The adventures of Captain O'Shea

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Books By Ralph D. Paine

Published By Charles Scribner’S Sons

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THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN O’SHEA. 12mo _net_ $1.35

The Adventures Of Captain O’Shea

The Adventures Of Captain O’Shea

By Ralph D. Paine

New York Charles Scribner’S Sons 1913

Copyright, 1913, By Charles Scribner’S Sons

Published September, 1913

[Illustration]

Contents

Page I. The Castaways 3

II. The King Of Trinadaro 133

III. The Liner “Alsatian” 195

IV. The Branded Man 250

The Adventures Of Captain O’Shea

The Castaways

I

When the Cubans, led by Gomez and Maceo, were waging their final rebellion against the immemorial tyranny of Spain, it may be recalled that there was much filibustering out of American ports, and a lively demand for seafaring men of an intrepid temper who could be relied on to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. Such a one was young Captain O’Shea, and, moreover, he was no amateur at this ticklish industry, having already “jolted one presidente off his perch in Hayti, and set fire to the coat-tails of another one in Honduras,” as he explained to the swarthy gentlemen of the Cuban Junta in New York, who passed on his credentials.

They gave him a sea-going tug called the _Fearless_, permitted him to pick his own crew, and told him where to find his cargo, in a fairly lonesome inlet of the Florida coast. Thereafter he was to work out his own salvation. The programme was likely to be anything else than monotonous. To be nabbed by a Yankee cruiser in home waters for breaking the laws of nations meant that Captain O’Shea would cool his heels in a Federal jail, a mishap most distasteful to a man of a roving disposition. To run afoul of the Spanish blockading fleet in Cuban waters was to be unceremoniously shot full of holes and drowned in the bargain.

Such risks as these were incidental to his trade, and Captain O’Shea maintained his cheerful composure until the _Fearless_ had taken her explosive cargo on board and was dropping the sandy coast-line of Florida over her stern. Then he scrutinized his passengers and became annoyed. The Junta had sent him a Cuban colonel and forty patriots, recruited from the cigar factories of Tampa and Key West, who ardently, even clamorously, desired to return to their native land and fight for the glorious cause of liberty.

Their organization was separate from that of the ship’s company. It was not the business of Captain O’Shea to enforce his hard-fisted discipline among them, nor did he have to feed them, for they had brought their own stores on board. Early in the voyage he expressed his superheated opinion of the party to the chief engineer. The twain stood on the little bridge above the wheel-house, the clean-built, youthful Irish-American skipper, and the beefy, gray-headed Johnny Kent, whose variegated career had begun among the Yankees of ’way down East.

The deep-laden _Fearless_ was wallowing through the uneasy seas of the Gulf Stream. The Cuban patriots were already sea-sick in squads, and they lay helpless amid an amazing disorder of weapons, blankets, haversacks, valises, and clothing. Now and then the crest of a sea flicked merrily over the low guard-rail and swashed across the pallid sufferers.

“Did ye ever see such a mess in all your born days?” disgustedly observed Captain O’Shea. “And we will have to live with this menagerie for a week or so, Johnny.”

“It’ll be a whole lot worse when all of ’em are took sea-sick,” was the discouraging reply. “Doggone ’em, they ain’t even stowed their kits away. They just flopped and died in their tracks. Why don’t you make their colonel kick some savvey into ’em, eh, Cap’n Mike?”

“Colonel Calvo?” and O’Shea spat to leeward with a laugh. “He is curled up in the spare state-room, and his complexion is as green as a starboard light. There is one American in the lot. Wait till I fetch him up.”

A deck-hand was sent into the dismal chaos, and there presently returned in his wake a lean, sandy man in khaki who clutched an old-fashioned Springfield rifle. At a guess his years might have been forty, and his visage had never a trace of humor in it. Much drill had squared his shoulders and flattened his back, and he stiffly saluted Captain O’Shea.

“Who are you, and what are ye doing in such amazin’ bad company?” asked the latter.

“My name is Jack Gorham, sir. I served four enlistments in the Fifth Infantry, and I have medals for marksmanship. The Cubans took me on as a sharp-shooter. They promised me a thousand dollars for every Spanish officer I pick off with this old gun of mine. I have a hundred and fifty rounds. You can figure it out for yourself, sir. I’ll be a rich man.”

“Provided ye are not picked off first, me hopeful sharp-shooter. Are there any more good men in your crowd?”

The old regular dubiously shook his head as he answered:

“There’s a dozen or so that may qualify on dry land. The rest ain’t what you’d call reliable comrades-in-arms.”

“Oh, they may buck up,” exclaimed Captain O’Shea. “Look here, Gorham, you can’t live on deck with those sea-sick swine. Better go for’ard and bunk with my crew.”

Jack Gorham looked grateful, but firmly declared:

“Thank you, sir, I belong with the Cuban outfit, and I’ll take my medicine. It would make bad feeling if I was to quit ’em. They are as jealous and touchy as children. I have a tip for you. There is one ugly lad in the bunch, the big, black nigger settin’ yonder on the hatch. They tell me he comes from Colombia and left there two jumps ahead of the police.”

They gazed down at the powerful figure of the negro, whose tattered shirt disclosed swelling ridges of muscle and more than one long scar defined in pink against the shining black skin. Thick-lipped, flat-nosed, he was the primitive African savage whose ancestors had survived the middle passage in the hold of a Spanish slaver. He was snarling and grumbling to a group of Cubans, and Captain O’Shea pricked up his ears.

“Raising a row about the grub, is he? ’Tis a pity he could not be sea-sick early and often.”

“Why don’t you crack him over the head with a belayin’-pin just for luck?” amiably suggested the chief engineer. “It would sweeten him up considerable.”

“I am carrying them as passengers, you blood-thirsty old buccaneer,” retorted O’Shea. “I must keep me hands off till they really mix things up. But I do not like the looks of the big nigger. He is one of your born trouble-hunters.”

“You take my advice and beat him up good and plenty before he gets started,” was the sage farewell of Johnny Kent as he lumbered below to exhort his oilers and stokers.

The night came down and obscured the hurrying tug whose course was laid for the Yucatan passage around the western end of Cuba. The lights of a merchant-steamer twinkled far distant and Captain O’Shea sheered off to give her a wide berth. He had no desire to be sighted or reported.

To him, keeping lookout on the darkened bridge, came his cook, a peaceable mulatto who had a grievance which he aired as follows:

“Please, cap’n, them Cubans what ain’t sea-sick is actin’ powerful unreasonable. I lets ’em heat their stuff and make coffee in my galley, but I ain’t ’sponsible for th’ rations they all draws. That big, black niggah is stirrin’ ’em up. Jiminez, they calls him. At supper-time to-night, cap’n, he tried to swipe some of th’ crew’s bacon and hash, and I had to chase him outen th’ galley.”

“All right, George. I will keep an eye on him to-morrow,” said the skipper. “Between you and me the Cuban party did not bring enough provisions aboard to run them on full allowance for the voyage. There was graft somewhere. But I’m hanged if they can steal any of my stores. We may need every pound of them. I will see to it that your galley isn’t raided. And if this big bucko Jiminez gets gay again, give him the tea-kettle and scald the black hide off him--understand?”

“Yes, suh, cap’n; I’ll parboil him if you’ll look out he don’t carve me when he’s done recuperated.”

The cook descended to his realm of pots and pans while Captain O’Shea reflected that the voyage might be even livelier than he had anticipated. With calm weather his forty passengers would recover their appetites and demand three meals per day. They might whine and grumble over the shortage, but without a leader they were fairly harmless.

“I will have to lock horns with the big nigger before he gets any more headway,” soliloquized Captain O’Shea.

For once he heartily desired high winds and rough seas, but the following morning brought weather so much smoother, that the pangs of hunger took hold of the reviving patriots, who arose from the coal-sacks and crowded to the galley windows. The cook toiled with one eye warily lifted lest the formidable negro from Colombia should board him unawares.

Captain O’Shea leaned over the rail of his bridge and surveyed the scene. Black Jiminez was making loud complaint in his guttural Spanish patois, but his following was not eager to encounter the rough-and-tumble deck-hands of the _Fearless_, besides which the prudent cook hovered within easy distance of the steaming tea-kettle.

To the amusement of Captain O’Shea, it was that lathy sharp-shooter of the serious countenance, Jack Gorham, who took it upon himself to read the riot act to the big negro. He regarded himself and his duty with a profound, unshaken gravity. Jiminez overtopped him by a foot, but pride of race and self-respect would not permit him to knuckle under to the black bully.

“Will ye look at the Gorham man?” said Captain O’Shea to the chief engineer who had joined him. “He is bristlin’ up to the nigger like a terrier pup. And Jiminez would make no more than two bites of him.”

“How can the soldier do anything else?” exclaimed Johnny Kent. “He’s the only white man in the bunch.”

“I may as well let him know that I am backin’ his game,” observed the other. He sang out to Gorham, and the veteran infantryman climbed to the bridge, where he stood with heels together, hat in hand. His pensive, freckled countenance failed to respond to the captain’s greeting smile.

“Unless I am mistaken, Gorham, ye have it in mind to tackle a job that looks a couple of sizes too large for you. Will ye start a ruction with Jiminez?”

“Until the colonel gets on his legs I’m the man to take charge of the party, sir,” answered the soldier, reflectively rubbing the bald spot which shone through his thinning thatch of sandy hair.

“But I expect to take a hand,” petulantly declared the captain. “This is my ship.”

“Excuse me, sir,” and Gorham’s accents were most apologetic. “This is your ship, but it ain’t your party. The patriots are a separate command. The big nigger belongs to me. If I don’t discourage him, I lose all chance of winnin’ promotion in the Cuban army. If he downs me, I’ll be called a yellow dog from one end of the island to the other. I intend to earn my shoulder-straps.”

“And you will climb this big, black beggar, and thank nobody to interfere?” asked the admiring Captain O’Shea.

“It is up to me, sir.”

“You strain me patience, Gorham. If ye have any trinkets and messages to send to your friends, better give them to me now.”

Said the chief engineer when the soldier was out of ear-shot:

“Does he really mean it, Cap’n Mike? He’ll sure be a homely-lookin’ corpse.”

“Mean it? That lantern-jawed lunatic wouldn’t know a joke if it hit him bows on.”

“Will you let him be murdered?”

“We will pry the big nigger off him before it goes as far as that. Have ye not learned, Johnny Kent, that it is poor business to come between a man and his good intentions, even though they may be all wrong?”

Later in the day Captain O’Shea sought the state-room of the prostrate Colonel Calvo. The sea was a relentless foe and showed him no mercy. Feebly moving his hands, he turned a ghastly face to the visitor and croaked:

“I have no interes’ in my mens, in my country, in nothings at all. I am dreadful sick. I will not live to see my Cuba. She will weep for me. The ship, she will sink pretty soon? I hope so.”

“Nonsense, colonel,” bluffly returned O’Shea. “The weather couldn’t be finer. A few days more of this and ye will be wading in Spanish gore to your boot-tops. I want to ask about your stores. Your men are growlin’. Who is in charge of the commissary?”

“Talk to me nothings about eats,” moaned the sufferer. “Why do anybody want eats? Come to-morrow, nex’ day, nex’ week. Now I have the wish to die with peace.”

“The sooner, the better,” said the visitor, and departed.

The _Fearless_, with explosives in the hold and inflammable humanity above-decks, pursued her hard-driven way through another night and turned to double Cape San Antonio and enter the storied waters of the Caribbean. Black Jiminez had failed to play the rôle expected of him and the discontent of the patriots focussed itself in no open outbreak. Captain O’Shea was puzzled at this until the mate came to him and announced that the Cubans had broken through a bulkhead in the after-hold and were stealing the ship’s stores. This accounted for their good behavior on deck. The leader of the secret raiding party was the big negro from Colombia.

“It seems to me that this is _my_ business,” softly quoth the skipper, and his gray eyes danced while he pulled his belt a notch tighter. “But I must play fair and ask permission of the melancholy sharp-shooter before I proceed to make a vacancy in the Jiminez family.”

The interview with Gorham was brief. The captain argued that by breaking through a bulkhead and pilfering the crew’s provisions, the large black one had invaded the O’Shea domain. The soldier held to it with the stubbornness of a wooden Indian that his own self-respect was at stake. O’Shea lost his temper and burst out:

“If ye are so damned anxious to commit suicide, go and get him and put him in irons. I will give you a decent burial at sea, though ye don’t deserve it, you pig-headed old ramrod.”

“The moral effect will be better if I get him,” mildly suggested the soldier.

The Cubans had learned that trouble was in the wind. Their stolen supplies were to be cut off and this meant short rations again. Angry and rebellious, only a spark was needed to set them ablaze. When eight bells struck the noon hour they surged toward the galley, making a great noise, displaying their sea-rusted machetes and rifles. In the lead was Jiminez, a half-clad, barbaric giant who waved a heavy blade over his head and shouted imprecations. The purpose of the mob was to rush the galley and carry off all the food in sight.

The crew of the _Fearless_ liked not the idea of going dinnerless. When the excited patriots charged forward, there quickly rallied in front of the deck-house fourteen earnest-looking men equipped with Mauser rifles broken out of the cargo. In a wheel-house window appeared the head and shoulders of Captain O’Shea. His fist held a piece of artillery known as a Colt’s forty-five. In the background of the picture was the resourceful Johnny Kent, who was coupling the brass nozzle of the fire-hose.

Jiminez had decided to declare war. He appealed to the patriots to use their weapons, but they showed a prudent reluctance to open the engagement. One of them, by way of locating the responsibility for the dispute, pulled a revolver from a holster and took a snap-shot at the cook.

“I guess I’d better turn loose this hose and wash ’em aft, Cap’n Mike,” sung out the chief engineer. “George is a darned good cook and it ain’t right to let these black-and-tans pester him.”

Captain O’Shea bounded from the bridge to the deck, and the crew of the _Fearless_ welcomed him with joyous yelps. Instead of giving them the expected order to charge the Cubans hammer-and-tongs, he made for Jiminez single-handed. His intention was thwarted. Between him and the burly negro appeared the spare figure of Jack Gorham, who moved swiftly, quietly. With courteous intonation and no sign of heat he affirmed:

“This is my job, sir. It’s about time to put a few kinks in him.”

The manner of the man made Captain O’Shea hesitate and feel rebuked, as though he had been properly told to mind his own business. With a boyish grin he slapped Gorham on the back and said:

“I beg your pardon for intrudin’. ’Tis your funeral.”

Although the mob behind Jiminez failed to catch the wording of this bit of dialogue, they comprehended its import. The extraordinary composure of the two men impressed them. They felt more fear of them than of the embattled deck-hands. The tableau lasted only a moment, but a singular silence fell upon the ship.

Big Jiminez nervously licked his lips and his bloodshot eyes roved uneasily. It was apparent that he had been singled out as the leader, and that the sad-featured American soldier in the sea-stained khaki viewed him as no more than an incident in the day’s work.

Captain O’Shea had stepped back to join his own men. Jack Gorham stood alone in a small cleared space of the deck, facing the truculent negro. The Cubans began to edge away from Jiminez as if comprehending that here was an issue between two men. The soldier had for a weapon that beloved old Springfield rifle, but he made no motion to shoot.

Presently he sprang forward, with the heavy butt upraised. The negro swung his machete at the same instant and the blade was parried by the steel barrel. The mob had become an audience. It lost its menacing solidarity and drifted a little way aft to make room for the combatants. Instead of riot or mutiny, the trouble on board the _Fearless_ had defined itself as a duel.

The veteran regular handled the clubbed rifle with amazing ease and dexterity. The wicked machete could not beat down his guard, and he stood his ground, shifting, ducking, weaving in and out, watching for an opening to smash the negro’s face with a thrust of the butt. Once the blade nicked Gorham’s shoulder and a red smear spread over the khaki tunic.

Jiminez was forced back until he was cramped for room to swing. His machete rang against a metal stanchion and the galley window was at his elbow. His black skin shining with sweat, his breath labored, the splendid brute was beginning to realize that he had met his master. From the tail of his eye he observed that the Cubans no longer thronged the passageway between the deck-house and guard-rail. He turned and ran toward the stern.

