The Pirate of Panama Part 6

"You're a right funny lawyer."

"I'll tell you a secret. My father was an Irish filibuster in Cuba. He died with his back to a wall when I was five."

"Then it's in the blood."

"He had a chance to slip away by leaving his men, but Barry Sedgwick wasn't the man to take that kind of an opportunity."

"The dear hero! How proud you must be of him," she said in the softest of voices.

I nodded.

"He's the best reference I can give you. Now, Miss Wallace, I'll have to tell this story--or part of it--before I can interest capital in the venture. You are willing that I should?"

"Do whatever you must. It's in your hands."

"First, we'll make sure of the map, then; and after that you can tell me the story of Doubloon Spit."

Together we went to the International Safe Deposit vaults, rented a box, and put in it the map. Afterward we took a car for Golden Gate Park.

There she told me the story, in substance if not in the same words, to be found in the next two chapters.

Those who find interest only in the conventional had better read no farther. For this true tale runs red with the primal emotions of the old buccaneers. It is a story of love and hate, of heroism and cowardice, of treasure-trove and piracy on the high seas, of gaping wounds and foul murder. If this is not to your taste, fall out. My story is not for you.

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING DOUBLOON SPIT

Robert Wallace, the father of Evelyn, was not one of the forty-niners, but he had come to California by way of the Isthmus not very many years later. Always of an adventurous turn, it was on his fourteenth birthday that he ran away from his home in Baltimore to become a stowaway on board a south-bound vessel.

It was a day of privations, and the boy endured more than his share of them without complaint. Somehow he got along, knocking about from one point to another, now at the gold diggings, now on the San Francisco wharfs, and again as a deck hand on the coasters that plied from port to port.

When he was eighteen, but well grown for his age, he fell in with an old salt named Nat Quinn. Quinn was an old man, close to seventy, a survival of a type of sailor which even then had all but pa.s.sed away.

The sea and the wind had given Quinn a face of wrinkled leather. It was his custom to wear rings in his ears, to carry a murderous dirk, and to wrap around his bald head a red bandanna after the fashion of the buccaneers of old.

He was a surly old ruffian, quick to take offense, and absolutely fearless. When the old fellow was in drink it was as much as one's life was worth to cross his whim.

Nat Quinn was second mate of the _Porto Rico_ when young Wallace shipped before the mast at San Francisco for a cruise to Lima. The crew were probably rough specimens, but there can be no doubt that Quinn hazed them mercilessly.

Soon the whole forecastle was simmering with talk about revenge. Off Guayaquil one night three of the crew found him alone on the deck and rushed him overboard. The old man was no swimmer. No doubt this would have been the end of him if young Wallace, hearing his cry for help, had not dived from the rail and kept him afloat until a boat reached them.

From that night Nat Quinn took a great fancy to the young man and often hinted that he was going to make his fortune. He told of hidden treasure, but never definitely; spoke of a great fortune to be had for the lifting, and promised Wallace that he should go halves.

No doubt he trusted the boy, but the habit of secrecy had grown too strong easily to be broken. Several times he approached the subject, but usually sheered off before he had gone far. Of shrugs and winks he offered plenty, enough to keep the youngster tantalized almost beyond endurance. Nor was it possible to force his confidence, for he was of a surly, taciturn disposition, given to brooding suspicions.

But at last the story came out. Quinn had been in his early days a seaman on board the ship _Mary Ann_ of Bristol, which in the year 1817 was wrecked off the coast of Peru and cast upon the rocks. Most of the crew were saved, including the captain, one Thomas Rogers, the first mate, "Bully" Evans, and the boatswain, Pablo Lobardi, a quarrelsome fellow with whom Quinn had had a difficulty.

The rescued seamen were treated with the greatest kindness by the simple-hearted natives. To Cerro Blanco, the nearest town, they were taken and given work. Most of them found employment in the rich mines of the neighborhood, pending the arrival of some ship to take them back to Europe.

Lobardi was the only one of the crew who could talk Spanish, so that in his capacity of interpreter he acquired much influence with the men. It was he that hatched the vile plot to rob the mines, loot the rich churches and the banks of Cerro Blanco, and make their escape on the ship which put in twice a year to carry the gold to Lima.

It looked a desperate enough adventure, this plan to seize an armed transport and escape with a great treasure, but these ruffians were the very men to carry through such an attempt. In its apparent hopelessness lay one prime factor of success, for none could expect a score of unarmed men to try so forlorn a hope. The transport carried twice as many soldiers, and these could call upon the town for aid in case of need.

