On Foreign Service; Or, The Santa Cruz Revolution

by T. T. Jeans

He had an idea that de Costa's people were trying to get hold of her. 'If they do,' he said, 'she can simply wipe the floor with all Canilla's rotten old tubs, and his game will be finished in a couple of months.'

I couldn't help worrying about Gerald and the mater—when she heard the news—for she thought he was still tapping his rubber trees. It may have been because of that, but I played abominably against the Prince Rupert's Island team that afternoon. It was fearfully hot, the sweat seemed to make my eyes all hazy; my fingers were all thumbs, I fumbled my passes, and if I did gather them properly, could think of nothing except to get rid of the ball quickly, without passing forward. I was playing centre three-quarters, so messed up the whole of our attack and we lost badly. The Angel at 'half kept looking at me with a puzzled face, wondering what was wrong, and all our chaps were shouting themselves hoarse, 'Buck up, Wilson,' but nothing would go right, and directly after the match I trudged down to the Governor's steps by myself, to smoke a pipe and wait for our boat.

You know what it feels like to have lost the game for your side; so I wanted to be alone, slung my heavy sweater over my back, with the arms tied round my neck, put on my coat over it, and sat down where old Ginger and I had sat that time before.

I smoked and watched a crowd of niggers hustling round me unloading a lighter which had come ashore from one of Pickford and Black's steamers lying off in the harbour—she had come in from Los Angelos that morning—and had just taken off my straw hat to light another match inside it, when I heard a naked footstep behind me, a fierce kind of a grunting hiss, and something struck my shoulder.

I was on my feet and had turned in a second, and there was that little brute who had been shadowing Gerald, and had nabbed me up at Santa Cruz. He had a long knife in his hand, and I knew him at once, although he was dressed as a coolie, by the scar on his forehead—the one my pipe had made.

I had hold of his wrist in a jiffy, but it was all oily. He wriggled himself free, I made another grab at him, but he was like an eel, and bolted through the crowd of niggers. It was all done so quickly that no one seemed to have noticed him, and, though I dashed after him, I lost sight of the little beast. Something warm began trickling down inside my jersey, and I gave up following him to see what damage had been done. The knife had made a gash in the skin over my left collar-bone, and I was bleeding like a pig. Like an ass, I must have fainted, for when I woke up my head was resting in the huge lap of Arabella de Montmorency, who was pinching up the skin near the gash; there were crowds of jabbering niggers all squashing round me; the tall grave Sikh policeman had his notebook out, and I heard her chattering away: 'The good Lo'd be praised. He send Arabella to sab de life of de British naval officah—some black trash hab done dis—no buckra niggah from Princes' Town—oh, de pretty yellow hair.'

Luckily for me Dr. Clegg and the rest of the football team came up and rescued me, or the old 'washa-lady' would probably have kissed me.

Of course I was all right directly, and Dr. Clegg stitched me up when we got aboard, but I was on the sick list for a week. The knife had cut clean through the knot in the sleeves of my sweater, and this had probably saved my life. Strangely enough, when I got on board, there was a letter waiting for me from my friend the fat A.D.C., telling me, in very bad English, that Pedro Mendez—that was the name of the ugly brute—had been dismissed the police force for bungling Gerald's arrest, and had left Santa Cruz burning to be revenged on us both. The letter and the ex-policeman had probably come across together in the Pickford and Black steamer which I'd been watching.

It was awfully decent of my A.D.C. chum to have taken all this trouble to warn me, because it must have been jolly hard work for him to write a letter in English.

He signed himself Alfonso Navarro, and I shouldn't forget his 'tally' in a hurry. It wasn't his fault that the letter had been a bit late, and it didn't make me the less grateful.