“Good morning, merry kinsman,” Francis greeted. “Why such violence?”
“Morning, morning, and the morning’s morning, comrade,” Henry muttered. “Such was the violence of your sleep that it was you who awakened me with a buffet on my breast. I thought it was the hangman, for this is the morning they planned to kink my neck.” He yawned, stretched his arms, gazed out over the rail at the sleeping sea, and nudged Francis to observance of the sleeping skipper and helmsman.
They looked so bonny, the pair of Morgans, Leoncia thought; and at the same time wondered why the English word had arisen unsummoned in her mind rather than a Spanish equivalent. Was it because her heart went out so generously to the two Gringos that she must needs think of them in their language instead of her own?
To escape the perplexity of her thoughts, she dangled the scarf again, was discovered, and laughingly confessed that it was she who had caused their violence of waking.
Three hours later, breakfast of coffee and fruit over, she found herself at the wheel taking her first lesson of steering and of the compass under Francis’ tuition. The Angelique, under a crisp little breeze which had hauled around well to north’ard, was for the moment heeling it through the water at a six-knot clip. Henry, swaying on the weather side of the after-deck and searching the sea through the binoculars, was striving to be all unconcerned at the lesson, although secretly he was mutinous with himself for not having first thought of himself introducing her to the binnacle and the wheel. Yet he resolutely refrained from looking around or from even stealing a corner-of-the-eye glance at the other two.
But Captain Trefethen, with the keen cruelty of Indian curiosity and the impudence of a negro subject of King George, knew no such delicacy. He stared openly and missed nothing of the chemic drawing together of his charterer and the pretty Spanish girl. When they leaned over the wheel to look into the binnacle, they leaned toward each other and Leoncia’s hair touched Francis’ cheek. And the three of them, themselves and the breed skipper, knew the thrill induced by such contact. But the man and woman knew immediately what the breed skipper did not know, and what they knew was embarrassment. Their eyes lifted to each other in a flash of mutual startlement, and drooped away and down guiltily. Francis talked very fast and loud enough for half the schooner to hear, as he explained the lubber’s point of the compass. But Captain Trefethen grinned.
A rising puff of breeze made Francis put the wheel up. His hand to the spoke rested on her hand already upon it. Again they thrilled, and again the skipper grinned.
Leoncia’s eyes lifted to Francis’, then dropped in confusion. She slipped her hand out from under and terminated the lesson by walking slowly away with a fine assumption of casualness, as if the wheel and the binnacle no longer interested her. But she had left Francis afire with what he knew was lawlessness and treason as he glanced at Henry’s shoulder and profile and hoped he had not seen what had occurred. Leoncia, apparently gazing off across the lagoon to the jungle-clad shore, was seeing nothing as she thoughtfully turned her engagement ring around and around on her finger.
But Henry, turning to tell them of the smudge of smoke he had discovered on the horizon, had inadvertently seen. And the negro-Indian captain had seen him see. So the captain lurched close to him, the cruelty of the Indian dictating the impudence of the negro, as he said in a low voice:
“Ah, be not downcast, sir. The senorita is generously hearted. There is room for both you gallant gentlemen in her heart.”
And the next fraction of a second he learned the inevitable and invariable lesson that white men must have their privacy of intimate things; for he lay on his back, the back of his head sore from contact with the deck, the front of his head, between the eyes, sore from contact with the knuckles of Henry Morgan’s right hand.
But the Indian in the skipper was up and raging as he sprang to his feet, knife in hand. Juan, the pale-yellow mixed breed, leaped to the side of his skipper flourishing another knife, while several of the nearer sailors joined in forming a semi-circle of attack on Henry, who, with a quick step back and an upward slap of his hand, under the pin-rail, caused an iron belaying pin to leap out and up into the air. Catching it in mid-flight, he was prepared to defend himself. Francis, abandoning the wheel and drawing his automatic as he sprang, was through the circle and by the side of Henry.
“What did he say?” Francis demanded of his kinsman.
“I’ll say what I said,” the breed skipper threatened, the negro side of him dominant as he built for a compromise of blackmail. “I said——”
“Hold on, skipper!” Henry interrupted. “I’m sorry I struck you. Hold your hush. Put a stopper on your jaw. Saw wood. Forget. I’m sorry I struck you. I....” Henry Morgan could not help the pause in speech during which he swallowed his gorge rising at what he was about to say. And it was because of Leoncia, and because she was looking on and listening, that he said it. “I ... I apologize, skipper.”