Everything went as well for the rascally buccaneers as they could desire. As the treasure wagons from the mines filed through a narrow gorge the sailors fell upon them. By means of three stolen rifles they drove away the guard. In their wild flight for safety the men who composed this body flung away their weapons in panic.

Bully Evans, captain in fact though not in name, now had eleven rifles and three pistols to distribute among his men. Leaving an escort with the gold, he pushed to Cerro Blanco with the main body of robbers. At the outskirts of the town he again divided his forces. One party hastened to the banks and another looted the cathedral. Within an hour the town had been stripped clean of its gold and jewels and the scoundrels had again joined forces at the wharves. Only the need of absolute silence saved the town from a carnival of fire and murder.

It was by this time in the small hours of a dark, moonless night. The pirates loaded the treasure into boats and pulled quietly for the _Santa Theresa_, a transport which lay like a black hulk in the harbor.

The first boat was challenged by a sentinel on board, but Lobardi gave the countersign which they had forced from the leader of the treasure convoy.

"_Muy bien_," answered the sentry, and he at once moved away to call the captain of the marines.

As that officer came sleepily to the deck a half dozen figures swarmed over the side of the ship. He gave a cry, the last he ever uttered. A knife hurtling through the dark was buried to the hilt in his throat.

Simultaneously one of the men on guard let out his death shriek and the other fled down the hatchway to the quarters of the men.

The first rush of the troopers to the deck was met by a volley that mowed them down. Before they could recover, the pirates were upon them with cutlases. Taken by surprise, hemmed in by the narrow hatchway, the soldiers made a poor defense. Some were pursued and cut down, others escaped by swimming to the wharves. Those who surrendered were flung into a boat and ordered ash.o.r.e.

Captain Rogers worked the brig out of the harbor and set her nose to the north. There was need of haste, for the ship's consort was expected in a day or two. That there would be a pursuit n.o.body doubted.

Now occurred a state of affairs to be accounted the most strange were it not the most natural in the world. While the plot had been fomenting, and during its execution, these scurvy fellows had been of one mind, amenable to discipline, and entirely loyal to each other.

The thing had been in the wind a month, yet not one of them had breathed a word in betrayal. But no sooner had they won success than dissensions broke out. They were jealous of their officers, suspicious of each other.

Men whispered together in corners, and others scowled at them in distrust. They grew unruly, were soon ripe for mutiny.

To make matters worse, the wines and liquors aboard were made too free.

It was not long before the cutthroats were in a debauch that threatened to last as long as the rum. Fights grew frequent. Within a week one man was buried and another lay in his bunk cut to ribbons.

At this juncture Rogers, Evans, and Lobardi put their heads together and quietly dumped overboard the liquor supply. Captain Rogers was the ablest seaman among the officers, and he it was that worked the brig.

But Bully Evans was the real leader of the pirates. He was a big man, of tremendous vitality and strength, and he ruled like a czar, hazing his men into submission by sheer brutality.

One specimen of his methods must serve to ill.u.s.trate a week of battle, every hour filled with disorder. The brig _Truxillo_, consort of the _Santa Theresa_, had appeared in the offing one morning and hung on in chase with all sail set. All day and night the two ships raced, the one to escape, the other to capture the pirates.

Next morning there came up a heavy fog. Orders were given to about ship.

Nothing could have amazed the crew more, and mutiny was instantly in the air. The malcontents whispered together and sent forward a committee of three to voice their refusal to comply with the order.

Before a dozen words had been spoken Evans stepped forward and flung the spokesman from the quarterdeck. While the other two hesitated he was upon them, had cracked their heads together, and hammered them down the steps to the waist.

From his belt he whipped two pistols and leveled them at the grumblers.

"Avast, you lubbers!" he bellowed. "By the powers, I'll learn you to play horse with Bully Evans! Pipe up your complaint or foot it, you flabby seac.o.c.ks what call yourselves gentlemen of fortune! Stow my quid, but I'll send some of you to feed the fishes if you try to make the f'c'sle rule the quarterdeck. Come, pipe up!"

They did not say much of what was in their minds, for he took the words out of their mouths, berating them for meddlesome fools and explaining how their sole chance of escaping was to slip past the _Truxillo_ in the fog and shake off the pursuit. All this he roared with the foulest of accompanying oaths, treating the crew like dogs so effectively that they turned tail and gave up without a blow.