Gorham was after him like a shot. In his wake scampered the crew of the _Fearless_ intermingled with the Cubans, all anxious to be in at the finish. Jiminez wheeled where the deck was wide. He was not as formidable as at first. Fear was in his heart. He had never fought such a man as this insignificant-looking American soldier, who was unterrified, unconquerable. Gorham ran at him without an instant’s hesitation, the rifle gripped for a downward swing. The machete grazed his head and chipped the skin from the bald spot.

Before Jiminez could strike again, the butt smote his thick skull and he staggered backward. Caught off his balance, his machete no longer dangerous, he was unable to avoid the next assault. Gorham moved a step nearer and deftly tapped his adversary with the rifle-butt. It was a knock-out blow delivered with the measured precision of a prize-ring artist. The machete dropped from the negro’s limp fingers and he toppled across two sacks of coal with a sighing grunt.

The crew of the _Fearless_ broke into a cheer. The mate on duty in the wheel-house let the vessel steer herself and scrambled to the bridge, where he was clumsily dancing a jig. The Cubans chattered among themselves in subdued accents, and from the state-room door peered the wan countenance of Colonel Calvo, who was wringing his hands and sputtering commands to which nobody paid the slightest attention.

Jack Gorham stood swaying slightly, leaning upon his Springfield, and wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand. A moment later Captain O’Shea had both arms around him and was bellowing in his ear:

“We will hoist ye into a bunk, Jack. Oh, but you are the jewel of a fightin’ man! I hope ye were not hurt bad.”

“Nothing to speak of, sir, but my wind isn’t what it was,” panted Gorham. “Better look after the nigger first. I didn’t plan to kill him.”

The chief engineer was dragging the hose aft with the praiseworthy intention of washing down the combatants, and the captain told him to turn the cool salt-water on the prostrate bulk of the negro.

“I’ll play nurse to him if you haven’t spoiled him entirely,” said Johnny Kent. “I need more help down below and he’ll make a dandy hand with a coal-shovel when his head is mended.”

Just then the mate, who had returned to the wheel, yelled to Captain O’Shea and jerked the whistle-cord. The skipper ran forward and bolted into the wheel-house. With a flourish of his arm the mate indicated a small boat lifting and falling on the azure swells no more than a few hundred yards beyond the bow of the tug. The occupants were vigorously signalling by means of upraised oars and articles of clothing.

The captain rang the engine-room bell to slacken speed and stared at the boat-load of castaways which had none of the ear-marks of shipwreck and suffering. The white paint of the boat was unmarred by the sea and the handsome brass fittings were bright. Two seamen in white clothes were at the oars, and in the stern-sheets were two women and a young man who could not be mistaken for the ordinary voyagers of a trading-vessel’s cabin.

“I ought to have called you sooner, sir,” sheepishly confessed the mate of the _Fearless_, “but I was watching the shindy on deck, same as all hands of us. What do you make of it?”

“It looks like a pleasure party,” said Captain O’Shea. “I am puzzled for fair.”

He ordered the engines stopped and the _Fearless_ drifted slowly toward the boat. The ship’s company flocked to the rail to see the castaways, who gazed in their turn at the picturesque throng of twentieth-century buccaneers--the swarthy, unshaven Cubans with their flapping straw hats, bright handkerchiefs knotted at the throat, their waists girded with cartridge-belts, holsters, and machete-scabbards--and the sunburnt, reckless rascals of the crew.

There were symptoms of consternation in the small boat as it danced nearer the crowded rail of the _Fearless_, also perceptibly less eagerness to be rescued. This was making a choice between the devil and the deep sea. It was now possible to discern that of the two women in the stern of the boat one was elderly and the other girlishly youthful. Both wore white shirt-waists and duck skirts, and the young man was smartly attired in a blue double-breasted coat, of a nautical cut, and flannel trousers. One might have supposed that the party was being set ashore from a yacht instead of tossing adrift in a lonely stretch of the Caribbean beyond sight of land.

Captain O’Shea surveyed them with a dismayed air. He was not equipped for the business of rescuing shipwrecked people of such fashionable appearance; and as for taking two women on board the _Fearless_, here was a complication to vex the soul of an industrious, single-minded filibuster. However, he was a sailor and an Irishman, and his honest heart responded to the appeal of femininity in distress. The steps were hung over the tug’s side to make the transfer from the boat as easy as possible, and a deck-hand stood ready with a coil of heaving-line. From the bridge Captain O’Shea hailed the derelicts.

“For the love of heaven, who are you and where do ye come from, so spick and span? What is it all about, anyhow?”

The young man in the stern answered in somewhat nettled tones:

“It seems more to the point to ask who you are. We are in a deucedly bad fix, and these ladies ought to be taken aboard; but do you mind if I ask whether you intend to make us walk the plank? My word, but you are a frightfully hard-looking lot. Is Captain Kidd with you?”

It was O’Shea’s turn to be ruffled, and he flung back:

“You seem mighty particular about your company. ’Tis a nuisance for me to bother with ye at all.”

“Oh, the ladies can’t drift about in this open boat any longer,” the young man hastened to exclaim. “I shall pay you handsomely to set us ashore at the nearest port.”

“And what would I be doing in the nearest port?” the skipper muttered with a grin. “Well, there is no sense in slingin’ words to and fro. Let them come aboard and find out for themselves.”

Running to the rail to assist these unwelcome guests, he called to the self-possessed young man in the boat:

“How long have ye been adrift?”

“Since midnight. Our yacht ran on a reef and broke her back. Before daylight we lost sight of the other boats.”

Captain O’Shea said nothing more. His interest veered to the girl, who had been shielding her face from the blistering glare of sun and sea. Now, as she looked up at the tug which towered above the boat, the impressionable skipper perceived that her face was fair to see, and that she smiled at him with friendly confidence. Presently he was lending her a steadying hand as she clung to the swaying rail of the tug and found foothold on the steps over which the waves washed.

“You are a plucky one and no mistake!” exclaimed Captain O’Shea. “A man might think ye enjoyed it.”

“I do,” said she, shaking the water from her skirt as she gained the deck. “Now please get my aunt aboard as carefully as you can. She has a touch of rheumatism.”

Without mishap the elderly lady was assisted to accomplish the acrobatic feat of forsaking the bobbing boat, after which the young man and the sailors were allowed to shift for themselves. Leather hand-bags, steamer-rugs, and canned provisions were tossed to the deck and the boat was turned adrift, for there was no room to stow it on board. Immediately the _Fearless_ forged ahead and picked up her course at full speed.

To an elderly spinster of refinement whose years had been spent in a sheltered, effete civilization, mostly bounded by Massachusetts, the deck of the _Fearless_ was an environment shocking beyond words. The chief engineer had resumed his interrupted task of playing the hose on the senseless, half-naked bulk of black Jiminez. Jack Gorham, more or less ensanguined, was stretched upon a hatch, where the surgeon of the Cuban party had detained him to sponge and stitch his shoulder and bandage his head. Near by hovered the disreputable patriots, begrimed with coal-dust and bristling with deadly weapons.

The elderly lady stared with eyes opened very wide. Her lips moved, but made no sound, and her delicately wrinkled cheek grew pale. At length she managed to whisper to her niece that dread saying familiar to many generations of New England spinsters:

“Mercy! We shall all be murdered in our beds.”

Captain O’Shea joined them, to speak his earnest reassurances.

“You are as safe as if you were in Sunday-school, ladies. This bunch of patriots is perfectly harmless. There was an argument just before we sighted ye, and the best man won.”

“And what is this voyage of yours, captain?” asked the girl.

“Oh, we are just romancin’ around the high-seas. ’Tis nothing that would interest a lady.”

“Do you kill each other every day?”

“You mean the big nigger yonder?” and Captain O’Shea looked a trifle embarrassed. “No, his manners had to be corrected. But will you come for’ard, please, and make yourselves at home in my room? ’Tis yours as long as ye are on board.”

“I am quite sure you have no intention of murdering us,” smilingly quoth the girl. “And we shall ask you no more questions for the present. Come along, Aunt Katharine.”

The young man of the castaways was fidgeting rather sulkily in the background. He wished to interview the captain at once, but the gallant O’Shea had eyes only for the ladies. Overlooked and apparently forgotten, the shipwrecked young man picked his way across the deck to accost Johnny Kent, whose first-aid-to-the-injured treatment with a hose-nozzle had proved efficacious. The vanquished negro was rubbing his head and sputtering salt-water and Spanish.

“There, you’re what I call recussitated in bang-up good style,” cried the engineer, proud of his handiwork. “If you were a white man, your block ’ud have been knocked clean off. You ought to be thankful for your mercies.”

The castaway touched his arm and exclaimed:

“I say, my good man, I need something to eat, and a place to sleep. I was awake all night in an open boat.”

The stout person in the greasy overalls turned to survey the speaker with mild amusement on his broad, red face.

“By the look of your party you must have suffered something awful. The skipper will attend to you pretty soon and he’ll do his best to make you happy. But this ain’t no gold-plated yacht, and it ain’t no table dote hotel.”

“So I see, but I’ll pay for the best on board. Really, money is no object----”

Johnny Kent chuckled and turned to wave the nozzle at the negro, who was sitting up.

“You subside, Jiminez, or I’ll dent this over your head. It ain’t healthy for you to get well too darned fast.”

He scrutinized the castaway with a tolerant, fatherly air and answered him:

“Better stow that you-be-damned manner of yours, young man. We’re outlaws, liable to be blown out of water any blessed minute. Those tarriers for’ard had just as soon throw you overboard as not if they don’t like your style. You ain’t a shipwrecked hero. You’re an unavoidable nuisance aboard this hooker. We’ve got other fish to fry.”

The young man flushed angrily. He was pleasant-featured, fair-haired, of athletic build, his accent suggesting that he had imported it from England. He was conscious of his own importance in the world whose idols were money and social position. Grizzled old Johnny Kent, who had diced with fortune and looked death between the eyes on many seas, knew only one distinction between men. They were “good stuff” or they were “quitters.” As for money, to have a dollar in one’s pocket after a week ashore argued a prudence both stingy and unmanly. Wherefore he wholly failed to grasp the view-point of the young man who had been wrecked in a sea-going yacht.

Fortunately Captain O’Shea came back to divert the chief engineer’s outspoken opinions. He called the castaway aside to say:

“Come to the galley with me and the cook will do his best for ye. I will sit down there and hear your yarn. If you want some clothes, maybe I can fit you out. My men are looking after your sailors.”

“This is a filibustering expedition, I take it,” exclaimed the other as they went forward.

“I do not admit it,” judicially replied Captain O’Shea. “I will not turn state’s evidence against meself.”

When they had perched themselves upon stools at the galley table the young man handed the skipper his card, which read:

“_Mr. Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen._”

The recipient eyed the card critically and commented:

“Dutch? I had a Dutchman as bos’n once and, saving your presence, he was an oakum-headed loafer. Now, how did ye come to be in these waters and whose yacht was it?”

Young Mr. Van Steen proceeded to explain.

“She was the _Morning Star_, owned by my father, the New York banker--the old house of Van Steen & Van Steen. You have heard of it, of course. He decided to take a winter holiday-trip and asked me to go along--that is to say, Miss Forbes and me. She is my fiancée----”

“You mean the young one. And she has signed on to marry you?” broke in Captain O’Shea with marked interest.

“Yes. She invited her aunt, Miss Hollister, to make the voyage as a sort of chaperon. We cruised to Barbadoes, where my father was called home on business and took a mail-steamer in a hurry. We jogged along in the _Morning Star_ until her captain lost his bearings, or something of the kind, and you know the rest. We were ordered into a boat, but while waiting for an officer and more sailors a rain-squall came along--a nasty blow it was--and our boat broke loose, and we couldn’t get back to the yacht. The wind was dead against us.”

“The other boats will be picked up,” observed O’Shea. “You were lucky to have such an easy time of it. Now comes the rub. What am I going to do with ye?”

“Chuck up your voyage,” cheerfully answered Mr. Van Steen. “We simply can’t go knocking about with you and risking the ladies’ lives. And think of the hardships. My dear man, this tug is no place for a gentlewoman.”

“It is not,” agreed O’Shea, “nor was it meant to be. ’Tis not ladies’ work I have on hand. I have promised to deliver my cargo at a certain place at a certain time, and there are men waitin’ that need it bad. Shall I break me word to them?”

Van Steen made an impatient gesture. He was used to dealing with men who had their price.

“But you are in this business for money,” cried he. “And I fancy you must have been pretty hard up to take such a job and run all these risks. Name your figure. I can understand the situation. Rescuing us is deucedly awkward for you. You don’t know what to do with us. How much do you stand to make on the voyage, and what is the cargo worth?”

Captain Michael O’Shea leaned across the table and his fist was clenched. He did not strike, but the wrath that blazed in his eyes caused Van Steen to draw back. The sailor was not much older in years than the other man, but he had battered his way, not merely sauntered through life, and virile experiences had so strongly stamped his features that Van Steen looked effeminate beside him. It was a masterful man that held himself steady under the provocation and replied to the insulting proposition slowly and carefully, as though choosing his words:

“You heard me say I had given me word to land this cargo as soon as ever I could, Mr. Van Steen. And on top of that ye try to buy me to leave good men in the lurch and break my word when this stuff of mine means life or death to them. All the money your daddy has in his bank could not make me put this ship one point off her course to set you ashore until I am good and ready. Do I make meself clear? You and your dirty money! This isn’t New York.”

Van Steen was honestly amazed. This lowering, flinty-faced young skipper must be crazy. Professional filibusters were a kind of criminal recruited from the roughest classes. They could have no morals, no manners, none of the sentiments of a gentleman. He ventured a final attempt and said with a nervous laugh:

“But what if I offer to buy the vessel outright, cargo and all, and absolutely protect you personally against any loss whatever?”

“I do not like your company,” abruptly exclaimed O’Shea. “Ye fill me with sorrow for the rich. I cannot be rid of you, but we will not be on good terms.”

His sense of humor saved the situation, and he concluded with one of his sunny, mischievous smiles:

“’Tis terrible inconvenient for both of us. Here we are, aboard a kind of a Flying Dutchman that must go dancin’ and dodgin’ about the high seas with every man’s hand against her. And you are no more anxious to quit me than I am to see the last of you.”

“But--but--it is absolutely impossible,” stammered Van Steen. “Think of the ladies----”

“They have my room, and the bit of an upper deck will be sacred to them.”

O’Shea stepped to the galley door, but Van Steen detained him with a question.

“What about me? Can I negotiate for a state-room?”

“Yes, indeed; it is on the overhang with two sacks of coal for a mattress, and ye should be thankful ’tis soft coal and not anthracite. Ye may find the suite a trifle crowded, but by kicking a few patriots in the ribs you can make room for yourself.”

II

In the refuge of the captain’s room that distraught spinster, Miss Hollister, was overcome by emotions almost hysterical. Her first impressions of the _Fearless_ had been in the nature of a nervous shock more severe than the episode of the shipwreck. Only the presence of her niece restrained her from tears and lamentations. Nora Forbes, the young person in question, was behaving with so much courage and self-possession as to set her aunt a most excellent example.

“Oh, did you ever see anything so dreadful?” moaned Miss Hollister, glancing at the captain’s shaving-glass and absently smoothing her gray hair. “There was a dead negro stretched on deck, and a white man all covered with blood, and the captain not in the least excited, actually joking about it----”

Miss Nora Forbes artfully coaxed her aunt away from the bit of mirror and proceeded to arrange her own disordered tresses as though this were more important than damp skirts and wave-soaked stockings. With hairpins twain between her pretty lips, she replied, and her accents were by no means hopeless:

“It is just too tremendously romantic for words, Aunt Katharine. I am not the least bit afraid. The captain may be a desperate villain, but he carries himself like a rough-and-ready gentleman. This is a genuine adventure, so cheer up and enjoy it.”

“But the scenes of violence--the crew of cutthroats--the bloodshed,” unsteadily resumed Miss Hollister, unable to refrain from dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “I don’t know what to say. My mind is a blank. I can only pray----”

“I should advise unpacking that bag and getting out some clean clothes,” suggested Nora. “There is no reason why we should look like a pair of drowned frights. It is an upsetting experience, Aunt Katharine, but life on shore is so tame!”

