Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew Part 9

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLIGHT OF THE TORPEDO BOAT. (Page 158)]

XIX.

DEATH SHIPS OF THE SEA.

A thick fog rose from the sea, as we stole away in the darkness with the torpedo boat. We had no distinguishing lights and every sound was m.u.f.fled. Even the funnels were protected against the tell-tale sparks of soft coal. The spume of the sea fell over our forward deck in flecks, and the waves splashed at our bow. The harbor lights of Panama shone in a glow of sickly yellow.

An officer stood by the hooded binnacle, watching our course by the faint glow of a tiny lamp. The bulldog engines, which I was working, were speeding us at 17 knots an hour and we were headed for Mollendo.

We had no armament. That was sent to the Peruvian government by other means and our only defense against the Chilean cruiser was a clean pair of heels.

Suddenly, the eye of a search-light opened, and sent a long gleam of yellow into the fog. It swung around and rested for a moment on the column of smoke trailing from our funnels and changed its color from a black to a fiery red. It rested there a moment, then closed and all was darkness. The tumult was deafening. The hissing rush of projectiles, as they struck the water and exploded by impact, or shrieked in ricochet overhead.

The brave officer at the binnacle fell to the deck, his mangled body a quivering ma.s.s. One funnel was struck midway and cut in twain as though by a sharpened blade. Fire darted up from the half funnel, and showed the cruiser's gunners the correctness of their aim. It lit our deck with its glare and showed the bodies of two others on the forward deck bathed in blood. Another officer coolly took his place at the binnacle and directed a change in the course of the boat.

The spurting jets of fire from our broken funnel gleamed in the fog, like a beacon light to those on board the gaunt black monster of the seas, in pursuit of his prey. A hunted thing on the black waves, we crowded on every ounce of steam throughout the watches of the night.

With the morning came the blaze of the tropic sun. It drove the fog off the sea and showed us the hull of the cruiser, looming up out of the purple mist. Steadily, we held our course, with steam up to the danger line. By noon we had gained a little, and again, with the approach of night, the fog began to rise and soon enveloped us in its grey cloak. But that beacon light from our funnel shone hateful as its spurting jets flashed signals to the enemy in pursuit.

Another night pa.s.sed, and, when the fog lifted again, there was the vampire even nearer than before.

The nervous strain was telling on our crew. The day before we joked and laughed--we would outrun him yet in the night. We would have; but for the glare from that funnel. We might have stolen into some cove and let him pa.s.s us in the dark, but for that. He did not waste shot anymore, we were going his way. He could afford to wait. The third day the crew was worn and silent. They had the look of desperation in their faces, as they threw furtive glances back at the spectre, the Ship of Death--The Black Coffin--we called him now.

At high noon, we met an American warship. His crew crowded to his decks and gave cheer after cheer in sympathy for our desperate plight.

The big greyhound of the sea was chasing the rabbit he had bitten and maimed, and the sympathy was with the weak. By night the nervous strain had become almost a frenzy. Then to add to our peril, the coal in the bunkers was running low. Something must happen in our favor soon. Our signal still flashed from the half funnel--our signal of distress--and by midnight we called it our funeral candle. The sky was clear now and the stars were shining. We could see lights flash now and then through the haze of the sea. When morning came there he was big, black, hideous--still in our wake.

Coal for eight more hours only. Surely something would happen; help must come, out of the sea, out of the sky, out of somewhere, only it must come. The sea was smooth; not a ship could be seen on the horizon. All on board were in restless anxiety. Only coal for three more hours.

We were now off Ecuador. The officer in command called the crew.

"We shall have to surrender the boat," he said.

The a.s.sistant engineer, two stokers and myself, all of us British, shouted "Never! We are not here to lay in a Chilean prison and perhaps be shot! We beach the boat!" Our emphasis was our drawn revolvers.

Without a word, the officer headed the boat for the sh.o.r.e. We gathered up a few edibles and when we grounded the boat, swam to the beach. The officer lingered for some time after all were ash.o.r.e, then hurried over her sides and made his escape. The Chilean cruiser launched her boat, eight sailors to each side of rowlocks, an ensign and a party of marines. They rowed rapidly to the torpedo boat and half of them climbed on board, when her sides parted and a terrific flame shot upward, bearing the bodies of a dozen men. The officer had lit the fuse that did the work.

Ten days afterwards the two stokers, a.s.sistant engineer and myself, footsore and ragged, went on board the British mail steamer at Guayaquil and presented ourselves to the gruff old captain.

