“Fetch me a hammer and spikes and some short pieces of scantling. I won’t need the rest of the crew in the morning. Can you manage to shove her as far as the Boca Chica?”
“Sure! I sling a mean shovel myself. Nail ’em up? That’s a corker.”
Soon Captain Cary went forward, with Mr. Panchito, to reconnoiter. A wooden house with large windows had been built, at Mr. Duff’s suggestion, to give the crew lodgings more livable in the tropics than the noisome kennels under the deck of the vessel’s bow. These were so leaky that rough weather would flood them, and they were foully dark. It had been cheaper to build a shelter than to make the necessary repairs.
Mr. Panchito was eager to assist the captain’s hasty carpentry by discouraging with a pistol any attempts to break out. The doors had hasps and padlocks, but these could not withstand much battering from within. Richard Cary spiked them fast with swift, powerful blows of a machinist’s hammer. The noise awoke the dozen sailors and firemen. For the moment they imagined the mate was pounding to call all hands on deck. They tumbled from the bunks, crowded to the doors, and couldn’t push them open.
Caramba! There was a commotion in this stout wooden coop. Bare toes could not kick through obstinate doors. The terrific hammering dinned at them. It was like being inside a bass drum. Fearfully they flew for the windows.
And now the rotund Mr. Panchito exhibited a frenzied agility. He bounded from one window to another, flourishing the pistol, pushing a head back, belaboring a wriggling pair of shoulders. It was like a multiplied jack-in-the-box. He caught one limber fellow by the leg as he dived for the deck. Into the window he stuffed him by main strength. Mr. Panchito was magnificent. As a second mate he was already deserving encomiums.
Laughter made Richard Cary miss a spike as often as he hit it. He too had to gallop round and round the wooden structure which seemed to have a hundred windows and as many frantic men trying to spill out of them. Never had he heard the Spanish language so molten that it actually threatened to set a building on fire. As fast as he rammed a man inside, he slapped a piece of board across a window and whacked the spikes into it.
Mr. Panchito was running himself to death. He sounded like a whistling buoy. There was no leisure for him while those infernal heads were popping out, and El Diablo was at his heels. One by one the windows were made secure enough to check the eruption. Then Captain Cary had time to spike more boards across the windows. Even if the captives should pull the bunks to pieces for battering-rams, they were safely caged for the present. In their own tongue Mr. Panchito informed them through the cracks that if they cared to live longer it was essential to be as still as mice and to beseech the goodness of God on their sinful knees.
“Mucho bueno, Capitan Cary,” exclaimed this excellent second mate whose pink shirt stuck wetly to his skin.
“One hundred per cent bueno,” was the hearty verdict. “If the Colombian navy hadn’t dropped out from under you, it would have been Admiral Panchito some day.”