“I shall be content to be tame forevermore, Nora, if I am permitted to survive this experience. I hope Gerald can persuade the captain to land us at once.”

“They didn’t want to rescue us, so we must make ourselves as agreeable as possible. I intend to be particularly nice to the captain.”

Miss Hollister was recalled to her duty as chaperone. Her manner was reproving as she counselled:

“Be careful, Nora, you are a heedless girl at times and Gerald is very sensitive. Our plight is too serious for jesting. Of course you must be civil to the captain, but he is a perfectly impossible person. Gerald will reward him for his trouble in our behalf. We are placing ourselves under no obligations whatever.”

They were quite trim and fresh in dry clothes when the cook brought up a tray laden with the best fare the ship’s stores could provide and a pot of coffee black and hot enough to revive the most forlorn castaways that ever floated.

“Th’ cap’n’s compliments,” said George, entering with a cake-walk shuffle, “an’ he tells me to inform you that if th’ grub is burnt or don’t taste right he’ll hang me up by mah thumbs an’ peel off mah no-’count hide with a rope’s end.”

Miss Hollister appeared so ready to believe the worst that the rascally George could not forbear to add:

“Of cou’se, I’se jes’ fillin’ in till th’ regular cook gits well. Mebbe you seen him when you come aboard. He was all spraddled out. It mighty near done for big Jiminez, I’se a-tellin’ you.”

“What happened to him?” breathlessly demanded Miss Hollister, her hands clasped.

“He done fetch th’ cap’n a cup of cold coffee, ma’am.”

“How awful! And what was the matter with the white man in the khaki uniform?”

“He tried to say a good word for th’ cook. And th’ cap’n done give him _his_. This is a lively ship, ma’am.”

He could not help grinning as he turned to leave, and Nora Forbes caught him in the act.

“You are an utterly shameless prevaricator,” cried she, “and I have a notion to report you to the captain.”

“No need of it,” exclaimed O’Shea himself, who appeared in time to grasp the luckless George by the neck and pitch him down the stairway to the lower deck.

“He is a good cook, but his imagination is too strong for him at times,” explained O’Shea as he stood in the door-way, declining Nora’s invitation to enter. “The both of ye look as lovely as a May morning. It agrees with you to be shipwrecked.”

Miss Hollister thawed a trifle, although she was strongly inclined to accept the cook’s story as after the fact. But it was hard resisting the blarneying sailor with the merry eyes.

“Is such severity necessary? I feel that I ought to protest--” she began, spurred by the prompting of a New England conscience.

“And what was that slippery divil of a cook deludin’ ye about?”

The spinster mustered courage to explain. Captain O’Shea roared with glee, and turning to Nora Forbes, as if recognizing a sympathetic listener, exclaimed:

“Would ye know the truth about the big nigger? Then I will introduce you to-morrow to the man that laid him out, and a better one never stood on two feet than this same Jack Gorham, the melancholy sharp-shooter who captures ’em alive with the butt of his gun.”

Afraid of delaying their meal, he made an abrupt bow and vanished on deck. Presently Mr. Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen stood gloomily regarding them. Nora made room for him on the cushioned locker and cheerily asked:

“How are you getting on with the assorted pirates? Are they a rum lot and do they sing ‘Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest’?”

“I am not getting on at all,” sadly quoth he. “I have met only the chief engineer and the captain, and I should call them a very rum lot indeed. This is a floating mad-house. By Jove! I was never so angry in my life.”

“I think I understand, Gerald,” soothingly observed Miss Hollister. “But I am sure you can extricate us from this alarming situation. You are a young man of courage and resources and the name of Van Steen carries great weight everywhere.”

“This wild Irishman never heard of it,” said Gerald. “And when I talked money he almost crawled across the table to assault me.”

“Then he refuses to put us on shore at once?” tremulously cried the chaperon. “What do you mean, Gerald?”

“He doesn’t care a hang about us. I made no impression on him at all. The more I argued the hotter he got. He intends to carry us about with him until he has dumped his cargo of guns somewhere on the Cuban coast. And then I presume he will make his way back to the United States, if the tug isn’t sunk with all hands in the meantime.”

“But the captain can’t afford to let us interfere with his plans,” protested Nora, who looked by no means so unhappy as the circumstances warranted. “Do be reasonable, Gerald. Aunt Katharine and I are quite comfortable.”

“I am not,” vehemently exclaimed young Mr. Van Steen. “The brute of a skipper tells me I must sleep on two sacks of coal. Fancy that!”

“I am afraid you were not tactful,” was Nora’s mirthful comment.

“We are in the captain’s power,” sighed Miss Hollister.

“We are kidnapped. That’s what it amounts to,” strenuously affirmed Van Steen.

Later in the afternoon the trio sought the railed space on the roof of the deck-house, just behind the small bridge which was Captain O’Shea’s particular domain. The mate had found two battered wooden chairs and rigged an awning. Such consideration as this was bound to dull the edge of Miss Hollister’s fears and she gazed about her with fluttering interest and reviving animation. Through an open door they could see Captain O’Shea standing beside the man at the wheel. He wore no coat, his shirt-sleeves were rolled up and displayed his brown, sinewy forearms, and a shapeless straw hat was pulled over his eyes. His binoculars attentively swept the blue horizon ahead and abeam.

Presently he went on the bridge and searched the shimmering sea astern. His demeanor was not so uneasy as vigilant and preoccupied. So long did he stand in the one position with the glasses at his eyes that Gerald Van Steen became curious and tried to descry whatever it was that had attracted the captain’s notice. At length he was able to make out a trailing wisp of brown vapor, like a bit of cloud, where sea and sky met.

“There is some kind of a steamer astern of us,” said Van Steen to Nora Forbes. “Perhaps it is a German or English mail-boat. If so, I can see no objection to transferring us aboard.”

Captain O’Shea overheard the remark and called to them:

“No mail-steamer is due on this course. And it is not a cargo tramp or she would not be steaming faster than we are.”

“Then what can it be?” asked Nora.

“I cannot tell ye, Miss Forbes, nor am I anxious at all to let her come close enough to find out.”

On the lower deck the Cubans were flocking to the overhang or climbing on the rail to gaze at the distant smoke astern. They talked excitedly, with many gestures. Evidently here was an event of some importance. Little by little the other steamer cut down the miles of intervening space until her funnel was visible. The _Fearless_ had been making no unusual effort to increase her own speed, but now Captain O’Shea said a few words into the engine-room speaking-tube, and Johnny Kent came trundling up from below, wiping his face with a bunch of waste.

The captain took him by the arm and imparted:

“I do not like the looks of her, Johnny; she is too fast to be healthy for us. I got the word in New York that two of the _Almirante_ cruiser class were coming out from Spain to join the blockadin’ fleet and make it hot for our business. There is nothing on the coast that can do over twelve knots, is there?”

“Only the _Julio Sanchez_, Cap’n Mike, and she’s laid up at Havana with her boilers in awful shape. I suppose you want me to hook up and burn my good coal.”

“I think this is a poor place to loaf in, Johnny. There was something said about a reward of fifty thousand dollars to the Spanish navy vessel that overhauled the _Fearless_ and sunk her at sea. Better crack on steam and maybe we can lose that fellow yonder after nightfall.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n Mike, I’ll put the clamps on the safety-valves, and take care not to look at the gauges. I’ll need more help below.”

“Grab the deck-hands. Get to it.”

“And I was just crawlin’ into my bunk to finish the most excitin’ novel you ever read,” mourned Johnny Kent as he footed it down the ladder. “It’s all about adventures. The situations are hair-raisin’, Cap’n Mike.”

Young Mr. Van Steen had edged within ear-shot so that he heard part of this dialogue. Returning to the ladies, he thrust his hands in his pockets and tried to hide his perturbation. Nora questioned him eagerly, and he answered with a shrug and a laugh:

“We’re going to have a race with the steamer behind us. I imagine they told a few whoppers for my benefit. The chief engineer remarked in the most casual way that he intended to put clamps on the safety-valves. That is absurd, of course. The boilers might blow up.”

“I am inclined to think he meant it,” said Nora, who was looking at Captain O’Shea. “This is not a yachting cruise, Gerald.”

“But if the silly old ass of an engineer really meant it, and we are pursued by a hostile man-of-war,” stubbornly persisted Van Steen, “why did he talk about wanting to finish a novel because it was full of exciting adventures? Isn’t this exciting enough?”

“You are stupid,” impatiently exclaimed Nora. “These extraordinary men can’t see that they are living the most thrilling adventures. It is all in the day’s work with them. I am going to ask Captain O’Shea to tell me the truth.”

Her aunt objected, but with no great spirit. Her poor, tired brain was bewildered by this new turn of events. She had begun to hope to survive the voyage, but now she was beset by fresh alarms, fantastic and incredible. Imminent danger menaced the lawless tug. It could be felt in the buzzing excitement which pervaded the crowded decks. The only calm place was the bridge, where Captain O’Shea walked steadily to and fro, six paces to port and six paces to starboard, a ragged cigar between his teeth. Already the hull was vibrating to the increasing speed of the engines and the smoke gushed thick and black from the hot funnel.

Nora Forbes had mounted the bridge before Van Steen could make angry protest. Clinging to the canvas-screened rail, she paused to catch a bird’s-eye glimpse of the swarming decks which spread beneath her from the sheering bow to the overhang that seemed level with the following seas. Captain O’Shea snatched a coat from the wheel-house and flung it over the girl’s head and shoulders, for the red cinders were pelting down from the funnel-top like hail. For the life of him he could not keep the caressing note out of his pleasant voice when he was talking to a pretty woman.

“’Tis a bright day and a fine breeze, Miss Forbes, and the old _Fearless_ is poundin’ through it at thirteen knots. Are ye enjoying yourself?”

“Every minute of it,” she replied, and the joy of living made her cheek glow. “Are you really afraid of that steamer behind us? Mr. Van Steen thought you were joking with the chief engineer. Really you can be frank with me. I promise not to make a scene.”

He regarded her rather wistfully for an instant, felt unusually hesitant, and told her the truth because he could not bring himself to tell her anything else.

“If it is a Spanish cruiser yonder, as I mistrust, she may make short work of us. But she has to catch us first. And if I was easy to catch I would not be here at all. Sooner than risk a hair of your head, Miss Forbes, I would give up meself and my ship. But a man’s duty comes first.”

“You are not to give me--to give us, one thought,” she warmly assured him, and her head was held high. “Thank you for being honest with me, Captain O’Shea. Do you wish us to stay on deck?”

Perplexed and unhappy, he answered:

“There is no safe place to stow you if the Spaniard gets within shooting range. The hold is full of cartridges and dynamite and such skittish truck.”

The steamer astern was still slowly gaining on the _Fearless_. Her forward mast was now discernible, and the tiny ring around it was unmistakably a fighting-top. If the vessel belonged to any other navy than that of Spain, she would be jogging along at a cruising gait, instead of crowding in chase with a reckless consumption of coal. Captain O’Shea ran below to see how matters fared in the sooty, stifling kingdom of Johnny Kent. The _Fearless_ could not turn and fight. All hopes of safety were bound up in those clanking, throbbing, shining engines, in the hissing boilers, in the gang of half-naked, grimy men who fed the raging furnaces and wielded the glowing slice-bars and shifted the coal from the cavernous bunkers.

The quivering needles of the gauges already recorded more steam than the law allowed, and they were creeping higher pound by pound. The heat in the fire-room was so intense that the men had to be relieved at brief intervals. There was no forced ventilation, and the wind was following the ship. The deck-hands, unaccustomed to grilling alive, stood to it pluckily until they collapsed and were hauled out by the head and the heels. Back and forth, between the engine-room and this inferno, waddled Johnny Kent, raining perspiration, an oil-can in one hand, a heavy wrench in the other, and with the latter he smote such faint-hearted wights as would falter while there was strength in them.

“Hello, Cap’n Mike,” he roared as the skipper sidled into the engine-room. “Is the other vessel still gainin’ on us, and what does she look like?”

“She looks like trouble, Johnny. We are doing better. How are things with you?”

“I need a couple of husky men. No use sendin’ me those limpsy patriots.”

“I will look for them, Johnny. Will your boilers hold together? Can you get any more out of her?”

“Of course I can. She’s licensed to carry a hundred and eighty pounds, and I aim to push her to two hundred and fifty.”

Captain O’Shea hastened on deck, glanced forward and aft, and grinned as he caught sight of Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen. To this pampered young man he shouted:

“You are a well-built lad. Jump below, if you please, and the chief will introduce ye to a shovel.”

“But I don’t want a shovel. I refuse to go below,” haughtily replied Van Steen. “It has occurred to me that if you will quit this silly race and let the other steamer come within signalling distance I can explain the case to her commander, and he will be glad to take us on board. Van Steen & Van Steen have influential banking connections with the Spanish government.”

“’Tis no time to deliver orations,” swiftly spake O’Shea. “The other steamer will shoot first and explain afterward. Come along and work your passage.”

“Do not resist, Gerald,” quavered Miss Hollister.

“Be a good sport and play the game,” slangily advised Nora Forbes.

Captain O’Shea did not appear to use violence. He seemed to propel Van Steen with a careless wave of the arm, and the indignant young man moved rapidly in the direction of the stoke-hole ladder. Johnny Kent pounced on him with profane jubilation, instantly stripped him of coat and shirt, and shot him in to join the panting toilers. There was a plucky streak in this victim of circumstances, and he perceived that he must take his medicine. The fire-room gang was reinforced by a strong pair of arms, a stout back, and the stubborn endurance of the Dutch.

The afternoon was gone and the sun had slid under the lovely western sea. The Spanish cruiser was spurting desperately to overtake her quarry before darkness. The speed of the quivering, clangorous _Fearless_ had crept up to a shade better than fifteen knots. The cruiser was in poor trim to show what she could do. Captain O’Shea knew the rated speed of every craft on the Spanish naval list and if his surmise was correct this particular cruiser should be doing eighteen knots. But he knew also that a foul bottom, slovenly discipline, and inferior coal counted against her, and that he had a fighting chance of escape.

It was immensely trying to watch and wait. Of all the company on deck that stood and stared at the small outline of the cruiser etched against the shining sea, only Captain O’Shea realized that this was the grimmest kind of a life-and-death tussle. He was your thoroughbred gambler who comprehends the odds and accepts them, but he was sorry for his crew, and much more so for the two women who were in his charge.

The chaperon had retired to her room in the grip of an acute nervous headache. She was mercifully unable to understand that tragedy moved on the face of the waters, that whether or not the _Fearless_ was to be obliterated depended on a certain number of engine revolutions per minute.

The cook had prepared supper, observing to himself as he rattled his pans:

“If we all is due to git bumped to glory, I reckon we’ll take it more cheerful with a square meal under our briskets.”

He dutifully bore a tray to the captain’s room, but Miss Hollister had no appetite, and he betook himself to the bridge, where Nora Forbes was standing beside the captain.

“Set the supper on the chart-locker in the wheel-house, George,” said O’Shea. “The young lady will not be wanting to go into her room and miss any of the show.”

In her twenty years Nora Forbes had never lived as intensely as now. The blood of an adventurous ancestry was in her veins. She was thrilled, but not afraid. More than she was aware, the dominating personality of Captain O’Shea was influencing and attracting her. Unconsciously she was sharing his simple, clear-eyed courage, which accepted things as he found them. There was singular comfort in standing beside him. They lingered for a moment in the wheel-house, where the tall young mate gripped the spokes, his eyes fixed on the swaying compass-card in the binnacle.

“You have never filibustered before, I take it, Miss Forbes,” said Captain O’Shea, “but ye are as cool as an old hand.”

“I never dreamed that men were living such lives as this nowadays,” she replied. “Tell me, do you----”

Down the wind came the report of a heavy gun. O’Shea leaped to the bridge and the girl followed, her heart throbbing with a sudden, sickening fear. Twilight was shutting down. The first star gleamed in the pale sky, but a curious after-glow lingered to flood the sea with tremulous illumination. The cruiser showed like a gray shadow, a vague blur, from which shot a second flash of red. Again the boom of her gun was heard on the _Fearless_, and this time the steel shell kicked up a water-spout far off to starboard.