“It is an injury,” Captain Trefethen stated aggrievedly. “It is a physical damage. No man can perpetrate a physical damage on a subject of King George’s, God bless him, without furnishing a money requital.”
At this crass statement of the terms of the blackmail, Henry was for forgetting himself and for leaping upon the creature. But, restrained by Francis’ hand on his shoulder, he struggled to self-control, made a noise like hearty laughter, dipped into his pocket for two ten-dollar gold-pieces, and, as if they stung him, thrust them into Captain Trefethen’s palm.
“Cheap at the price,” he could not help muttering aloud.
“It is a good price,” the skipper averred. “Twenty gold is always a good price for a sore head. I am yours to command, sir. You are a sure-enough gentleman. You may hit me any time for the price.”
“Me, sir, me!” the Kingston black named Percival volunteered with broad and prideless chucklings of subservience. “Take a swat at me, sir, for the same price, any time, now. And you may swat me as often as you please to pay....”
But the episode was destined to terminate at that instant, for at that instant a sailor called from amidships:
“Smoke! A steamer-smoke dead aft!”
The passage of an hour determined the nature and import of the smoke, for the Angelique, falling into a calm, was overhauled with such rapidity that the tugboat Dolores, at half a mile distance through the binoculars, was seen fairly to bristle with armed men crowded on her tiny for’ard deck. Both Henry and Francis could recognize the faces of the Jefe Politico and of several of the gendarmes.
Old Enrico Solano’s nostrils began to dilate, as, with his four sons who were aboard, he stationed them aft with him and prepared for the battle. Leoncia, divided between Henry and Francis, was secretly distracted, though outwardly she joined in laughter at the unkemptness of the little tug, and in glee at a flaw of wind that tilted the Angelique’s port rail flush to the water and foamed her along at a nine-knot clip.
But weather and wind were erratic. The face of the lagoon was vexed with squalls and alternate streaks of calm.
“We cannot escape, sir, I regret to inform you,” Captain Trefethen informed Francis. “If the wind would hold, sir, yes. But the wind baffles and breaks. We are crowded down upon the mainland. We are cornered, sir, and as good as captured.”
Henry, who had been studying the near shore through the glasses, lowered them and looked at Francis.
“Shout!” cried the latter. “You have a scheme. It’s sticking out all over you. Name it.”
“Right there are the two Tigres islands,” Henry elucidated. “They guard the narrow entrance to Juchitan Inlet, which is called El Tigre. Oh, it has the teeth of a tiger, believe me. On either side of them, between them and the shore, it is too shoal to float a whaleboat unless you know the winding channels, which I do know. But between them is deep water, though the El Tigre Passage is so pinched that there is no room to come about. A schooner can only run it with the wind abaft or abeam. Now, the wind favors. We will run it. Which is only half my scheme——”
“And if the wind baffles or fails, sir—and the tide of the inlet runs out and in like a race, as I well know—my beautiful schooner will go on the rocks,” Captain Trefethen protested.
“For which, if it happens, I will pay you full value,” Francis assured him shortly and brushed him aside. “—And now, Henry, what’s the other half of your scheme?”
“I’m ashamed to tell you,” Henry laughed. “But it will be provocative of more Spanish swearing than has been heard in Chiriqui Lagoon since old Sir Henry sacked San Antonio and Bocas del Toro. You just watch.”
Leoncia clapped her hands, as with sparkling eyes she cried:
“It must be good, Henry. I can see it by your face. You must tell me.”
And, aside, his arm around her to steady her on the reeling deck, Henry whispered closely in her ear, while Francis, to hide his perturbation at the sight of them, made shift through the binoculars to study the faces on the pursuing tug. Captain Trefethen grinned maliciously and exchanged significant glances with the pale-yellow sailor.
“Now, skipper,” said Henry, returning. “We’re just opposite El Tigre. Put up your helm and run for the passage. Also, and pronto, I want a coil of half-inch, old, soft, manila rope, plenty of rope-yarns and sail twine, that case of beer from the lazarette, that five-gallon kerosene can that was emptied last night, and the coffee-pot from the galley.”
“But I am distrained to remark to your attention that that rope is worth good money, sir,” Captain Trefethen complained, as Henry set to work on the heterogeneous gear.
“You will be paid,” Francis hushed him.
“And the coffee-pot—it is almost new.”
“You will be paid.”
