The Pirate of Panama Part 9

But why make apologies? After all, every man that lives has his great adventure, whether it come garbed in drab or radiant with the glow of the sunrise. A prosaic, money-grubbing age we call this, but by the G.o.ds! romance hammers once in a lifetime at the door of every mother's son of us. There be those too n.i.g.g.ardly to let her in, there be those to whom the knock comes faintly; and there be a happy few who fling wide the door and embrace her like a lover.

For me, I am Irish, as I have said. I cried "Aye!" and shook hands on the bargain. We would show Captain Boris Bothwell a thing or two. It would be odds but we would beat him to those chests hidden in the sand.

This was all very well, but one cannot charter and outfit a ship for a long cruise upon day-dreams. The moneyed men that I approached smiled and shook their wise gray heads. To them the whole story was no more than a castle in Spain. For two days I tramped the streets of San Francisco and haunted the offices of capitalists without profit to our enterprise.

On the afternoon of the third I retired, temporarily defeated, to my club, the Golden Gate. On my salary I had no business belonging to so expensive a club, but I had inherited from my college days a taste for good society and I gratified it at the expense of other desires.

In the billiard-room I ran across an acquaintance I had met for the first time on the Valdez trail some years earlier. His name was Samuel Blythe. By birth he was English, by choice cosmopolitan. Possessed of more money than he knew what to do with, he spent a great deal of time exploring unknown corners of the earth. He was as well known at Hong-Kong and Simla as in Paris and Vienna. Within the week he had returned to San Francisco, from an attempt to reach the summit of Mount McKinley.

He was knocking b.a.l.l.s about aimlessly.

"Shoot you a game of pool, Sedgwick," he proposed.

Then I had an inspiration.

"I can give you more fun for your money another way. Come into the library, Blythe."

There I told him the whole story. He heard me out without a smile. For that alone I could have thanked him. When I had finished he looked for a minute out of the window with a far-away expression in his eyes.

"It's a queer yarn," he said at last.

"And of course you don't believe a word of it?" I challenged.

"Don't I? Let me tell you this, old man. There are a number of rum things in this old world. I've bucked up against two or three of them.

Let me see your map."

I had made another copy of it, with the lat.i.tude and longitude omitted.

This I handed to him.

While he examined it his eyes shone.

"By Jove, this _is_ a lark. You can have the old tub if you want it."

He was referring to his splendid steam yacht the _Argos_, in which he had made the trip to Alaska.

"I haven't the price to outfit her and pay your crew," I explained.

"I have. You'll have to let me be your bank. But I say, Sedgwick, you'll need a sailing master. You're not a seaman."

Our eyes met.

"Could Sam Blythe be persuaded to take the place?"

"Could I?" He got up and wrung my hand. "That's what I wanted you to say. Of course I'll go--jump at the chance."

"There's the chance of a nasty row. We're likely to meet Bothwell in that vicinity. If we do, there will be trouble."

"So I gather from your description of the gentleman."

I was delighted. Blythe was not only a good navigator; he was a tried companion, true as steel, an interesting fellow who had pa.s.sed through strange experiences but never used them to impress upon others a sense of his importance.

He had served through the Boer and the Spanish-American wars with distinction. As I looked at him--a spare tall man with a bronzed face of power, well-shouldered, clear-eyed, and light-footed--I felt he was the one out of ten thousand for my purpose.

"Too bad I didn't know a week ago. I've let my crew go. But we can pick up another. My sailing master Mott is a thoroughly reliable man. He'll look after the details. My opinion is that we ought to get under way as soon as possible. That fellow Bothwell is going to crowd on all sail in his preparations. I take it as a sure thing that he means to have a try for the treasure."

"My notion too. He struck me as a man of resource and determination."

"So much the better. He'll give us a run for our money. My dear fellow, you've saved my life. I was beginning to get bored to extinction. This will be a bully picnic."

"How long will it take you to get the yacht ready?"

"Give me a week to pick a crew and get supplies aboard. I'll offer a bonus to get things pushed."

To see the enthusiasm he put into the adventure did me good after the three days of disappointment I had endured. I was eager to have him and Miss Wallace meet, and I got her at once on the telephone and made arrangements to bring him up after dinner to the private hotel where she and her aunt were stopping.

They took to each other at once. Inside of ten minutes we were all talking about our equipment for the trip.

"If we have a good run and the proper luck we'll be back to you with the treasure inside of a month, Miss Wallace," Blythe promised as he rose to leave.

"Back to me!" She looked first at him and then at me. "You don't think that I'm not going, too, do you?"

It is odd that the point had not come up before, but I had taken it for granted she would wait in 'Frisco for us.

"It's hardly a lady's job, I should say," was my smiling answer.

"Nonsense! Of course I am going." Sharp decision rang in her voice.

"It may be dangerous."

"Fiddlesticks! Panama is a tourist point of travel these days. Half of my schoolgirl chums have been there. It's as safe as--Atlantic City."

"Atlantic City isn't safe if one ventures too far out in the surf," I reminded her.

"I'll stick close to the life line," she promised.

Both Blythe and I were embarra.s.sed. It was of course her right to go if she insisted. I appealed to her aunt, a plump, amiable lady nearer fifty than forty.

"Don't you think, Miss Berry, that it would be better to wait here for us? There would be discomforts to which you are not used."

"That is just what Boris told us," Evelyn put in mischievously.

Miss Berry gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

"Oh, I'd as soon stay here, but Evie will have her way." Her pleasant smile took from the words any sting they might otherwise have held.

"Of course I shall. This is a matter of business," Miss Wallace triumphantly insisted.

Excitement danced in her eyes. She might put it on commercial grounds if she liked, but the truth is that the romance of the quest had taken hold of her even as it had of us. One could not blame her for wanting to go.