Stanley Graydon’s impulse to blurt out in savage, unsparing retaliation was checked by but one factor. That was his earnest desire to convince Dixon of the seriousness of Juan’s revelations. In the face of these revelations, he had no wish to incur further enmity.
On their way back to the hacienda, Dixon summed up his observations.
“You’re dead right, Graydon, in laying down the law for those ignorant peons.” He smiled tolerantly as he went on. “I’m destined to die at sea, just as I was destined to follow the sea. So don’t mind if I allow myself a little latitude on your rules.”
True to his tenets, Dixon steered his fatalistic course, eating mangoes with relish, drinking unboiled spring water. He was missing at breakfast the third day. Stanley Graydon, a prey to misgivings, found him in bed with the unmistakable marks of cholera on him. They were there in the faint livid tinge of his face; in the spasms of pain that raced through his body.
With the discovery, the last trace of bitter resentment on Graydon’s part fled. The iron will of the man, his serene fatalism, his stubborn fight for life, where a peon would have succumbed without a struggle, enlisted Graydon’s admiration.
Don Rafael heard the news with an air of deep abstraction. It was apparent that something of greater import had him in its grasp.
“Ah, if only Señor Dixon had acted as we begged him to! Now, if he recovers and relents, it may be too late.” His face was drawn.
The bitterness of it brought inspiration to Stanley Graydon.
“That radio is going, Don Rafael!” he cried. “I’ll write the message, sign Dixon’s name to it, and the legation will have it coded and on the air before night falls!”
Don Rafael’s voice boomed out exultantly for a mounted messenger.