“Johnny Kent has lost distance in the last half hour,” muttered the skipper. “His men can’t stand the pace.”

“What does it mean?” implored Nora, and she caught her breath with a sob. “Are they really and truly trying to kill us?”

“Those are the intentions, but the shooting is pretty bad, Miss Forbes. I will bet ye ten to one they do not hit us.”

Unwittingly she moved closer to him. Her hand was upon the rail and he covered it with his hard palm. At the firm, warm contact her fortitude returned. His tremendous vitality was like an electric current. She smiled up at him gratefully, and he said in a big, friendly way, to put her at ease:

“’Tis good to have somebody to hang onto in a tight pinch, isn’t it? Look! There he goes again! A better shot. It struck the water within two hundred yards of us. If he keeps on improvin’ his target practice, I may lose me bet.”

Nora was silent. She could think of nothing to say as she stared at the darkening horizon and the flashes of the cruiser’s guns. The after-glow died, and night marched swiftly across the tropic sea. It curtained the cruiser and obscured the _Fearless_. Johnny Kent had won in the first act of the drama.

Every light on board the tug was extinguished, and the word was carried below to close the draughts and slacken the fires in order to show no sparks from the funnel. The _Fearless_ swerved sharply from her course and ran straight away from the Cuban coast, heading to the southward across the Caribbean. To follow her was a game of blind-man’s-buff, and Captain O’Shea knew every trick of shaking off pursuit.

Nora had withdrawn her imprisoned hand with a self-conscious little start. Already the episode of the chase seemed unreal, theatrical. It would not have surprised her if the picturesque Cubans had burst into a light-opera chorus. She hastened to tell her aunt the good news, and presently there came staggering up from the lower deck the wreck of Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen. The merciful night hid his grime and tatters. Leaning against the bulkhead of the tiny passageway, he addressed the invisible ladies in the state-room. His voice was husky and cracked, but, singularly enough, all its petulance had fled.

“It was simply great,” he exclaimed. “We shovelled coal like drunken devils, and between-times they dragged us on deck and turned the hose on us. My word, it was a sporty game, and we won. I am bruises from head to foot, but what’s the odds?”

Nora was instantly contrite. Here was an unexpected hero, whom she had shamefully forgotten.

“You poor Gerald! Tell us all about it.”

He felt proud of himself. Nora shared the feeling, and yet her behavior lacked the warmth to be expected of a girl whose engagement to Gerald Van Steen had been a notable society event on Fifth Avenue. Wayward and shocking it was, no doubt, but she knew that she would rather talk to the rude and unregenerate Captain Michael O’Shea.

She let Gerald tell her of the great fight for more speed down among the roaring furnaces, of the fainting men, the straining boilers, the furiously driven engines, and of the bullying, cursing, jesting Johnny Kent who held the men and the machines unfalteringly to their work.

“He is an awful brute,” said Van Steen, rubbing a welt on his shoulder, “but he has pluck--no end of it. A steam-pipe leading to a pump or something burst and scalded him, but he didn’t let up at all, and threatened us with more kinds of death and damnation than ever.”

“He must be suffering dreadfully,” exclaimed the ardently sympathetic Nora. “I thought he looked so good-natured and jolly and easy-going.”

“You are a poor hand at reading character,” was the earnest comment. “Were you anxious about me, Nora?”

“Yes, I suppose so. It was so exciting on deck that I couldn’t think of anything else but that wicked Spanish cruiser.”

“Where were you all the time?”

“On the bridge with Captain O’Shea.”

“The deuce you were! I don’t like him at all, Nora. He is not the sort you should have anything to do with.”

“I can’t very well help meeting him now and then, Gerald. Don’t be a goose. Tell me some more about your adventures with a shovel.”

Van Steen was ruffled and became a sulky companion. Nora let him kiss her good-night, and he wearily descended to find a resting-place on the open deck. She found her aunt awake and told her of the heroic conduct of the scalded chief engineer. The stamp of Van Steen’s approval was apt to color the mental attitude of Miss Hollister and she exclaimed in an animated manner:

“Does Gerald really believe that this Mr. Kent is such a fine character, a diamond in the rough?”

“Gerald certainly respects him, although he does not love him, Aunt Katharine.”

“Then I hope to meet Mr. Kent in the morning, Nora. I am given to understand that he saved our lives, but I can’t realize that the cruiser was actually shooting at us with deadly intent.”

Miss Hollister was a woman of a certain kind of determination whenever duty was concerned. And because she had misjudged the chief engineer, it was her duty to make amends. After breakfast she asked Van Steen if she might safely go to the lower deck and look into the engine-room.

“You are coming on remarkably well,” said he. “Aren’t you afraid of the brutes?”

“I wish to thank our preserver and to inspect the ship,” she calmly answered.

“Very well. Will you come along, Nora?”

“Thanks, Gerald, but Captain O’Shea wants to show me the chart of this coast and of the bay where he will try to land the cargo.”

“Hang Captain O’Shea; he is making a confounded nuisance of himself,” muttered Van Steen as he reluctantly departed with Miss Hollister. They passed among the lounging patriots and came upon their leader, Colonel Calvo, whom the flight from the cruiser had frightened, not out of his boots, but into them. As a cure for sea-sickness he had found the boom of an eight-inch gun extremely efficacious. He flourished his hat with flamboyant gallantry and bowed low as he addressed Miss Hollister.

“Ah, ha, Señora! To behol’ you is a pleasure for me an’ my braves’ of soldiers. Yesterday we was ready to fight the ship of Spain, to defen’ the ladies with our lives.”

The dignified spinster looked confused. She resented the bold stare of the colonel’s black eyes and the smirking smile. With a stiff little nod she grasped Gerald’s arm and told him, as they moved to another part of the deck:

“I hate that man. Is he really a brave officer?”

“Not yet, but perhaps, Miss Hollister. We shall have to ask Johnny Kent about him.”

Pausing at the engine-room door, they found an assistant on duty. To their inquiry he replied:

“The chief is in his bunk, all bandaged up and using language. His arm and chest were blistered bad.”

“I should like very much to do something for him,” timidly answered Miss Hollister. “Who is attending him?”

“The Cuban doctor has a medicine chest, ma’am, and we all try to soothe him. But he cusses us out and throws things at us.”

“I will look in his room and leave a message for you, Miss Hollister,” said Gerald.

“He must be in great distress. And I am sure he is not getting proper care,” she murmured.

Van Steen cautiously advanced to an open door beyond the engine-room, Miss Hollister hovering in the background. No sooner had the sufferer in the bunk caught sight of the young man than his big voice roared:

“Come to gloat, have you? I suppose you’re glad to see me on my beam ends after the awful way I abused you. Get to hell out of here.”

“Miss Hollister came below to express her sympathy,” began Van Steen, ready to dodge a water-bottle that stood beside the bunk.

“Holy mackerel! The lovely lady with the gray hair?” blurted Johnny Kent, his face redder than ordinary. “Did she, honestly? Is she out there? Did she hear me slip that cuss-word?”

“I am afraid so. Do you want to apologize? She accepts my statement that you are a grand man in an emergency.”

“Fetch her in. No, wait a minute. Straighten out the bedclothes and see that my nightie is buttoned clear up to the neck. This is the da-darnedest thing that ever happened to me.”

It was also an unprecedented experience for Miss Katharine Hollister, but one could not live twenty-four hours on board the _Fearless_ without losing one’s grip on conventions, even though they were made in New England. She halted at the brass-bound threshold of the little room, and peered curiously at the recumbent figure of the chief engineer with his gray mustache and mop of grizzled hair.

“Come in and take the chair by my desk, ma’am. What on earth made you want to see me?” was his hearty greeting.

She remained standing, and confessed, hesitating nervously:

“I formed such a shocking opinion of you when I first saw you--I thought you had killed that negro--and when Mr. Van Steen told me how you had toiled and suffered to save the ship--and were in pain--I knew my judgment was mistaken--and that it was my duty----”

“Forget it, ma’am,” and Johnny Kent waved a bandaged fist. “We ain’t pretty to look at, and our manners are violent, but when you talk about duty, I guess you and I believe in the same gospel.”

His gaze was so honestly, respectfully worshipful that Miss Hollister was conscious of an agreeable sensation. She was a woman, and a charming one, but at fifty years she no longer dreamed of masculine homage.

“Were you severely injured, Mr. Kent?”

“Not half as much as those poor old boilers. I’m afraid to guess how many tubes are leaky. I’ll quit sputterin’ and losin’ my temper when we get those Cubans and guns ashore.”

“Their leader does not seem very capable,” ventured Miss Hollister. “I was not at all favorably impressed with him when he spoke to me just now.”

“Did that sea-sick tin soldier annoy you, ma’am?” heatedly ejaculated Johnny Kent as he raised himself on his elbow and fixed a glittering eye on a holster which hung on the wall. “I’ll surge out of here and learn him a lesson that will do him a whole lot of good.”

“No more violence, I beg of you,” implored the spinster, dismayed and yet enjoyably thrilled. “I should not have mentioned it. If there is anything that can be done to make you more comfortable----”

“Pshaw, I’ll be up and doing before we try to make a landing, ma’am. Your droppin’ in to see me has made me chirk up. Blessed if it don’t make this hole of a room seem kind of sweetened and lit up and sanctified.”

Miss Hollister colored and concluded that she had stayed quite long enough. With a gracious word of farewell, she hastened to the upper deck. Nora Forbes had found a new companion, a lean, sandy man in faded khaki whose sad, freckled face had a noticeable pallor and whose head was wound about with a white bandage. He sat with his back propped against a boat in the shade of the awning, and Nora announced to her aunt:

“I want you to know Mr. Jack Gorham. He is the man who conquered that giant of a negro. Captain O’Shea says it was one of the finest things he ever saw.”

Gorham, a modest, shrinking soul, looked acutely uncomfortable and protested:

“I had to get him. He fetched me a couple of clips, but I feel pretty spry. I’ll be ready to hop ashore and perforate them Spanish officers at a thousand per.”

Oddly enough, Miss Hollister was no longer terrified by the presence of these men of war. Since meeting Johnny Kent she had suffered a sea-change. In the face of the veteran soldier she was able to read that same quality of respectful admiration. She had been vouchsafed a glimpse of the real spirit of this singular voyage. It was pure romance, reincarnated from the age when the world was young. She had been permitted to sail with men who were living an Odyssey, a saga, but they knew it not. She thought of Johnny Kent in his bunk, and now she looked at Jack Gorham, commonplace, unlettered, uncouth, and listened while Nora repeated the story of the fight with Jiminez. The soldier wriggled uneasily. His embarrassment was painful. When questioned he could only repeat:

“Well, I just had to get him. That’s all there was to it.”

“But you did not have to risk your life,” persisted Nora. “Captain O’Shea was ready with his whole crew to overpower the man.”

“The captain wanted to tackle him, but of course I couldn’t stand for that,” patiently explained Gorham.

“_Why_ did you do it?” asked Miss Hollister.

“I guess it was what you might call a question of duty,” he drawled.

“I have heard nothing else,” was the spinster’s wondering comment. “And yet you are all breaking the laws of your country. My standards of right and wrong seem all topsy-turvy.”

“You sure did land in queer company this time,” seriously affirmed Gorham.

Miss Hollister’s excursion into the debatable ground of conduct and ethics as applied to buccaneering in the Caribbean was interrupted by Captain O’Shea, who was in a mood of brisk action and curt speech. Paying no attention to the ladies, he halted in front of Gorham to say:

“We shall try to put the stuff ashore to-night. Will ye be fit to land with the Cubans, or will I carry you back home with me?”

“Of course, I’ll land, sir. The nigger didn’t cut me deep,” was the dogged response. “What’s the programme?”

“The cargo will be hoisted out of the hold this afternoon, convenient for droppin’ into the boats. If you are able, will ye stand by to boss a gang of Cubans? Ye need not bear a hand yourself. Just talk to them and make signs with the butt end of that old Springfield.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll manage to keep them busy.”

The news ran through the ship. By noon the patriots were seething with excitement. They were about to set foot on the beloved soil of Cuba, to be quit of the hateful, perfidious ocean. They became incredibly valiant. These forty men would face a Spanish army. They talked of marching to attack fortified cities. Magically revived, they scoured the rust from their weapons and brandished them with melodramatic gesticulation. They sang the battle-hymns of the revolution and wept at sight of the blue, misty mountain range of the distant coast. Jack Gorham regarded them critically.

One gang of Cubans went into the hold and another was stationed on deck. The heavy cases of rifles and cartridges were passed up through the hatchways and piled along the rail. Captain O’Shea sauntered hither and yon, once halting to remark in chiding accents:

“Better not bang those square boxes about so free and careless. ’Tis nitro-glycerine for making dynamite ashore.”

“I’ll land it myself,” said Gorham. “It will come in handy for blowin’ up Spanish troop-trains.”

Toward nightfall the _Fearless_ reduced speed and loafed along over a smooth sea at a distance of perhaps thirty miles from the coast. The crisis of the voyage had come. O’Shea must run his ship into a trap and get her out again.

As soon as darkness was at hand the _Fearless_ began the final dash for the coast. Johnny Kent had crawled from his bunk and wearily set himself down in the engine-room doorway to await orders.

“If anything goes wrong to-night, it’ll happen all of a sudden,” he grumbled to his first assistant. “Takin’ chances of getting bottled up in a bay don’t please me a mite.”

“There is nothing in sight, chief. It looks like an easy landing. The skipper knows his business.”

“But it would be just our fool luck to run into trouble with these two ladies aboard. Women complicate every game they draw cards in. But that Miss Hollister is certainly a queen, ain’t she, Jim?”

“She’s old enough to be my mother,” ungallantly observed the youthful assistant.

“And I’m ’most old enough to be your grand-daddy, you godless, disrespectful sculpin,” was the angry retort of Johnny Kent. “And I’m man enough to break you in two across my knees.”

The rash young man wisely held his tongue, and the chief engineer murmured to the world at large:

“Refinement and culture do make a heap of difference in folks. Now, if I had chased after refinement and culture when I was young, instead of incessantly pursuin’ rum, riot, and rebellion on the high seas--but what’s the use?”

Thereupon this pensive pirate turned to survey his chanting engines and wondered what the night might bring forth. The _Fearless_ maintained an even gait until the coast was no more than five miles distant. Then she drifted idly while Captain O’Shea swept the horizon with his night-glasses. His eyes and ears were acutely alert, but there was neither sight nor sound of Spanish blockading craft cruising to intercept him. Astern were piled six large flat-bottomed surf-boats, in nests, as fishermen’s dories are carried. These were now launched and towed, ready to be ranged alongside and filled with cargo.

The forty Cubans conversed in hushed tones. Every man had knapsack, blanket-roll, canteen, and loaded rifle. The _Fearless_ again picked up full speed and moved straight for the coast. Soon the mountains loomed like gigantic shadows blotting out the stars. It was a bold, sheer coast, indented here and there by small bays into which the rivers flowed from the passes and valleys. It was in a certain one of these bays that Captain O’Shea had been told by the Junta to beach his cargo. A force of Cubans led by General Maximo Gomez himself would be waiting to receive the munitions. As had been arranged, the _Fearless_ now showed a white mast-head light above a red. Captain O’Shea looked at his watch. Three minutes later his signal-lights flashed again. In the gloom of the mountain-side, a white light winked above a red.

“That looks good to me,” said O’Shea to the mate. “If there was anything wrong, the answering signal would warn us to keep clear. But I do not like this messin’ around in a bay. Give me the open coast and plenty of sea-room.”

The _Fearless_ had come so near the entrance of the bay that the shadowy headlands on either side were dimly discernible from the bridge. The speed of the tug diminished until she was cautiously moving ahead with no more than steerage-way.

The silence was intense. No one spoke above a whisper. The engines were turning over so slowly that their rhythmic clamor was no more than a faint, muffled throb, like the pulse-beat of the ship. Warily she slid into the quiet bay and made ready to drop anchor off a strip of white beach. The surf-boats were hauled alongside and the cargo began to tumble into them. It looked as though this game of filibustering might not be so hazardous as reputed. The seamen were in the boats, detailed to handle the oars and put the Cubans and the cargo ashore.

