"What shall you do?"
"Get out, if I can. I"m ordered to Curacao. Wisner left word for me."
"Come down the mountain with me."
"Impossible. There are matters here to be attended to."
"Then when will you come down?"
"Before you sail. I must be sure that you get off."
"You"ll come to the yacht, then?"
"No."
"I think you should. There are reasons why--why--Miss Brewster--"
"It isn"t a question that I can argue," the other cut him off. "I can"t do it." There was so much pain in his voice that Carroll forbore to press him. "But I"ll ask you to take a note."
Carroll nodded, and his host, disappearing within the quinta, returned almost at once with an envelope on which the address was written in pencil. The Southerner took it and rose from the porch, where he had flung himself to rest.
"Perkins," he said, with some effort, "I"ve thought and said some hard things about you."
"Naturally enough," murmured the other.
"Do you want me to apologize?"
The scientist stared. "Do you want me to thank you for to-night"s work?"
he countered.
"No."
"Well--"
"All right."
The two men, different in every quality except that of essential manhood, smiled at each other with a profound mutual understanding.
There was a silent handshake, and Carroll set off down the mountain toward the sunrise glow.
XIII
LEFT BEHIND
Dawn crested, poised, and broke in a surf of splendor upon the great mountain-line that overhangs Puerto del Norte. Where, at the corporation dock, there had lurked the shadow of a yacht, gray-black against blue-black, there now swung a fairy ship of purest silver, cradled upon a swaying mirror. Tiny insects, touched to life by the radiance, scuttled busily about her decks and swarmed out upon the dock. The seagoing yacht Polly had awakened early.
Down the mule path that forms the shortest cut from the railway station straggled a group of minute creatures. To one watching from the mountain-side with powerful field-gla.s.ses--such as, for example, a convinced and ardent hater of the Caribbean Sea, curled up with his back against a cold and Voiceless rock--it might have appeared that the group was carrying an unusual quant.i.ty of hand luggage. Yet they were not porters; so much, even at a great distance, their apparel proclaimed. The pirates of porterdom do not get up to meet five-o"clock-in-the-morning specials in Caracuna.
The little group gathered close at the pier, then separated, two going aboard, and the others disappearing into sundry streets and reappearing presently at the water-front with other figures. The human form cannot be distinctly seen, at a distance of three miles, to rub its eyes; neither can it be heard to curse; but there was that in the newer figures which suggested a sudden and reluctant surrender of sleeping privileges. Had our supposit.i.tious watcher possessed an intimate and contemptuous knowledge of Caracuna officialdom, he would have surmised that lavish sums of money had been employed to stir the port and customs officials to such untimely activity.
But not money or any other agency is potent to stir Caracunan officialdom to undue speed. Hence the observer from the heights, supposing that he had a personal interest in the proceedings, might have a.s.sured himself of ample time to reach the coast before the formalities could be completed and the ship put forth to sea. Had he presently humped himself to his feet with a sluggish effort, abandoned his field-gla.s.ses in favor of a pair of large greenish-brown goggles, and set out on a trail straight down the mountains, staggering a bit at the start, a second supposit.i.tious observer of the first supposit.i.tious observer--if such c.u.mulative hypothesis be permissible--might have divined that the first supposit.i.tious observer was the Unspeakable Perk, going about other people"s business when he ought to have been in bed.
And so, not to keep any reader in unendurable suspense, it was.
While the Unspeakable Perk was making his way down the dim and narrow trail, another equally weary figure shambled out from the main road upon the flats and made for the landing. The apparel of Mr. Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was in a condition that he would have deemed quite unfit for one of his station, had he been in a frame of mind to consider such matters at all. He was not. Affairs vastly more weighty and human occupied his mind. What he most wished was to find Miss Polly Brewster and unburden himself of them.
At the entrance to the pier, he was detained by the American Consul.
Cluff came running down the long structure in great strides.
"Moses, Carroll! I"m glad to see you! Where"ve you been?"
A week earlier, the scion of all the Virginias would have resented this familiarity from a professional athlete. But neither Mr. Carroll"s mind nor his heart was a sealed inclosure. He had learned much in the last few days.
"Up on the mountain," he said. "For Heaven"s sake, give me a drink, Cluff!"
The other produced a flask.
"You do look shot to pieces," he commented. "Find Perk--Pruyn?"
"Yes. I"ll tell you later. Where"s Miss Brewster?"
"In her stateroom. Asleep, I guess. Said she wanted rest, and n.o.body was to disturb her till we sail."
"When do we start?"
"Eight o"clock, they say. That means ten. Will Dr. Pruyn get here?"
"He isn"t going with us."
"Oh, no. I forgot his Dutch permit. Well, he"d better use it quick, or he"ll go in a box when he does go. I wouldn"t insure his life for a two-cent stamp in this country."
"You wouldn"t if you"d seen what I saw last night," said the Southerner, very low.
Wisner, the busy, efficient little consul, who had been arranging with the officials for Carroll"s embarkation, now returned, bringing with him a viking of a man whom he introduced as Dr. Stark, of the United States Public Health Service.
"Either of you know anything about Dr. Pruyn?" he inquired anxiously.
"He"s on his way down the mountain now," said Carroll.
"Good! He"s ordered away, I"m glad to say. Just got the message."
"Then perhaps he will go out with us," said Cluff, with obvious relief.
"I sure did hate to think of leaving that boy here, with the game laws for goggle-eyed Americans entirely suspended."
"No. He"s ordered to Curacao to stay and watch. We"ve got to get him out to the Dutch ship somehow."