Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 27/Number 4/Shadows Tremendous/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
TAKING THE BAIT.
THE words were followed by no actual pause. It was rather an impalpable sense of tension which affects one sometimes much as does an electric-shock vibration, and even that was made almost negligible by Darrell's presence of mind.
“Magdalena Bay!' he repeated, in very natural surprise. “I can't conceive what would take a man of that sort there. I've always understood it was one of the most desolate, God-forsaken spots on the Pacific coast. There isn't even a settlement, is there?”
Carmen selected another cigarette, and lit it on the glowing end of the first, his glance sweeping over the green Presidio, and coming to rest for a second on the ramparts of Fort Winfield Scott.
“Just a few greasers, I believe,” he returned indifferently, swaying a little as the ship caught the swell of the open ocean. “I've given up trying to fathom the motives of other people. I travel a good bit, and in my youthful days I used to amuse myself by figuring out the whys and wherefores of various men I encountered. But being right about once out of ten times became altogether too much of a bore. Our amiable but grotesque friend may have any one of a dozen perfectly good reasons for stopping off at Magdalena Bay, but I, for one, don't propose to waste gray matter on the subject.”
Darrell shrugged his shoulders in casual agreement, and the subject was dropped for the time. “Nevertheless, his interest in Billy Boote had been thoroughly aroused, and he made up his mind to lose no time in discreetly sounding that individual, to discover if possible the reason for his presence on board the Golden Horn.
This did not prove to be as simple as one might have supposed. In spite of the fact that he was a passenger, the man evidently preferred to mess with the crew. He did not appear in the cabin at dinner time, and afterward, when the three men took a turn or two about the deck, he was not to be seen.
It was not until late in the afternoon that Darrell, taking advantage of Carmen's absence in the cabin for some cigarettes, was able to slip away for a little tour of investigation. It was some time before he had any success. The fore deck was quite deserted, save for the lookout and a couple of black-browed sailors languidly scrubbing up. Making his way leisurely along, as if for no other purpose than to stretch his legs, the secret-service agent paused for an instant by the stokehole, through which came stentorian language, which showed that the engineer was having his own troubles with the stokers.
A little farther on he stopped abruptly in the shadow of the mast. From the direction of the forecastle hatch rose a voice, raucous, rasping, yet with a strange undercurrent of melody in it which stirred the pulses unaccountably:
“Oh, we buried him deep in the deep, deep sea,
Where the billows roil and the winds blow free.
We cursed and we swore to hide our grief,
And a sail was the shroud of the pirate chief.”
Rumbled forth in deep-chested bass, there was something eerie in the wild deviltry of the chantey; something which gave Darrell the curious sensation of being transported a hundred years or more into the past, when ruthless pirates scourged the seas and rendered ocean travel perilous. He ventured to glance cautiously past the mast, and the illusion, instead of vanishing, was instantly made more real.
Sitting on the edge of the hatchway, his feet resting on the top step of the companionway, was Billy Boote. He had discarded the soiled linen boating hat he had worn that morning, and in its place had tied about his head a greasy red bandanna handkerchief, below which straggled a sandy lock or two of oily, tangled hair. He was smoking a very black pipe, with which he now and then gesticulated at the black-browed sailor whose head alone appeared above the hatch.
In a flash the puzzle of the slashed-off arm, the empty, wrinkled eye socket, the livid scar seemed to puzzle no longer. A vivid picture leaped into Darrell's mind of desperate hand-to-hand struggles where cutlasses flashed and bit, where red blood flowed, and wild oaths rang out amid swirling, choking clouds of smoke from ancient muzzle-loading cannon. It seemed incredible in these modern times.
“Them was the days, matie,” Boote was saying, in a raucous growl, “when a man went to sea in a good old brig or schooner, an' was gone a year or more. Lots kin be done in a year, my boy, when you ain't troubled with no telegraph, or cussed contraptions like that. Ever hear on the Pearl Islands, off Panama? Owned by a lot o' greasers an' half-breeds, as usta send their finds back to the Isthmus in bulk. Some of 'em never got there.” He laughed with a ghoulish sort of relish which rasped Darrell's nerves.
“Same with the gold from Peru, an' bar silver shipped out o° Chile,” he went on. “Now an' ag'in a ship left port as was never heard on no more. Some thinks she went down in a storm. Mebbe. She went down, anyhow, but not before her treasure room was stripped clean as a whistle. It ain't the times as is wrong, matie; it's the swabs as goes to sea. Look at the swipes aboard this ship.” He lowered his voice, and the single eye glowed with an evil light. “Think o' what they could do if only they had a mind, an' you”
He broke off abruptly, and glared fiercely at the secret-service agent, who had strolled carelessly into view, an unlighted cigarette in one hand. The sailor squirmed around, and stared upward, a sullen, half-frightened look in his shifty eyes.
