ricardo, and with manners courteous to an old man. He wandered to Colombia from Boston because he had the loose foot. You know. To take a look at the tropics. Nothing wrong with him. He was an assistant engineer in steamers between Boston and Norfolk. Down this way he was in charge of the ice plant at Barranquilla until his foot felt loose again. For two weeks he has been sweating with the engines of the Valkyrie, always cheerful, and he says he will hammer seven knots out of the old contraption or blow her to the middle of next week. Contraption? He made me laugh. The Valkyrie is just that.”
For Richard Cary it was a game of blind-man’s buff, with such random echoes as these to make him call it a choice between being shot in Cartagena or drowned in a coffin of a ship. It was a mad world and daily growing madder. However, he liked it, and would not have exchanged lots with the spruce Captain Jordan Sterry and the immaculate Tarragona punctually running her lawful schedule.
One thing troubled him, and one thing only. He could not bear to go surging off into this uncertain escapade without sending some word to Teresa Fernandez. Wherever she might be, a letter would probably be forwarded if addressed in care of the Union Fruit Company’s offices in New York. He could not disclose his plans, but he could ask her to wait for him. So straitly was he fettered by circumstances that he felt bound to say to Señor Bazán:
“It is your secret, this voyage to Cocos Island. I have no idea of giving it away, but I must write Teresa before we sail. There is no harm in telling her that I have found a good berth in a ship in the west coast trade for two or three months. She knows how dull shipping is at home. I disappeared from the Tarragona, you remember, and I want her to understand that it wasn’t my fault.”
“Write her that much, then,” cried her waspish uncle, “but no more, on your honor, Ricardo. Fill that girl with all the beautiful lies you like about love and separations, but not one word about the Valkyrie and Ramon Bazán. By my soul and breeches, we must keep Teresa quiet. Nobody knows what she will do next. Put your letter on the desk with my letters. I will take them to the post-office when I go out to-morrow.”
For a young man naturally candid and unversed in evasions, it was a mortally difficult letter to write. He hated the web of secrecy which had inexorably enmeshed him. Besides this, he was writing his first love letter, and to a girl who had vanished from his ken, beyond horizons of her own. The situation was intricate, wretchedly confused. For the time he had given hostages to fortune and was not his own free man. To tell the whole truth, to explain to Teresa that, for love of her, he had sought a hiding-place in Cartagena with a price on his head and was now off for a fling at pirate’s gold to pour into her lap, this would have satisfied the normal impulses of a young man who desired to stand well in the eyes of his sweetheart.