The deep-laden flotilla had not quit the _Fearless_ for the first trip to the beach when the vigilant skipper fancied he saw a shadow steal from behind a headland at the mouth of the bay. For a long moment he ceased to breathe, while his gaze followed the illusive shadow which he was not sure that he could distinguish from the darkened sea.

Then one or two sparks gleamed like fire-flies and were gone. This was enough. Captain O’Shea instantly concluded that the sparks had dropped from a steamer’s funnel. He was caught inside the bay. Perhaps the steamer would pass without sighting the _Fearless_. But the shadow halted midway between the headlands, and O’Shea cursed the treachery which he presumed had betrayed his destination. The snare had been cleverly set for him. The Cuban force in the mountains had failed to detect this Spanish vessel or they would not have signalled him that the coast was clear.

O’Shea had to make his choice. He could abandon his ship and flee with his crew and passengers to the beach and the jungle, or he could turn and try to smash his way out to sea. The thought of deserting the _Fearless_ was so intolerable that he made his decision without hesitating. Summoning the mate and Johnny Kent, he spoke hurriedly.

“’Tis bottled up we are. Look yonder and ye can see for yourself. Call the men aboard and cut the boats adrift. Give it to her, Johnny, and hold on tight. There may be the divil and all of a bump.”

“Goin’ to run her down?” asked the chief engineer.

“If she doesn’t get out of my way. ’Tis a small gun-boat most likely.”

III

The patriots were unable to adjust themselves to the sudden shift of events. One moment they were about to land, rejoicing and valorous, to be welcomed by the tattered legion of Maximo Gomez, and the next they were snatched away to surge hell-bent in the direction of the enemy and the detestable sea. Captain O’Shea might have delayed to dump them into the boats and turn them adrift to flounder about the bay, but in all probability the Spanish gun-boat would overtake and slay many before they could reach the shore. He did not love them, but it was his duty to safeguard them along with the cargo.

Less than ten minutes after the shadow had moved across the entrance of the bay, the _Fearless_ was swinging to point her nose seaward. As soon as the tug was fairly straightened out, O’Shea rang for full speed. It was no longer a silent ship. The patriots raised a lamentable outcry of grief and indignation, unable to comprehend this slip between the cup and the lip. They were unconvinced that the captain had really seen a gun-boat. They accused him of taking fright at phantoms.

Indeed, there was no such thing as slipping unperceived past the waiting enemy, for besides the loud protests of the Cubans, the engines of the _Fearless_ made a strident song that re-echoed from the wooded shores. No longer in ambush, the Spanish craft turned on a search-light whose streaming radiance picked the tug out of the gloom like a lantern-slide projected on a screen. The two vessels were perhaps four hundred yards apart. Straight into the path of the search-light rushed the _Fearless_, veering neither to right nor left. Her tactics were disconcerting, her insane temerity wholly unexpected. It was obvious that unless the gun-boat very hastily moved out of the way there would occur an impressive collision. And the tall steel-shod prow of an ocean-going tug is apt to shatter the thin plates of a light-draught, coastwise gun-boat.

Captain O’Shea himself held the wheel. The Spanish gunners hurriedly opened fire, but sensations of panic-smitten amazement spoiled their aim, and they might as well have been shooting at the moon.

“By Judas! ye are so gay with your search-light, I will just have a look at you,” muttered O’Shea as he switched on the powerful light which was mounted upon the wheel-house roof. The handsome gun-boat was sharply revealed, her sailors grouped at the quick-fire pieces on the superstructure, the officers clustered forward. Jack Gorham’s Springfield boomed like a small cannon, and a man with gold stripes on his sleeves toppled from his station and sprawled on the deck below.

The Cubans cheered and let fly a scattering, futile rifle fire, but the crew of the _Fearless_, convinced that they must fight for their skins, crouched behind the heavy bulwarks and handled their Mausers with methodical earnestness. The Spanish officers and seamen took to cover. They were not used to being shot at, and this filibustering tug was behaving like a full-fledged pirate. The commander of the gun-boat made up his mind to dodge collision and sink the _Fearless_ with his guns before she should flee beyond range outside the bay. His mental machinery was not working swiftly, because this was what might be called his crowded hour. He tried to swing his vessel head on and to sheer to one side of the channel.

Captain O’Shea climbed the spokes of his steering-wheel and swung the _Fearless_ to meet the manœuvre. He was bent on crippling the gun-boat. With leaky boiler tubes, the tug was in no condition for another stern chase and the Spanish gunners would certainly hull her through and through and explode the cargo before he could run clear of the hostile search-light.

A few seconds later, the foaming bow of the _Fearless_ struck the gun-boat a quartering, glancing blow that raked along her side. The Spanish commander had almost twisted his vessel out of the other’s path and O’Shea dared not swing to catch her broadside on, for fear of running aground. The impact was terrific. The Spanish craft had a low freeboard and the guns of her main-deck battery protruded their long muzzles only a few feet above the water. The steel stem of the _Fearless_, moving with tremendous momentum, struck them one after the other, tore them from their mountings and stripped the starboard side clean. The tug’s headway was checked and a tangle of splintered stuff held the two vessels interlocked. The Spanish gunners on the upper deck could not sufficiently depress the secondary battery to fire down into the _Fearless_, and on board the tug all hands had been knocked flat by the collision, so that for the moment there was no hostile action on either side.

So close together were the two steamers while they hung together that cases of cargo, toppling over, spilled through the crushed bulwark of the _Fearless_, and slid upon the gun-boat’s lower deck where the side had been fairly ripped out of her above the water-line. Then the tug very slowly forged ahead, tearing herself free and grinding against the gun-boat’s cracked and twisted plates until the twain parted company.

“We are still afloat, glory be, and the engines are turnin’ over,” cried O’Shea.

He spun the wheel hard over to pass out to sea between the headlands, and steered where he thought deep water ought to be. The gun-boat had not opened fire, and he began to hope that he might win the freedom of the sea. Nor was the hostile vessel making any effort to follow him, and instead of blazing his trail with her search-light it had been turned skyward to flash signals for assistance against the clouds.

“I jolted the ambition out of her,” joyfully exclaimed O’Shea. “I would not like to look at my poor old hooker, but she must be an awful hash on deck----”

The _Fearless_ suddenly yawed to starboard and took the bit in her teeth. The skipper tried to fetch her back on her course, but she failed to respond to the wheel. He instantly knew that a rudder chain had parted. He yelled down the tube to Johnny Kent to reverse his engines. The masterless tug was heading out of the channel and the incoming tide caught her bow and swung her away from the seaward passage, over toward the nearest headland and its submerged reef.

The _Fearless_ felt the powerful backward drag of her screw, but not in time. The disabled steering-gear wrought the mischief before the emergency tiller could be manned or an anchor dropped to hold her in the channel. Her keel scraped along the coral bottom and the hull trembled to the shock of stranding. The _Fearless_ was hard and fast aground and the tide lacked three hours of the flood.

Finding it useless to try to work her off, Captain O’Shea had the engines stopped. The plight was soon discovered by the gun-boat, which brought her search-light to bear on the tug. The Spanish commander laughed, no doubt, when he perceived that he could train his remaining guns and smash the _Fearless_ to pieces at his leisure. It was point-blank range at a conspicuous target, and the tables had been turned.

Captain O’Shea comprehended the fate that was about to overtake his helpless ship. His boats had been cut adrift and there was no means of conveying his people to the shore. They could only swim for it and try to find footing on the reef.

“’Tis no use showing a white flag and offering to surrender,” he said to himself while the sweat ran down his face. “We fired on them and we rammed their ship.”

There was a life-raft on the deck-house roof, and he was about to order it shoved overside in order to send Nora Forbes and Miss Hollister ashore in charge of Van Steen and the mate. It was a forlorn hope, because the gun-boat would most likely fire at anything seen afloat. Just then Jack Gorham climbed to the bridge and respectfully saluted the captain.

“We are up against it, Jack,” said O’Shea. “The Spaniard yonder is taking his time. He will anchor bow and stern and then shoot us to splinters. I will be grateful if ye will lend the mate and young Van Steen a hand with the ladies. If ye can fetch the beach, take to the woods and try to find the camp of General Gomez.”

“I have a proposition, sir,” returned the soldier, and for once his voice was unsteady with excitement. “When we were tangled alongside the gun-boat, some cases of cargo was jolted off our deck onto her deck where the woodwork and plates was all tore away. For God’s sake, put your search-light on her for a minute, quick, before she swings her smashed side away from us. She’s still turnin’.”

“And for what?” queried O’Shea, but he leaped for the lighting-switch, confident that the soldier knew what he was talking about.

“Two of them cases was nitro-glycerine, sir, and for a wonder they slid so easy that they didn’t go off. I know them when I see ’em. Just give me one sight of them.”

The search-light of the _Fearless_ swept across the gun-boat, which was slowly shifting her position to find the middle of the channel and a safe anchorage. There was cramped room to manœuvre, and she was swinging in a small arc which exposed for a little time the shattered side that had been rammed by the tug. A gaping hole above water disclosed the main-deck forward, and the search-light of the _Fearless_ played and flickered in and out, white and brilliant. It illuminated the wreckage and the heap of wooden cases which lay as they had slid across the fragments of bulwark that bridged the narrow gap between the interlocked vessels.

“Hold the light steady, sir,” said Jack Gorham as he dropped to one knee, shoved the barrel of the Springfield across the rail of the bridge, and laid his cheek against the stock. “It seems plumb ridiculous, but it’s worth tryin’.”

His wonderfully keen eyes had distinguished a square wooden case which sat exposed and somewhat removed from the others on the gun-boat’s littered deck. He had bragged of his marksmanship. Now was the supreme opportunity to make good. The gun-boat was moving. Her shattered side would be hidden from him before he could shoot more than twice or thrice.

As the sights of his beloved old rifle came true on the tiny target he pressed the trigger and the heavy bullet went singing on its way.

“Missed, by Godfrey!” grunted Gorham as he reloaded. “If I score a bull’s-eye, you’ll know it all right.”

Annoyed by this impertinence, the gun-boat let drive with a one-pounder which put a shell through the funnel of the _Fearless_ and showered the deck with soot. Gorham wiped his eyes and took aim for the second shot. Good luck and good marksmanship guided it. No need to wonder where this bullet struck. The case of nitro-glycerine exploded with a prodigious detonation that seemed to shake earth and sea and sky. The forward part of the gun-boat was enveloped in a great sheet of flame. The people of the _Fearless_ were stunned and deafened and the hull rocked violently against the reef. Burning fragments rained everywhere, and fell hissing into the bay. From the place where the gun-boat was rapidly sinking came cries for help.

“She is gone entirely. God help their poor souls,” brokenly murmured Captain O’Shea.

He turned to shout to the mate:

“Pull yourself together and paddle over yonder with the life-raft. Pick up all ye find of the poor men in the water and set them ashore. The Cuban army will take care of them as prisoners of war. And maybe you can find some of our boats. ’Tis an awful sight to see a fine vessel snuffed out like a candle.”

Jack Gorham sat on deck, his head in his hands, a disconsolate figure.

“I made a wonderful shot,” he muttered, “but I hope I’ll never have to make another one like it.”

“Bridge, ahoy!” roared Johnny Kent from the lower deck. “This is war. We beat ’em to it. Now let’s get this tug off the reef on the flood tide, if we rip the bottom out of her. This bay will be full of gun-boats and cruisers to-morrow.”

Going below for the first time since the _Fearless_ had entered the bay, the skipper found the decks in chaotic confusion. Broken bulwarks, smashed doors and windows, parted funnel-stays, twisted deck-houses, and other signs of the collision were strewn from bow to stern. Some twenty of the patriots had dived overboard. Of those left on board, several had been hurt, and the crew of the _Fearless_ were badly cut, bruised, and banged about.

O’Shea rallied all that were able to turn to, and set them to throwing cargo overboard. The guns and ammunition were packed in water-proof cases and could be fished up by the Cuban army at low tide. It was heavy material, and getting rid of two or three hundred tons of it must considerably lighten the stranded tug. At this back-breaking task doggedly labored Gerald Van Steen without waiting for an order. Captain O’Shea stared at him by the light of a lantern as though reminded of something important.

“The ladies!” cried he. “Are they safe and sound?”

“They are alive, thank you,” said Van Steen. “I stowed them in their room, and made them lie on the floor with the mattresses tucked against the wall to stop the bullets. I could think of nothing else to do.”

“And how did they take it?”

“Very well, indeed. Miss Hollister has been rather hysterical, but one can scarcely blame her.”

“Well, the worst may be over, and again it may not,” thoughtfully explained O’Shea. “Now, ’tis this way. I can set you people ashore, and ye can take a chance that the Cuban army will be able to send you inside the Spanish lines under a flag of truce. But there may be weeks of hard living and fever and exposure before ye get anywhere at all. And it may be the death of the ladies. Or you can stay with me, if we get this vessel off, and I will carry you back to the United States.”

“It isn’t a hilarious proposition either way,” replied Van Steen. “I rather think, though, that we had better stick to you.”

The mate returned aboard with the tidings that more than half the crew of the gun-boat had been rescued by the life-raft and in boats which had drifted to the beach.

“We ought to have those boats in case we need them,” said the skipper; “but if the ship can be worked off this tide, and is fit to go to sea, I will not wait for them or anything else.”

The tide was rising fast and the company worked like mad to heave the cargo overboard. At length Johnny Kent set his engines going hard astern and the _Fearless_ began to slide along her coral bed. Halting, bumping, grinding, she gradually moved into the deeper water of the channel and rolled in the swell that ran past the headlands. Collision and stranding had fearfully racked and strained her hull, and the captain was not surprised when Johnny Kent bellowed from below:

“We’re leakin’, of course. I guess every rivet in her must have pulled loose. You’d better pray for a spell of good weather.”

“Would ye rather be shot or drowned decent in a gale of wind, Johnny? ’Tis suicide to stay on this coast till daylight.”

The forlorn tug limped out to sea at her best speed, which was not much. The fire-room gang was more or less disabled and the engines needed a deal of tinkering. Drop an able-bodied man from a third-story window and he may not break his neck, but his gait is not apt to be brisk.

“By the holy poker!” ejaculated O’Shea to the mate as they watched the shadowy mountains drop astern. “We delivered the cargo, though it is in a few feet of water, but I have some patriots left. I could think of only one thing at a time. What will I do with them?”

“You can search me, sir. Dump ’em ashore at Key West, if we ever get that far.”

“I will not run into this coast again with a leaky old crab of a ship and no more than coal enough to carry me to a friendly port.”

Men must sleep, and when the _Fearless_ had left the coast twenty miles behind her Captain O’Shea set the regular watches and curled up on the wheel-house transom for a nap before daylight. Johnny Kent, after a sorrowful survey of his engines and boilers, crawled into his bunk and presently his snores rose and fell with the cadenced beat of the steam-pump that fought to keep the water from rising in the leaky hold. The sea was smooth, the clouds no longer obscured the stars, and the weary crew was suffered to rest before clearing away the wreckage and patching the broken upper works.

When O’Shea awoke the dawn was bright and a fresh breeze whipped across an empty sea. George, the cook, greeted him with melancholy demeanor.

“You-all suttinly did play th’ mischief with mah galley when you kerbumped that gun-boat, cap’n. Every las’ dish is busted.”

“Where were you, George?”

“Hidin’ behind th’ range, please, suh. An’ when that there Spaniard blew up it broke all th’ galley windows an’ filled me plumb full of glass. Ain’t we had mos’ excitement enough?”

“I hope so. Did your friend, big Jiminez, swim ashore last night?”

“No, suh. He’s in th’ galley helpin’ me straighten things out. Him an’ me ain’t a mite hostile. Mistah Gorham suttinly did knock a heap o’ sense into that niggah’s skull.”

