Several days previous, he had been detached from the United States cruiser Seminole at La Guayra on special duty. Incidentally, the commander of the Seminole had entrusted him with a packet of important papers to be delivered to Mr. Brigham, the United States consular representative at Para, in the mouth of the Amazon River. In the course of his duty, Ensign Glennie was to call at Para; also the course of his duty demanded that he proceed to Georgetown, British Guiana, and there await the arrival of a certain boat in which he was to take passage around "the Horn."
Ensign Glennie, let it be known, was descended from a line of Massachusetts notables who first came over in the Mayflower. His father was a Boston nabob, and there was a good deal more pride and haughtiness about Glennie than was good for him. No sooner had he been cut loose from the Seminole on detached duty, than he proceeded to hire the services of a body servant—a sphinx-like little Jap by the name of Tolo.
How Tolo came to be in La Guayra at the very time the ensign landed there, and why he should insinuate himself into the particular notice of Glennie and ask for a job, were mysteries not destined to be solved for some time. The prime thing to be taken account of here is that Tolo did present himself, and was hired.
For two days he brushed the ensign's clothes, polished his boots, and performed other services such as fall to the lot of a valet who knows his business. Then, after two days of faithful service, Tolo disappeared; and, about the same time, the packet of important papers likewise vanished.
Glennie led the authorities in a wild hunt through La Guayra, and after that through Caracas, but Tolo was not to be found. What on earth the little Jap wanted with the papers, Glennie could not even guess, but that he had them seemed a certainty.
Returning to La Guayra, Glennie found that the authorities there had discovered that Tolo had taken passage, on the very morning he had turned up missing, on a tramp steamer bound for Trinidad and Port-of-Spain; and the authorities further stated that Tolo had formerly been employed as a waiter in the fonda Ciudad Bolivar, which fronted the esplanade of the capital city of the island.
Ensign Glennie changed his plans forthwith. Instead of proceeding direct to Georgetown he would gain that port by way of Trinidad, stopping long enough in Port-of-Spain to hunt up the enterprising Tolo and secure the papers.
So this was why Glennie happened to be on the Borneo; and it was also the reason he was not so comfortable in his mind as he might otherwise have been.
As a commissioned officer in the United States Navy he had been entrusted with important dispatches. If he did not recover the dispatches, and then proceed with the rest of the duty marked out for him, a black mark would be set against his name that would interfere with his promotion.
Glennie was worried as he had never been before in his life. His one desire was to serve Uncle Sam with a clean and gallant record. His father, the Boston nabob, expected great things of him, and Glennie, being puffed up—as already stated—with rather high ideas regarding his family, expected them of himself. Therefore the loss of that packet of official papers caught him like a slap in the face. It made him squirm, and he was squirming as he sat by that table on the grating, felt the Borneo reach the end of her scope of cable and come to a stop with her mud-hook hard and fast.