Darrell's face was calm and undisturbed; his manner coolly nonchalant. “Either of you men got a match?” he asked pleasantly.
Boote's single eye gleamed balefully for a moment. Then, with a guttural growl, he thrust the black pipe roughly toward Darrell. The latter took it, lit his cigarette from the glowing ashes, and returned it with a word of thanks, which met with no response save another of those wordless snarls.
Undisturbed by this evidence of hostility, the secret-service agent made some casual remark about the ship, and for about five minutes exercised every wile and every bit of skill he possessed, which was not a little, to engage the villainous-looking character in casual conversation.
He failed utterly to extract more than a sullen monosyllable or two, delivered in a rasping voice, and at length was forced to give up the effort and stroll aft again, not a little chagrined at his lack of success.
“Either Carmen's lying when he says he talked with the old ruffian,” he observed, “or else the genial Billy Boote has taker a dislike to me personally. I wonder which?”
He continued to wonder every now and then as the Golden Horn steamed steadily southward, plowing her way through the long, heavy ocean swells. Sometimes the vague, hazy coast line could be seen dimly on the port side, more like a low-lying cloud bank than solid land. More often, however, the wide expanse of restless water was as unbroken as the glittering arch of deep, fathomless blue above their heads.
It was all so calm and peaceful that one felt instinctively that a mental relaxation should by every right accompany the physical restfulness. In spite of their appearance, the crew worked well enough. The food was plain, but well cooked and perfectly served by the silent, swift-footed Sudo. The trade wind, droning in measured cadence, tempered the heat of the glaring sun. The barometer showed no sign of falling. Carmen proved an interesting and amusing companion, possessed of an apparently inexhaustible fund of odd experiences which he related in his drawling, lazy manner with great effect.
In spite of all this, Darrell's mind was not really at ease for a single moment. First and foremost, there was constantly before him the thought of their journey's end and what they would find there. It lay upon his shoulders like an actual physical weight, which increased with every mile of water churned up by the ship's propeller blades. Had it been possible to plan ahead, the feeling of tension would have been infinitely less, but he was deprived of even this consolation. Their actions on arriving at Magdalena Bay would have to be governed solely and entirely by the conditions they found there.
The future was not the only thing which troubled him. He was impressed with a growing conviction that some one aboard ship was interested in Bellamy and himself to an extraordinary degree. Whether it was that intuition which is something like a sixth sense, or the possession of an unusually acute hearing, by the end of the second day out he became certain that they were being constantly spied upon and watched.
When they turned in that night, Darrell proceeded at once to glance through his bag. He had left nothing in it which any one aboard ship might not have examined with perfect impunity, but he had a very decided curiosity to know whether or not it had been tampered with.
Almost at once he saw that a corner of the leather flap in the cleverly hidden secret compartment was crumpled a little, as if it had been hastily tucked back by a strange hand. The discovery brought a frown to his forehead, but he closed the bag without comment, and began to strip off his clothes.
Directly after breakfast next morning, Bellamy, appearing on deck, discovered his friend hunched over an old magazine, on which rested a sheet of stiff paper that looked as if it might have been torn from a dog-eared log book.
“What the mischief are you up to, Dal?” inquired the Californian, after a moment's puzzled scrutiny of the erratic lines and curves his friend was scrawling.
“Oh, just passing the time away,” returned the secret-service agent, without glancing up. “A fellow's got to be amused somehow.”
He continued his frivolous occupation for ten or fifteen minutes longer, and then, carelessly folding the paper, tucked it away in his pocket.
The matter passed completely from Bellamy's mind, and he was consequently amazed, as they sat together in the shadow of the deck house, two hours later, to have Darrell suddenly draw out the paper in a stealthy sort of way, glance suspiciously to right and left, and then slowly unfold it on his knee, bracing to steady himself against the heavy roll of the steamer.
“Fifty paces south, southeast from the broken pillar of rock, it says,” he said, in a low tone, pointing with one finger at a small cross in ink. “I'd give a lot, Jack, to know whether we're going to locate that or not. It bothers me a heap. What if it's fallen down and become buried with sand?”
For a second Bellamy stared at his friend in utter bewilderment. Then—for he was not particularly slow-witted—he realized that Darrell's extraordinary behavior was not the result of a whim, but of some definite purpose; and, as well as he was able, he took the cue.
“I don't see how a rock like that could fall,” he answered slowly. “They'd never have taken it for a landmark if there was any chance of that.”
Darrell's face took on a worried expression. “That's true enough, in a way,” he returned; “but you must remember it all happened a thundering long time ago, and there's no telling what has”
Suddenly he broke off, with a well-simulated start, and in a flash the paper was crumpled into a wad and concealed under his swiftly folded hands. Almost at the same instant, without the slightest preliminary warning, the soft-footed Sudo appeared around the corner, and paused before them, his round, childlike face wreathed in smiles, his bright eyes shifting from one to the other of the two men.