The breeze blew with steadily increasing weight and began to kick up a choppy sea which racked the sluggish, laboring tug. Johnny Kent reported that the pump was not keeping the water down as easily as during the night. O’Shea chewed over this disquieting news and was undecided whether to attempt the long passage around Cape San Antonio into the Gulf of Mexico. The alternative was to run for Jamaica and take refuge in the nearest neutral port. The English government would probably seize his ship, but her company would be safe against arrest and condemnation as pirates by the Spanish authorities.

While he was considering this grave problem his eyes were gladdened by the sight of Nora Forbes, who came on deck and halted to gaze with amazement at the wrecked appearance of the vessel. Her splendid color paled and she smiled rather tremulously at Captain O’Shea, who reassured her:

“We are still afloat, but we look like a junk heap. And how did ye pull through? And is your aunt getting the upper hand of that nervous prostration?”

“Miss Hollister was terribly frightened, and--and--so was I. I would rather not hear about all that happened last night--not just yet.”

“And I would rather not think of it, just now, Miss Forbes. Perhaps I ought to have set ye ashore among the Cubans. I hope you will not be worse off at sea again.”

“I am glad to be at sea again, with you, Captain O’Shea,” said Nora, and she looked him in the eyes like a true viking’s daughter who scorned subterfuge and spoke as her heart moved her.

It was perhaps as well that Gerald Van Steen decided to join them just then.

“And are ye convinced that the Spanish are not a courteous people when ye meet them by night?” O’Shea cheerfully asked him.

“Do you know, I begin to like this filibustering,” answered the industrious young man, who looked as trampish as any of the crew. “One feels so well pleased after he has pulled out of one of these scrapes that it is almost worth while running into it.” He turned to Nora and addressed her with a shade of appeal in his voice: “Will you sit down with me for a while? I have no end of things to talk about.”

“Why, certainly, Gerald. Good-by, Captain O’Shea. The top o’ the morning to ye.”

The captain bowed and raised his straw hat. His ingenuous countenance wore a somewhat puzzled expression, as if he beheld a new complication in this tumultuous voyage of his.

It was well into the forenoon before Johnny Kent found a breathing-spell and climbed above to confer with the skipper. The indomitable engineer appeared aged and haggard. The pain of his burns distressed him and he was spent with worry and weariness. His hands trembled as he pulled himself up the bridge stairway.

“I ain’t as young as I was, Cap’n Mike,” he huskily exclaimed. “Blamed if I don’t feel kind of strained and shook up, same as the poor old _Fearless_. Looks like one of them fair-weather gales, don’t it? Bright sky and a big sea and wind to peel your whiskers off before night.”

“’Tis a good guess,” soberly replied O’Shea. “Can we weather it, Johnny?”

“I don’t want to make the ladies nervous and fretty,” confided the chief, “but we ain’t keepin’ the water down, Cap’n Mike. It will be in the fire-room before dark at this rate----”

“And then she will fall off into the trough of the sea and founder,” said O’Shea. “And we have no boats. Will your men stay on duty and keep her going?”

“They will, Cap’n Mike. The big nigger feels spry enough to turn to, and the gang is scared to death of him. They believe he’ll murder ’em if they quit on me.”

“Well, Johnny, make steam as long as ye can, and if the weather will not moderate I can try to fetch up somewhere before she goes to the bottom.”

“I ain’t particularly anxious, Cap’n Mike. I never saw you in a hole you couldn’t work your way out of. Of course, there’s the ladies. How are they, anyhow? The young one is on deck, lookin’ like a morning-glory. But what about Miss Hollister? She ain’t sick, is she?”

“Van Steen says the flurry last night gave her a sort of nervous prostration,” answered O’Shea. “She is up and dressed now and taking it easy in her room. Maybe ye would like to duck in and hand her a few kind words.”

“I sure would,” and Johnny Kent beamed. “Ladies like her are mighty refined and delicate and sensitive, and they’re liable to be took with this nervous prostration. I don’t blame her a bit, Cap’n Mike. Why, when we piled up on that reef and the gun-boat was fixin’ to shoot us all to hell-and-gone, I felt nervous myself. Honest I did.”

“Go to it, Johnny, but don’t mention the fact that we are due to founder as the next act of this continuous performance.”

It was really extraordinary to see how much animation came into the face of Miss Hollister when Johnny Kent poked his gray head inside the open door and grinned a bashful greeting. Never did a hero wear a more unromantic aspect, but the spinster had selected him as her own particular hero, nevertheless. He was rugged, elemental, as she had come to regard him, and, in fact, there was something uncommonly attractive to the discerning eye in the modest courage, inflexible devotion to duty, and simple kindliness of this grizzled old sea rover.

“I’m ashamed that we had to give you such a scare last night, ma’am,” he began. “It’s a hoodooed voyage, any way you look at it. Why, Cap’n Mike and me ran a cargo into Hayti last summer and you would have enjoyed it. Stuff on the beach in three hours and a funny old stone fort bangin’ away at us just enough to keep all hands amused.”

“But after this experience, you will not dream of going filibustering again, will you?” Miss Hollister asked him.

Johnny Kent tugged at his gray mustache and looked rather blank as he ejaculated:

“Why not? I ain’t fit for anything else. Of course, I get big wages for runnin’ these risks, and if I can ever save some money, I’m hopin’ to buy a farm down in Maine and raise chickens and such truck. That’s what I call really excitin’ and romantic.”

Miss Hollister responded eagerly:

“And a vegetable garden and cows, and----”

“Yes, ma’am. And flowers in the front yard--hollyhocks, and asters, and peonies, and a lilac bush by the front door-step. I set and think about it a lot.”

It did not appeal to the chief engineer as at all incongruous that the conversation should have taken this turn while the ship was slowly sinking beneath them.

“I have been very successful with flowers,” brightly returned Miss Hollister. “I shall be delighted to send you some seeds and cuttings whenever you return to New England to live on that wonderful farm of yours.”

“Thank you. Now when it comes to chickens, for all-round service there ain’t a bird to beat the Plymouth Rock. I subscribe to the _Poultry Journal_, and always bring it to sea to read----”

The mate dodged out of the wheel-house to shout:

“You’re wanted below, chief. The assistant sends up word that the loose coal is sucking into the pump and she’s chokin’ up.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” gently spoke Johnny Kent as he ceremoniously shook Miss Hollister’s hand. “Engines and pumps are provokin’ critturs and they’re always getting out of kilter.”

He paused outside to ask Captain O’Shea:

“What’s the answer? Do we win or lose? There’s bad news from below. The bunker coal is awash. The pump is liable to quit on me ’most any time.”

“I have overhauled the charts, Johnny, and there is a bit of a coral key marked down thirty miles from our present position, bearing sou’-sou’west. I have changed me course to head for it.”

“Thirty miles! Five hours or more at the speed we’re makin’. It will be a close finish, Cap’n Mike.”

“Life seems to be a game of close finishes for you and me, Johnny.”

The _Fearless_ wallowed sluggishly over a rolling, foamy, blue sea. Already the water in the holds had diminished her natural buoyancy. The waves leaped through her broken bulwarks and flung themselves across the deck. The crew and the remaining Cubans had a listless, discouraged demeanor. Their energy was deadened by misfortune. The voyage was ill-fated. Jack Gorham, by contrast, undertook whatever duty came handiest with a kind of machine-like, routine fidelity, unhurried, efficient, his melancholy countenance reflecting neither fear nor impatience. Now and then Jiminez emerged from the stoke-hole to sluice his huge body with pails of salt water. At such times Gorham crossed the deck to slap the negro on his bare back and speak words of approval in broken Spanish. The responsive grin of Jiminez showed every big, white tooth in his head. He had found a master whom he vastly respected, and there was no ill-will between them.

Long before the thirty miles had been run down Captain O’Shea was searching the sea with his glasses to find the tiny coral islet where he hoped to find refuge. It was out of the track of steamer traffic, and so far from the Cuban coast that the danger of discovery by the Spanish navy seemed fairly remote. The chart failed to indicate any harbor, but O’Shea had no expectation of saving his ship. He would drive her ashore and try to put his people on the beach.

At length he was able to descry a low, sandy strip almost level with the sea, along which the breakers flashed white and green. It was the key, and as the _Fearless_ moved nearer it was seen that the vegetation comprised only a few ragged bushes. Desolate, sun-baked, and wind-swept was the place, but it was dry land, and better than the deep sea in a foundering ship.

Captain O’Shea laid down his glasses and called Van Steen.

“’Tis not what I expected, but the _Fearless_ is done for,” said he. “We have fresh water and stores to last some time. And I have faith enough in me luck to feel sure we will be picked off that bit of a key yonder. Please ask the ladies to pack their traps, and you will put life-belts around them.”

As the _Fearless_ lurched drunkenly toward the beach, it seemed as though every comber would stamp her under. The water in the hold had covered the fire-room floor, and was hissing and swashing under the furnaces. The deck-hands were strung along the ladder and hatch, bailing with buckets to aid the choking, sputtering steam-pump.

“I ain’t got any business to be drowned in this lump of a tug,” said Johnny Kent to the first assistant. “I’m thinkin’ about that farm with the hollyhocks and Plymouth Rocks.”

“If that pump stops, which it has symptoms of doing, you’d better be thinking of your wicked old soul,” growled the assistant.

“I can’t swim a lick,” muttered the chief engineer.

“You’d better learn quick. There go the fires,” yelled the other as clouds of steam poured out of the engine-room, and the men below came up the ladder, fighting, scrambling, swearing. Johnny Kent dodged the wild rush, glanced out to sea, and shouted, “Breakers ahead! There are a few more kicks in the old packet and she’ll hit the beach yet.”

As the steam pressure rapidly ran down, the dying engines turned over more and more feebly, but the propeller continued to push the vessel very languidly into the shoal water. Presently she ceased to move, there was a slight jar, and she heeled to starboard. The doomed tug rested upon a sandy bottom.

Now that she was inert, aground, lifting no more to the heave and swing of the seas, the breakers shook her with an incessant bombardment. Spray flew over the bridge and pelted into the cabin windows. The key was about three hundred yards distant from the tug. Between her and the dry land was a strip of deeper water than the shoal on which she had stranded, and then the wide barrier of surf where the breakers tossed and tumbled in a thundering tumult.

Captain O’Shea scanned the angry water and wondered how he could send his people through it. The clumsy life-raft was all he had to put them on. It was buoyant enough, but unmanageable in such boisterous weather as this, and would most likely be blown out to sea and miss the key entirely. To remain on board and hope for quieter weather on the morrow was to risk pounding to pieces overnight.

Then O’Shea caught sight of the jagged timbers of an ancient wreck half covered by the sand on the ridge of the key. If a line could be carried from the ship and made fast to one of those stout timbers, the life-raft might be hauled through the surf.

“’Tis a terrible swim to undertake,” he painfully reflected. “I will try it meself, but if I go under there is nobody to take charge of these people. My men are a rough lot, and it will be hard living on this God-forsaken bit of a key.”

As if Jack Gorham had read what was in the skipper’s mind, he crawled across the sloping deck and shouted something in the ear of Jiminez. The negro nodded and waved an arm in the direction of the beach. The soldier was urging and explaining, the other eagerly assenting. Gorham shouted to the bridge:

“This fine big nigger of mine will carry a rope ashore. He can swim like a duck, and there’s nobody aboard with half his strength.”

“Aye, aye, Jack!” exclaimed O’Shea. “I will give him a heaving-line, and when he hits the beach he can haul a light hawser ashore and make it fast.”

Jiminez had no need to strip for active service, clad as he was only in tattered dungaree breeches chopped off above the knees. It was apparent that he proposed risking his life because the soldier had asked it of him. For the lives of the others he cared not a snap of his finger. Knotting an end of the heaving-line around his waist, he poised himself upon the guard-rail, a herculean statue of ebony. Gorham grasped his hand and said in farewell:

“You keep on going, Jiminez, old boy, or I’ll cave in your cocoanut with the butt of my Springfield.”

The negro grinned and shot downward into the foaming sea. His round head and gleaming shoulders emerged for an instant and then he dived again to pass under the toppling crest of a breaker. A few overhand strokes, and he was in the deeper water with a hundred yards of comparatively easy swimming. He ploughed through it with tremendous ease and power while Captain O’Shea paid out the heaving-line in his wake. Turning on his back, Jiminez rested before the final struggle with the surf on the beach.

The people on the _Fearless_ forgot their forlorn situation. They were absorbed in the picture of the bright, hot sand, the dazzling wall of surf, with the gulls dipping and screaming overhead, and the tossing figure of the black swimmer. Jiminez vanished in the outer line of breakers, bobbed into view for an instant, and was whirled over and over. The undertow caught him and pulled him down, but he fought clear and came to the surface, now beaten seaward, now gaining a yard or so.

From the tug it looked as though he were being battered about like a piece of drifting wreckage, but the sea could not drown him. More than once the beholders were sure he had been conquered. Then they shouted as they saw him shoot landward on the crested back of a rearing comber. He felt the sand with his feet. He was knocked down and rolled back, but regained a foothold and resisted the drag of the out-rushing waves. Wading powerfully, he stumbled into shallow water and fell on his knees, too exhausted to walk, and crawled on all fours to the dry sand. There he sprawled on his back like a dead man, while the hearts of those on board the _Fearless_ beat slow and heavy with suspense. A little while and Jiminez staggered to his feet, shook himself like a dog, and made for the timbers of the old wreck. Making the end of the heaving-line fast, he threw his arms over his head as a signal.

Captain O’Shea bent to the other end of the line the strong rope which he had used for towing the surf-boats. Jiminez sat himself down, dug his heels in the sand, and began to haul in like a human capstan. The rope trailed slowly through the surf without mishap, and the negro firmly belayed it to one of the embedded timbers. Having accomplished what he had set out to do, Jiminez sensibly rolled over, pillowed his head on his arm, and let the other men rescue themselves.

The life-raft was now shoved overboard and secured to the swaying rope by means of pulley blocks. Four picked men and the mate were detailed to make the first trip, which was in the nature of an experiment. They paddled the life-raft across the strip of quieter water, the pulleys holding them close to the fastened hawser. When the raft reached the surf, they laid hold of the hawser and lustily hauled their careering craft shoreward, hand over hand. Drenched and breathless, they gained the beach and sought a few minutes’ rest before undertaking the return journey.

As soon as the raft had safely come back to the _Fearless_ Captain O’Shea shouted:

“Now for the ladies! ’Tis time they quit the poor old hooker.”

Nora Forbes was waiting, a lithe round arm about Miss Hollister’s waist. The spinster was white to the lips, and her eyes sought, not the protecting care of Gerald Van Steen, but the bracing presence of that stout-hearted old pirate Johnny Kent, who was profanely wrestling with the fresh-water barrels.

“You will get wet, ladies,” said O’Shea, “but ’tis not at all dangerous. The raft will take you through the surf like a toboggan. Mr. Van Steen will go with you. Ye are a brave pair, and I would ask no better shipmates.”

The raft was pitching and bucking alongside, but the lower deck of the vessel was now level with the sea. O’Shea caught Miss Hollister in his arms, waded to the rail with her and waited until Van Steen and the other men were ready to catch her. Then with a wrenching heave, O’Shea tossed her into their outstretched arms. It was Nora Forbes’s turn to leave the vessel.

“You will pardon the liberty,” O’Shea whispered in her ear, “but this is no small consolation for losing me ship.”

He swung her clear of the deck and her arms, perforce, had to cling around his neck while he balanced himself with sailorly agility and waited for the tug to right itself and the raft to rise on the next wave. Perhaps he held her a moment longer than was necessary. Captain Michael O’Shea was a man with a warm heart and red blood in him. Deftly and carefully he swung her over the rail, and the men on the raft placed her beside Miss Hollister. Nora waved her hand in a blithe farewell. Miss Hollister had closed her eyes, but she opened them quickly enough when Johnny Kent came rolling aft to flourish his cap and shout:

“Sorry I can’t make the passage with you. We’ll have lots of time to talk flowers and hens on that patch of sand, but it looks like mighty poor soil for gardenin’ ma’am.”

Guided by the pulley-blocks that creaked along the hawser, the raft made the tempestuous passage through the surf. The shipwrecked ladies set themselves down on a sandy hummock in the hot sunshine. They were waterlogged and appeared quite calm and collected because they lacked strength for anything else.