"Get below in the stoke-hole and black up," he said, "the Chilean government offers five thousand dollars reward for each of you. If we are searched you are stokers."

Meanwhile, on board another ship far to the north were aching hearts.

Hattie's aged mother fell ill when two days out from Panama and the next day she pa.s.sed away. Rules required that the body be buried at sea. It was a solemn group that a.s.sembled at the ship's gangway, while all that was mortal of the aged mother rested on a plank, one end of which was held by a sailor. Slowly the chaplain read the beautiful service. The ship was stopped. Not a sound was heard and the midnight moon was hidden by clouds. "Therefore we commit this body to the deep," was p.r.o.nounced. The plank was raised and the body was swallowed up in the cavernous depths of the ocean.

Hattie leaned upon the arm of Mr. Robinson, who tenderly escorted her to the cabin when the rites were over. To her the world was gloomy and desolate, her sister but recently buried in far away Arequipa and the mother now in the sea. With a fort.i.tude beyond her years the Christian girl bore bravely her deep sorrows, trusting in Him "who doeth all things well." When the ship reached the open roadstead of Port Harford, and she again landed on the sh.o.r.es of her native California, she went to her former home--a vine-clad cottage in San Louis Obispo.

It was here I found her some weeks after I a.s.sumed the role of stoker on the British mail steamer. Mr. Robinson had gone to his former home in Missouri, but Hattie was protected by relatives. We talked of our coming marriage. It was not possible at that time. I had lost so much money by exchange from the paper currency of Peru to the gold of California, that I needed time to replenish my almost depleted purse.

We decided that we would wait one year, meanwhile I would go to Arizona and run an engine on the railroad east of Tuscon.

It made my heart glad to be in a country once more where my own language was spoken and among people whose customs were like unto that of my native land. There was no prejudice toward me on account of my foreign birth, such as I had often encountered in Peru. The hand of fellowship was extended in this broad free land of the United States, where the greatness of men is measured almost by merit alone.

What surprised me at first was the absence of soldiers until I came to understand the peace-loving disposition of the people, and learned that in the hour of the country's need, all men became her defenders.

It was one of those balmy afternoons, so characteristic of southern California, when Hattie and I were seated in a park overlooking the beautiful Los Ossis valley. Our plans were made for the future, and I was to leave that night for Arizona. It was the tender parting of man and woman whose lives had been seared by the hot irons of adversity, and each felt that the other was the one and all upon this planet.

Here Buchan's narrative was broken short. He was writing the last chapter on a pair of ladies' dainty cuffs, when he stopped and listened. He arose to his feet. "Do you know," he said, "I thought a moment ago I heard something--her voice."

XX.

A DAUGHTER OF THE CHEROKEES.

Mary Greenwater was not the ugly, coa.r.s.e-featured woman that many squaws are. She possessed many of the fine features of her white sisters. She had been well educated at the Carlisle Indian school, and had traveled much. While, with other Cherokee Indians, she drew her annuities from the government, yet she was known to be the wealthiest woman of the tribe. She was lavish in the expenditure of money. Her home in the Cherokee hills was elaborately furnished with the richest of carpets and furniture; even a grand piano adorned her parlor. But with all its costly appointments, the house was a wilderness of disorder. Like other of her race, she despised anything akin to neatness. Her dresses were gaudy in color and extravagant in style.

Pearl necklaces, diamond brooches and rings were worn on all occasions. She owned fine carriages and many spirited horses. As a horsewoman, she was an expert and as a pistol shot she was accounted the best in the Cherokee nation. Her servants were the half-breed Indian Negroes to whom her word was as absolute a law as any Caliph ever possessed over a tribe. She was accustomed to command, and if disobeyed she enforced her orders at the point of the revolver she always carried.

The source of Mary Greenwater's wealth was a mystery. Those of her tribe gave themselves no concern about it, but the matter was a subject of much comment among the few white men in the territory.

Mercer, a young man of adventurous spirit, hearing of her fabulous wealth, sought her hand in marriage. After the wedding, he used all his arts to wring from her the secret of her riches. Once when she started on one of her lone journeys to the hills of the Grand River, he attempted to follow and that was the last ever seen or heard of him. That the woman possessed the secret of a vast amount of lost treasure was evident, as she spent many Spanish gold coins of ancient date as months rolled on, and this induced Grim, a farm hand, to marry her. She elevated him from a menial position, to overseer of her ranch. She gave him money, which he recklessly spent at the faro tables at the Garrison. When she refused to further indulge him in his reckless expenditures, he, like Mercer, attempted to follow her on her journey to the Grand River hills one night. He was missed by his companions who went in numbers to search for him, taking an Indian guide. They were led in an opposite direction from the way he went and his fate remained a mystery, until many months later his body was found in the Grand River, with a bullet in the brain.