The raft plied to and fro in a race against time. Such stores as would be damaged by wetting were wrapped in tarpaulins. The precious water-barrels were filled from the ship’s tank, and the wise Johnny Kent packed spare copper piping, a gasolene torch, empty tin cases, and tools for making a condenser to distil salt water. Captain O’Shea took care to send all the arms which had been served out to the crew, besides several boxes of rifles and ammunition that had been overlooked in dumping the cargo. Also he saved a number of shovels and picks designed for use as intrenching tools.

Before the last load of stuff had been hauled to the beach, the _Fearless_ was driven so far on the shoal that she began to break amidships. O’Shea ordered Colonel Calvo and his Cubans off the vessel, and then sent his crew ashore. He was left on board with Johnny Kent, Jack Gorham, and the men needed to help manage the life-raft. The little group stood in the lee of the deck-house. The tragedy of the ship oppressed them. They were mourners at the funeral of a faithful friend. Sentimental Johnny Kent exclaimed with a husky note in his voice:

“The _Fearless_ did her best for us, Cap’n Mike. It’s a rotten finish for a respectable, God-fearin’ tow-boat.”

“She was a good little vessel, Johnny,” softly quoth O’Shea. “But those guns we dumped in the bay will come in mighty useful to old Maximo Gomez, and maybe the voyage is worth while after all.”

“I seem to be sort of side-tracked, but I ain’t complainin’,” murmured Jack Gorham. “I hope the Cubans will keep the rebellion moving along until I can get to ’em and help mix it up.”

One by one they jumped to the raft and Captain O’Shea was the last man to leave. With a shake of the head he turned to gaze no more at the _Fearless_, but at the disconsolate cluster of men on the key, who were waiting for him to take command.

IV

With ready resource and dynamic energy, O’Shea proceeded to organize the refugees. The dreary little sand-bank was no longer populated by discouraged loafers, but by busy, shouting toilers who made a camp with the cheerful zest of children at play. There were tarpaulins, storm-sails, and awnings to fashion shelters from the sun and rain. The beach was strewn with an accumulation of drift-wood which served to cut into uprights and cross-pieces that were lashed together with bits of line. In this wise a tent was built for the two women. It was set apart from the other camps with an ingenious amount of comfort and privacy.

The crew of the _Fearless_ flocked together, while Colonel Calvo and his Cubans established themselves in quarters of their own. All this was a two days’ task, at the end of which the shipwrecked company, utterly fagged, slept and rested most earnestly and took no thought of the morrow. The blessed respite from excitements and alarms lulled them like an anodyne.

When, at length, the camp came out of its trance, Captain O’Shea discovered that his work was cut out for him to devise a daily routine which should maintain obedience, discipline, and good-nature. His own men were accustomed to an active life, their energy was exuberant, and when not fighting the sea they enjoyed fighting among themselves. On shipboard they obeyed by instinct because it was the iron tradition of their calling, but on the key these bonds were inevitably loosened.

While this was to be expected, the behavior of the surviving patriots was nothing short of phenomenal. They were rid of the curse of the sea which had wilted them body and soul. The immovable land was under their feet. They laughed and displayed an astonishing vivacity. They strutted importantly, soldiers unafraid. Even Colonel Calvo was reanimated. His sword clanked at his side. Large silver spurs dashed on the heels of his boots and he perceived nothing absurd in wearing them. His attitude toward Captain O’Shea was haughty, even distant. It was apparent that this miraculously revived warrior considered himself the ranking officer of the island. He signified that he would take entire charge of matters in his own camp.

O’Shea was surprised. At sea the patriots had been so much bothersome, unlovely freight.

“’Tis comical,” he said to himself. “I took it for granted that I was the boss of the whole outfit.”

Common-sense and experience told Captain O’Shea that he must keep all hands busy, if he had to invent work for them. He therefore staked out a rectangular space of considerable extent and set them to throwing up sand to form four walls several feet thick within which the company might find shelter. It was a simple pattern of earthworks, but more efficient to resist bullet and shell than stone or concrete.

“We may not need to scuttle into it,” he explained to Jack Gorham, “but if one of those Spanish blockadin’ craft should accidentally cruise off shore, we will be in shape to stand her off. Anyhow, it will keep our tarriers occupied for a while.”

“How do you frame it up that we’re goin’ to get away from this gob of sand?” asked the chief engineer. “Not that I’m fretty, Cap’n Mike, or findin’ fault, but I’ve seen places that I liked better.”

“We will mark time a little longer, Johnny, and then if a schooner or steamer doesn’t happen by, I will rig a sail on the life-raft, and send it to the south’ard. How are the ladies to-day? I have had no time to pay a social call.”

“Miss Hollister don’t seem as droopin’ as she was. I dried out a pack of cards that was in my jumper, and we played some whist. If you want to set in, Cap’n Mike, I’ll drop out. I ain’t really graceful and easy in a game where there’s more than five cards dealt to a hand.”

“Thank you, but I am handicapped in the same way, Johnny. I will stroll over and pay me respects before supper.”

“Miss Forbes seemed a mite peevish that you haven’t made more tracks toward their tent,” observed the engineer.

“Pshaw, they are glad to have the chance to be by themselves.”

Nevertheless, Captain O’Shea appeared interested when he spied Miss Forbes sauntering alone on the beach, and at some distance from her tent.

“Miss Hollister is asleep and Mr. Van Steen is trying to mend his shoes with a piece of wire,” said Nora. “And I have done my week’s washing like an industrious girl, and now I’m looking for someone to play with.”

“Would you like to walk to the far end of the key, Miss Forbes? And then, perhaps, ye would care to inspect the camps. We have a ship-shape little settlement, if I do say it meself.”

“An exploring expedition? I shall be delighted,” cried she, unconsciously glancing at the tent which hid the chaperon and also Gerald Van Steen.

They strolled a little way without speaking. O’Shea halted to gaze at the wreck of the _Fearless_. With quick sympathy, the girl understood and made no comment. He turned away with a sorrowful smile and broke the silence.

“’Tis strange how close a man’s ship is to his heart. I wish I did not have to see her.”

“There will be other ships for a man like you, Captain O’Shea,” said Nora.

“But never a voyage like this one, Miss Forbes.”

“I was thinking the same thought. For me there will never be a voyage like this, Captain O’Shea.”

“For misfortune and bedivilment generally, do ye mean?” he asked rather hastily.

“No, I do not mean that,” and she spoke in a low voice as if talking to herself. “I have enjoyed it. I suppose I am very queer and shocking, but I shall look back to this experience all my life and be glad that it came to me.”

The shipmaster wondered how much she meant. Her intonations told him that it was something personal and intimate. Perhaps other women had made love to Captain Michael O’Shea, but never one like Nora Forbes. Amid circumstances so strange and exotic, so utterly removed from the normal scheme of things, it was as natural as breathing that speech should be sincere and emotions genuine.

O’Shea had a curiously delicate sense of honor. He could not forget Gerald Van Steen. Nora had promised to marry him. Steering the conversation away from dangerous ground, he said:

“I have changed me opinion of Mr. Van Steen. He has behaved very well. He did not understand us at first.”

Nora was not as interested as before, and replied rather carelessly:

“He has worked hard because you and Mr. Kent compelled him to.”

“You are not fair to him,” warmly returned O’Shea. “There is not a man in the crew that has stood up to it any better. Nor am I warped in his favor, for I will own up that he rubbed me the wrong way at first.”

“Of course, I have admired the way he handled himself on board the _Fearless_,” admitted Nora, her conscience uneasy that she should be so laggard a champion. “But I hardly expected to hear you sing his praises, Captain O’Shea.”

“Why not? I would give me dearest enemy his deserts”--he hesitated and bluntly added--“and then if he got in my way I would do me best to wipe him off the map.”

“If he got in your way?” murmured Nora. “I should hate to be the man that stood in your way.”

“If there is to be straight talk between us,” demanded O’Shea, “tell me why ye show no more pleasure that this voyage has knocked the foolishness out of Van Steen and made a two-fisted man of him? When he came aboard he was an imitation man that had been spoiled by his money. He is different now. Can ye not see it for yourself?”

“Yes, I see it,” replied Nora, regarding O’Shea with a demeanor oddly perplexed. He was not playing the game to her liking. The interview had been twisted to lead her into a blind alley. With a petulant exclamation, she walked briskly toward the farther end of the key. O’Shea followed, admiring, cogitating.

Overtaking her, he indicated a broken topmast washed ashore from some tall sailing-ship, and they found seats upon it. The hypnotic spell of the sea took hold of them both until Nora turned and protestingly exclaimed:

“Aren’t you fearfully tired of seeing nothing but this great, blue, empty expanse of salt water?”

“My eyes could never tire if I had you to look at,” said he, not by way of making love to her, but as a simple statement of fact.

Nora appeared happier. This buccaneer of hers was becoming more tractable, but he perversely hauled about on another tack and added:

“As long as there are ships to sail the sea, there will be men to go in them, men that will never tire of salt water though it treats them cruel. They will hear the voices of sweethearts and wives on shore, but they will not listen. The hands of little children will beckon, but they will not stay. ’Tis fine to be warm and dry in a house, and to see the green things grow, and men and women living like Christians, but if you are the seafarin’ kind, you must find a ship and put out of port again. I am one of those that will never tire of it, Miss Forbes. Poor old Johnny Kent is different. He sits and sighs for his farm and will talk you deaf about it. My father was a shipmaster before me, and his people were fishermen in the Western Islands.”

Nora sighed. O’Shea’s caressing voice rose and fell with a sort of melancholy rhythm, an inheritance from his Celtic forebears. It was as though he were chanting a farewell to her. Her lovely, luminous eyes were suffused. The wind was warm and soft, but she shivered slightly.

“We had better turn back to the camp,” said she. “My aunt will be looking for me.”

They walked along the shining beach, thinking many things which could not find expression. O’Shea left her near her tent and was about to go to his own quarters when he overheard a stormy meeting between Nora and Gerald Van Steen. He hastened on his way, ashamed that he should have been an unwitting eavesdropper. It was most emphatically none of his business. His cheek reddened, however, and he felt gusty anger that Nora should be taken to task for strolling to the end of the key with him.

“A jealous man is the most unreasonable work of God,” he said to himself. “’Twas a harmless walk we had.”

Duty diverted Captain O’Shea from considering the disturbed emotions of Gerald Van Steen. Rations must be measured out and inspected, the muster roll called, the sick visited, and the sentries appointed for the night. He had finished these tasks and was standing near his tent when Van Steen approached in a hurried, angry manner. Surmising the cause, O’Shea caught him by the arm and led him in the direction of the beach, away from the curious eyes and ears of the camp.

Van Steen wrenched himself free with a threatening gesture. He had worked himself into a passion childishly irrational. O’Shea was inwardly amused, but his face was grave as he inquired:

“Why these hostile symptoms? Do not shout it all over the place. Tell it to me easy and get it out of your system.”

This casual reception rather stumped young Mr. Van Steen. He gulped, made a false start or two, and sullenly replied:

“You and I will have it out as man to man, O’Shea.”

“_Captain_ O’Shea, if ye please, while I command this expedition,” softly spoke the other. “As man to man? You have been a man only since I took charge of your education. Are ye sure you are ready to qualify?”

The shipmaster’s smile was frosty, and his glance was exceedingly alert. Van Steen raised his voice to an unsteady pitch as he cried:

“That is a cheap insult. It shows what you are under the skin. Now, I don’t propose to bring her--to bring any one’s name into this--but you are to keep away, understand? It has to stop.”

“Did any one request ye to tell me to keep away, as ye put it in your tactful way?” blandly suggested O’Shea.

“No; this is my affair. There has been enough of this blarneying nonsense of yours, and watching for a chance when my back is turned. If you were a gentleman, there would be no necessity of telling you this.”

The veneer had been quite thoroughly removed from the conventional surfaces of Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen. He was the primitive man ready to fight for his woman. O’Shea was divided between respect for him and a desire to swing a fist against his jaw.

“We have no gentlemen in my trade, of course,” he retorted. “Now and then we pick up one of them adrift and do our best for him, and he turns to and blackguards us for our pains. Have ye more to say?”

“Considerably more. It is an awfully awkward matter to discuss, but it is my right, and--and----”

O’Shea interrupted vehemently:

“The hot sun has addled your brain. For heaven’s sake, stop where you are. If it was me intention to make love to the girl and try to win her for myself, I would go straight to you. You would not have to come to me.”

“You are a liar and a sneak, and I think you are a coward unless you have your men at your back,” almost screamed Van Steen.

“Which I will take from no man,” returned O’Shea, and he swung from the shoulder and stretched the young man flat on the sand. Several seamen and Cubans beheld this episode and ran thither.

“Pick yourself up and keep your mouth shut,” exhorted O’Shea, “or ye will be draggin’ some one’s name into this after all.”

Van Steen was sobbing as he scrambled to his feet, let fly with his fists, and was again knocked down by a buffet on the side of the head. O’Shea turned to order the men back to camp, and then quizzically surveyed the dazed champion.

“You will fight a duel with me or I’ll shoot you,” cried Van Steen. “At daylight to-morrow--with revolvers--at the other end of the key.”

“I will not!” curtly replied O’Shea. “Ye might put a hole through me, and what good would that do? ’Tis my business to get these people away, and keep them alive in the meantime. As for shooting me informally, if I catch you with a gun I will clap ye in irons.”

“But you knocked me down twice,” protested Van Steen.

“And ye called me hard names. We are quits. Now run along and wash off your face.”

The misguided young man marched sadly up the beach to find solitude, and was seen no more until long after night. O’Shea stared at his retreating figure and sagaciously reflected:

“He wants to fight a duel! ’Tis quite the proper thing. He figures it out that he is a buccaneer on a desert island, and ’tis his duty to play the part. Consistency is a jewel.”

It seemed improbable that Van Steen had acted wholly on his own initiative. Then the provocation must have come from Nora herself. And what could have aroused Van Steen to such a jealous frenzy but her admission that she was fond of the company of Captain O’Shea?

“Right there is where I stop tryin’ to unravel it,” soliloquized the skipper. “’Tis not proper for a man to confess such thoughts. But I have no doubt at all that she stirred him up when he scolded her for walking on the beach with me this afternoon.”

In the evening Johnny Kent became inquisitive. There was something on his mind, and he shifted about uneasily and lighted his pipe several times before venturing to observe:

“I sort of wandered down to the beach, Cap’n Mike, when you and the millionaire coal-heaver were quarrellin’. I didn’t mean to butt in and I hung back as long as I could----”

“Forget whatever you heard, Johnny. It was a tempest in a teapot.”

The engineer scratched another match, cleared his throat, and diffidently resumed:

“Excuse me, but there was words about a duel. I was interested--personally interested, you understand.”

“How in blazes did it concern you?” laughed O’Shea.

“Never you mind,” darkly answered Johnny Kent. “Tell me, Cap’n Mike, ain’t you goin’ to inform the young lady that there came near being a duel fought over her?”

“Of course not. And don’t you blab it.”

“But she’d feel terrible flattered. Women just dote on having duels fought over ’em, accordin’ to all I’ve read in story-books. Seems to me you ought to stand up and swap a couple of shots with Van Steen just to please the girl.”

“I had not looked at it from just that angle,” amiably returned O’Shea. “You surely are a thoughtful, soft-hearted old pirate.”

“Well, the girl will get wind of it, Cap’n Mike. She’s bound to. And maybe she’ll feel pleased, to a certain extent, that a duel was pretty near fought over her.”

“But what has all this to do with you personally?” O’Shea demanded. “’Tis none of your duel, Johnny. You would make a fine target. I could hit that broad-beamed carcass with me two eyes shut.”

“And maybe I could put a hole in your coppers with my eyes open,” was the tart rejoinder. “Anyhow, you agree with me, Cap’n Mike, don’t you, that there’s no solider compliment with more heft and ballast to it than to fight a duel over a lady?”

“I will take your word for it if ye will only explain what it is all about,” yawned O’Shea.

“A man don’t have to tell all he knows,” was the enigmatical reply.

Whereupon Johnny Kent rolled over on his blanket, but he did not snore for some time. Staring at the canvas roof, or beyond it at the starlit night, he revolved great thoughts.

Fortune occasionally favors the brave. Next morning the chief engineer trundled himself across the intervening sand to pay his respects to Miss Hollister. The comparative calm of existence on the key was mending her shattered nerves. She felt a singularly serene confidence that the party would be rescued ere long, and the healthful outdoor life hastened the process of recuperation. With feminine ingenuity she managed to make her scanty wardrobe appear both fresh and attractive. Her favorite diversion was to sit on the sand while Johnny Kent traced patterns of his imaginary farm with a bit of stick. Here was the pasture, there the hay-field, yonder the brook, indicated by a wriggling line. The house would be in this place, large trees in front, a sailor’s hammock swung between two of them. Miss Hollister had several times changed the location of the flower-beds and paths, and was particularly interested in the poultry-yards.

Just before Johnny Kent loomed athwart her placid horizon on this momentous morning, the contented spinster was tracing on the white carpet of sand a tentative outline of the asparagus-bed to be submitted to his critical eye. A shadow caused her to glance up, and her startled vision beheld not the comfortable bulk and rubicund visage of the chief engineer, but the martial figure and saturnine countenance of Colonel Calvo. He was still arrayed in the panoply of war. The front of his straw hat was pinned back by a tiny Cuban flag. His white uniform, somewhat dingy, was brave with medals and brass buttons, and the tarnished spurs tinkled at his high heels. Unaware that he was Miss Hollister’s pet aversion, the gallant colonel bowed low with his hand on his heart, smiled a smile warranted to bring the most obdurate señorita fluttering from her perch, and affably exclaimed:

“I have the honor to ask, is your health pretty good? We have suffer’ together. I promise myself to come before, but my brave mens have need me.”

“There is no reason why you should trouble yourself on my account, I am sure,” crisply replied Miss Hollister. “Captain O’Shea is taking the best of care of us, thank you.”

The colonel assumed a graceful pose, one hand on his hip, the other toying with his jaunty mustache. How could any woman resist him?

“I will be so glad to have you inspec’ my camp,” said he, staring at her very boldly. “It is ver’ military. That Captain O’Shea”--an eloquent shrug--“he is good on the sea, but he is not a soldier, to know camps like me.”

“Captain O’Shea has offered to show me the camps. He is in command, I believe.”

“That fellow do not comman’ me. Will you come to-night? My soldiers will sing for you the songs of _Cuba Libre_.”

“No, I thank you.” Miss Hollister was positively discourteous.

“Ah, so beautiful a woman and so cruel,” sighed the colonel, ogling her with his most fatal glances.

Miss Hollister spied Johnny Kent coming at top speed, and she looked so radiant that Colonel Calvo spun round to discover the reason. With a contemptuous laugh he remarked:

“The greasy ol’ man of the engines! I do not like him.”

Johnny Kent had read the meaning of the tableau. The colonel was making himself unpleasant to Miss Hollister. And the breeze carried to his ear the unflattering characterization of himself.

“He’s playing right into my hands. It couldn’t happen nicer if I had arranged it myself,” said the chief engineer under his breath. His mien was as fierce as that of an indignant walrus as he bore down on the pair and, without deigning to notice Colonel Calvo, exclaimed to Miss Hollister:

“Was anybody makin’ himself unwelcome to you just now? If so, I’ll be pleased to remove him somewhere else.”

“You will min’ your own business,” grandly declaimed Colonel Calvo.

“You needn’t answer my question, ma’am,” resumed Johnny Kent. “This pestiferous Cuban gent wanders over here without bein’ invited and makes himself unpopular. It’s as plain as a picture on the wall.”

The spinster realized that it was her duty to intervene as a peace-maker between these belligerents, but she felt powerless to move from the spot, which happened to be in the middle of Johnny Kent’s imaginary pasture, between the brook and the hay-field. The proprietor thereof, advancing close to Colonel Calvo, thundered, “Ha! Ha!” and firmly grasped the warrior’s nose between a mighty thumb and forefinger. The colonel yelled with rage and pain, and fumbled for the hilt of his sword. With dignified deliberation the chief engineer released the imprisoned nose, turned the colonel squarely around by the shoulders, and kicked him until his spurs jingled like little bells.

“There! I hope you’re real insulted, right down to the heels,” commented the avenger.

Colonel Calvo painfully straightened himself, managed to haul the sword clear of the scabbard, waved it undecidedly and shrieked:

“Mos’ likely you have the pistol in your pants to kill me with. I will fight the duello with you. You have insult’ me in my mortal part. You refuse me to fight with pistols, quick, as soon as it can be arrange’?”

“Bully for you,” cordially answered Johnny Kent. “Sure thing. I’ll be delighted.” He had one eye on Miss Hollister as he continued in resonant tones: “We will duel to the death.”

“I will sen’ my frien’ to see your frien’, señor,” was the grandiloquent response of Colonel Calvo. “An’ I will kill you mos’ awful dead.”

“It will be a pleasure to turn up my toes in defence of a lady,” fervently declaimed the engineer as Colonel Calvo limped in the direction of his own camp, filling the air with such explosive imprecations that it was as though he left a string of cannon-crackers in his wake. Johnny Kent mopped his face, smiled contentedly, and turned his attention to the dumfounded spinster.

“But are you in earnest?” she gasped.

“Never more so, ma’am,” and he added, with seeming irrelevance, “I suppose you have heard that Cap’n O’Shea and Mr. Van Steen came near fightin’ a duel yesterday afternoon.”

“Yes, Mr. Van Steen admitted as much. It was a most inexplicable affair. What in the world has it to do with your terrible quarrel with Colonel Calvo?”

“You understand just why I am perpetratin’ the duel with the colonel, don’t you, ma’am?” asked Johnny Kent, showing some slight anxiety.

“I--I imagine--” She blushed, looked distressed, and said with a confusion prettily girlish, “I am afraid I had something to do with it.”

“You had everything to do with it,” he heartily assured her. “You don’t feel slighted now, do you? I thought you might take it to heart, you understand--being sort of left out. Says I to myself last night, there’ll be no invidious distinctions in Miss Hollister’s neighborhood. She deserves a duel of her own, and I’ll hop in and get her one the first minute that conceited jackass of a Colonel Calvo gives me a chance to pull his nose for him. That is strictly accordin’ to Hoyle, ma’am. Pullin’ the other fellow’s nose is the most refined and elegant way of starting a duel. Kickin’ him was an afterthought, to make sure he was insulted a whole lot.”

“I appreciate your motive,” murmured Miss Hollister, “but, oh, dear, it wasn’t at all necessary. You and I are too good friends to require a duel as a proof of esteem. And I did not feel in the least slighted.”

“Perhaps not; but you are bound to feel sort of gratified,” stubbornly argued the portly squire of dames. “It’s the nature of women to like to have duels fought over ’em. The colonel is as thin as a shad, and I suppose he’ll stand edgewise, but maybe I can wing him.”

“But what about you?” tremulously besought his lady fair, whose emotions were chaotic in the extreme.

“Me? Pooh! I’ve had too many narrow escapes to be bagged by a google-eyed shrimp like this Calvo person,” easily answered the knight-errant. “Now you just sit tight and don’t get fretty, ma’am. You can bank on me every time. I’m shy of culture, but my heart is as big as a basket. And when I see my duty plain, I go to it in a hurry.”

Miss Hollister’s perturbed glance happened to fall on the half-obliterated plan of Johnny Kent’s farm, in the midst of which she still stood. It appealed to her with an indefinable pathos. She could not understand why, but she began to weep, although a moment before she had perceived the wild absurdity of Johnny’s Kent arguments.

“Why, you ain’t supposed to cry,” he exclaimed in great agitation; “I’m trying to please you.”

“I--I--can see your good intentions,” she tearfully faltered, “but I shall go to Captain O’Shea and beg him to forbid this duel--to prevent bloodshed. I shall be perfectly happy without it.”

“Please don’t interfere in men’s affairs,” implored the alarmed hero. “Women are too delicate to go prancin’ in among us professional pirates. You’ll feel better after it’s over. I guess I had better leave you.”

He fled from the sight of her tears, greatly distressed, wondering whether he might be mistaken in his theories concerning the operations of the feminine mind. She had behaved as if she did not want a duel, but he reflected:

“They’re all geared contrariwise. You can never tell just what they do want. And it’s a good bet that she’d feel worse if I disappointed her about this duel.”

The first assistant engineer called him to repair the condenser, which had been set up on the beach, and it was there that Captain O’Shea found him some time later.

“For the love of heaven, Johnny,” exclaimed the skipper, “what infernal nonsense have you been up to now? The Cuban colonel came surging into me tent, foaming and sputterin’ like a leaky boiler. He got all choked up with language, but I made out that ye have handed him seventeen kinds of deadly insults, and agreed to fight him with revolvers. Are ye drunk? The Cuban crowd is hard enough to handle as it is, and you have been me right-hand man. Is it one of your bad jokes?”

“Not on your life, Cap’n Mike,” earnestly affirmed the engineer. “He made himself unpleasant to a friend of mine--ladies’ names are barred. We fixed up this duel in perfectly gentlemanly style, and as a favor to me I ask you to keep your hands off. It won’t be a public ruction.”

“You butt-headed old fool, he may shoot you!”

“Well, Cap’n Mike, speakin’ seriously,” and Johnny’s face was genuinely sad, “just between you and me, I wouldn’t care a whole lot. I’ve lost my ship, and I’ll never have money enough to buy a farm. And--well--she wouldn’t look at me twice if we were in civilization among her own kind of folks. I didn’t mean to slop over this way, but you are a good friend of mine, Cap’n Mike.”

O’Shea laid a hand upon his comrade’s shoulder and was moved to sympathy.

“You are making heavy weather of it, Johnny. Suppose I forbid this high-tragedy duel. I am still in command, ye understand. It would give me no great sorrow to see Colonel Calvo wafted to a better world, but I will be hanged if I want to lose you.”

“I ask it as a favor, Cap’n Mike. I’ve done my best for you, blow high, blow low,” doggedly persisted the other.

“’Tis not fair to put it that way, Johnny. Cool off a bit, and we will talk about it to-night.”

“You’re the boss, Cap’n Mike, and I’d hate to mutiny on you, but I’ve passed my word to the finest lady in the world that this duel would be fought. And a man that will break his word to a lady ought to be strung to the yard-arm.”

O’Shea walked away and sat down in front of his tent. The Cuban camp was buzzing with excitement, and a grumbling uneasiness was manifest among the crew of the _Fearless_. The two factions cordially disliked each other. The story of the duel had spread like a fire. If anything happened to Johnny Kent, the _Fearless_ men were resolved to annihilate the Cuban camp. Such intentions being promptly conveyed to the patriots, they swarmed about Colonel Calvo and announced their readiness to avenge him with the last drop of their blood.

O’Shea summoned Jack Gorham as his most dependable aid and counsellor. The melancholy sharp-shooter listened respectfully. O’Shea waxed torrid and his language was strong.

“Johnny Kent is a great engineer and I swear by him,” he declared, “but he is full to the hatches with sentiment, and it makes him as cranky as a wet hen. He is dead set on this comical duel, and I dislike to disgrace him by putting him under arrest. He would never sail with me again.”

“Better let them fight,” said Gorham.

“’Tis your trade,” replied O’Shea. “You are biassed. I want ye to figure a way to make this duel harmless. Let them shoot all they like, but don’t let them hit each other. You know how I feel about Johnny Kent, and little as I love Colonel Calvo, I am sort of bound to deliver him safe somewhere.”

“When is this pistol party scheduled to happen?” asked Gorham.

“Early to-morrow morning.”

“It will be easy enough to steal their revolvers while they’re asleep, sir, and work the bullets out of the shells and spill most of the powder. Or I could file down the front sights. Why not make ’em postpone it for another twenty-four hours? The seconds will have a lot of pow-wowin’ to do, and perhaps we can work out a better scheme.”

“I agree with you, Gorham. A duel should be conducted with a great deal of etiquette and deliberation. ’Tis not a rough-and-tumble scrap, but more like a declaration of war. We will do it proper, even if we are ragged and shipwrecked.”

Shortly thereafter Captain O’Shea issued his ultimatum to the combatants. They were to observe a truce until the morning of the second day. Meanwhile negotiations would be conducted in a dignified and befitting manner. Violation of this edict would be punished by confinement under guard. Johnny Kent grumbled volubly until O’Shea convinced him that the etiquette of the duelling code forbade unseemly haste.

“I take your word for it, Cap’n Mike. I don’t want to make any breaks. This affair aims to be strictly accordin’ to Hoyle.”

V

Shortly after sunrise next morning the sentries, the cook, and a few sailors and Cubans who were early astir discovered a faint smudge of smoke on the horizon to the northward. They shouted the tidings, and Captain O’Shea tumbled out of his tent, rubbing his eyes. A long scrutiny convinced him that the steamer was heading to pass within sighting distance of the key. She was coming from the direction of the Cuban coast. Possibly she might belong to the Spanish navy. On the other hand, she might be a cargo tramp bound to the southward and seeking a South American port.

There is such a thing as becoming accustomed to the unexpected. Those who dwell in the midst of alarms acquire a certain philosophical temper which views life as a series of hazards. On this lonely key in the Caribbean the daily routine of things had run along without acute symptoms of worry and dread, although the peril of discovery by a Spanish war-vessel was discussed by the evening camp-fires. So long as Captain O’Shea appeared unruffled, his followers saw no reason why they should lose sleep. To him it was like the toss of a coin. They were to be rescued or they were to be found by the enemy.

If he had seemed inactive, it was because this was an extraordinary shipwreck. To send the life-raft in search of succor was a forlorn hope, a desperate expedient, but even this was denied him. The wind was blowing steadily from the southward, day after day, and the raft would drift straight toward the coast of Cuba where no mercy was to be looked for. Because of the destruction of the Spanish gun-boat, these refugees were something else than castaways. They were men without a country, and death awaited them wherever flew the red and yellow flag of Spain.

Captain O’Shea turned from gazing at the distant smoke and awakened Johnny Kent.

“Rouse out, ye sleepy old duellist,” he called. “Take a look at this vessel.”

The engineer emerged from the tent and the two men stood side by side, their emotions weighted with poignant anxiety.

“We won’t be able to tell what she is for some time yet,” said Johnny Kent. “The sea is hazy. Yes, she’s sure enough comin’ this way, Cap’n Mike.”

“’Tis best for us to be ready, whatever she is,” replied O’Shea.

“I guess we’ll postpone the arrangements for my duel. What’s the orders?”

“All hands will move inside the earthworks right after breakfast,” briskly spoke O’Shea. “Take charge of the men in your department, Johnny. See that the rifles are clean and serve out plenty of ammunition. And store all the fresh water ye can.”

“If it’s a Spanish vessel, can we stand her off at all, Cap’n Mike?”

“She will have a hard time shellin’ us out, Johnny. That four-sided refuge we piled up with our shovels is nothing but a big sand-bank. Shells will bury in it without explodin’. ’Tis the theory of modern fortifications. We can do our best, and maybe luck will turn our way. Anyhow, ’tis more sensible than to be shot by drum-head court-martial, which is what will happen to us if we throw up our hands and surrender. If they find us a hard nut to crack, perhaps we can make terms of some kind.”

“What about the ladies? I was hopin’ they wouldn’t have to go up against any more excitement,” wistfully said Johnny Kent.

“I have delivered me cargo. It stands no longer between us and our guests, Johnny. And ’tis my opinion that you and I will not let them suffer for the sake of saving our own skins.”

“Right you are, Cap’n Mike. I don’t care a cuss what becomes of me if you can get Miss Hollister--I mean both of ’em, of course--on board a respectable vessel of some kind.”

Soon the camp was in commotion. The methods of the leaders were brutal and direct. This was no time for soft words. Jack Gorham moved quietly, in several places at once, and when a man would argue or expostulate he was threatened with the butt of that terrible Springfield. At his side, like a huge, black shadow, stalked Jiminez, a militant assistant who jumped at the word of command.

Johnny Kent, no longer a sighing sentimentalist, bellow