Two years after the death of Grim, Carson and a negro were hunting in the Grand River country and were encamped one night in the hills.

While seated beside their campfire, they heard a cry of distress.

Upon going to the spot, they found a lone Indian woman pinioned beneath her pony, which had stepped into a wolf hole and broke its leg. The woman was badly injured and they carried her to their campfire and made her comfortable. The next day they constructed a rude litter and carried her twenty miles to a place where she could receive medical attention.

The woman was Mary Greenwater, and this was, perhaps, the first act of kindness she had ever received.

A certain escapade at the close of Carson's college days had caused him to migrate to the West, where, like many others, he became a soldier of fortune, drifting whither the strongest tide wind blew.

When Mary Greenwater recovered she sought him, and in her grat.i.tude made him the overseer of her ranch at a princely salary.

In course of time they were married by the ancient Indian ceremony of the Fastest Horse. When the days of feasting were over, and Mary Greenwater's relatives had returned to their cabins richer by a number of ponies, Mary told Carson a wondrous story of how, many summers ago, when her grandfather was a boy, a Spanish caravan came from Santa Fe and was besieged in the Grand river hills for many days, and of how, finding that they would eventually be starved to death if they remained, the travelers had hidden their possessions among the lime rocks and undertaken to cut their way through the Indian hordes to a place of safety. Her grandfather had found the hiding place of the treasure and had kept it a profound secret from all except herself, to whom he told it only when he began to sing his death song.

Mary Greenwater swore to Carson that the hiding place of the Spanish treasure would never be known except to one other member of her tribe, and then not until after her death. She told him there were valuable papers which she knew none of her people could ever use, and which she later gave to Carson.

The doc.u.ments were discolored and the ink faded and this much Carson was able to decipher: "Jean Maldonado visited a far distant country north of Santa Fe--a wide valley through which flowed a stream, along the banks were bushes that bore fruit like unto those of Spain--in the valley were herds of oxen of the bigness and color of our bulls--their horns are not so great--they have a great bunch upon their fore shoulders and more hair on the forepart than on the hindpart; they have a horse's mane upon their backbone and much hair and very long from the knees downward--they have great tufts of hair hanging from their foreheads and it seemeth they have beards--they push with their horns--they overtake and kill a horse--finally it is a fierce beast of countenance and form of body--we feared these beasts and stayed near the mountains named the Sangre de Christo.... Climbed the mountain to a great flat rock that stood on end like a platter.... Jean Maldonado, commander of an expedition reached this place 1750.... The mine yielded much gold in a rock like white china--Babtiste beat it out with--Mattheo returned from Santa Fe with more donkeys--loaded donkeys with much unbeaten rock--returned to Santa Fe"--

Here the ink was so faded that nothing more could be made of the ma.n.u.script. The accompanying map was more perfect. The tracings showed the mountain ranges. It had been drawn almost with the precision of an engineer. The route from Santa Fe through the mountain pa.s.ses was clearly shown; there were marks of each day's stops. Where the map showed the end of the journey there was the rude drawing of a cliff set on edge and below it was marked "Gold."

Carson pondered over the quaint doc.u.ment for many days. The Indian marriage with Mary Greenwater had become a matter of regret. While the woman loved him, yet her love was like a new bowie knife, to be handled with care. He decided to leave the Grand River country and bide his time until Mary Greenwater should make one of her long visits to the hills. One night he mounted the best horse on the ranch and driving thirty others ahead of him, set out for Colorado. On the way he sold most of the horses to ranchmen and cattlemen and netted a neat sum.

When Mary Greenwater returned and found her spouse had vanished, her fury knew no bounds. Ordinarily the Indian squaw might be deserted by her lord and she would stoically accept her fate. Mary might have done so had she not been spoiled by being educated at Carlisle. Her savage blood grew hot for revenge. She made another trip to the Grand river hills, presumably for a larger amount of money, placed her affairs in the hands of her Indian-Negro servants, and started on the trail of Carson, believing she would have no trouble in overtaking a man driving that many head of horses. Meanwhile the fall rains set in and the shallow rivers of the plains became raging torrents. But to a woman of Mary Greenwater's determined character, these things were obstacles only for the time being. Her heart was bad and her love of revenge strong.