The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories Part 4

"Beyond the mark! Why, Dios, Senor Capitan!" cried the General, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "Why, she could not tell you a tenth of the truth." And he launched into a long narrative of the oppressions in Cuba. The words came like a torrent, mostly Spanish, occasionally English; and Franklin, sitting there fascinated, his cigar forgotten, could think of nothing save that the daughter's fluency was a gift of heredity.

When Moreto had ended and had sunk back half exhausted on the cus.h.i.+ons the Captain, usually calm and self-contained, betrayed unwonted enthusiasm.

"I'm with you through and through," he exclaimed as he rose from his chair and sought the Cuban's hand. "You haven't had a square deal, and I'd like to see you get it."

Moreto's black eyes seemed to pierce him.

"Would you help us?" he asked. His tone was so tense and low that Franklin barely caught the words.

"Help you! How can I?"

Moreto paused again. He was not quite sure of his man. Finally he uncovered his aim:

"Take rifles to Cuba."

Captain Franklin stepped back. He did not exactly like the proposal. He had always kept out of such musses, and he knew it was violating Federal law to be a filibuster.

"I'm only part owner of the Cristobal," he stammered. "I would not like to involve the others."

"They need never know. I have a perfectly safe plan."

The Captain wavered. He would like to help Moreto and his daughter if it were not for the risk.

"What is your plan?"

"If we had a thousand rifles to arm Pino Guerra," said Moreto, "we could take San Luis. If we took San Luis we could control Pinar del Rio province. My mission to your country is to get those rifles to a point in that province. I have them boxed, ready for s.h.i.+pment as new machinery for a sugar plantation. They are at Wilmington. I thought I had placed them on a steamer in the Delaware last week, but your confounded Secret Service agents are too vigilant, and they learned from members of the crew that something unusual was up. If you will take those boxes on the Cristobal I can get them here on Friday and will arrange for an insurgent schooner to meet you at any point you name. Will you do it?"

"It's risky business," slowly said the Captain, lighting a fresh Vuelta cigar.

"It means liberty to us. Dios, Senor Captain, where would your country be if the French had not helped Was.h.i.+ngton and his ragged rebels?"

Franklin puffed away slowly. The Cuban watched him. At last the Captain made a decision.

"You may send those rifles along," he said.

The two men grasped hands again. They were in that position when Catherine put her head in the library door. "You're as quiet as two conspirators," she laughingly said. "Perhaps we are conspiring, Senorita," called General Moreto as the girl shut herself from view again.

"That is a charming daughter of yours, Captain," said the Cuban, in his best English.

"Ah! but your girl has the head and the wit. You find her a great help, don't you?"

Moreto's smile was more frank than his reply. "Women take a bigger share in revolutions than is generally believed." he said.

In another half hour the details of their filibuster were arranged. A point in the Caribbean, near the Isle of Pines, was selected for a rendezvous. There the Cuban schooner would take aboard the contraband cargo and Franklin go on his way after bananas.

"Do you wish your family to know?" asked Moreto as they were about to leave the library. "My daughter knows all my business."

"Catherine is all right," replied Captain Franklin, "and so is Will, but his mother would worry too much."

And so for the next three days there was a great secret in the Franklin home, shared by the young people with the two gray-haired men. They made trips to the steamer, at the foot of Centre-Market s.p.a.ce, a slender, white-painted craft, looking more like a private yacht or a revenue cutter than a tropical trader; they heard the arrangements made for prompt transfer of the boxes across the city; they stopped with General Moreto at the telegraph offices on Calvert street when he sent off cipher wires to the junta and its agents, and sometimes cabled to Cuba.

And on the Friday when the boxes were due they pestered the clerks at Bolton freight yards with 'phone inquiries. "It's great fun," confided Catherine to Manuela. "I feel just like a heroine doing a great deed.

And we have to be so mysterious, too." Manuela smiled indulgently. She had got past the stage of thinking conspiracies fun.

No untoward incident occurred while the boxes of rifles labeled "Sugar machinery" were being loaded into the Cristobal's hold. There was no one on the dock or steamer who could be suspected of being a Government agent. General Moreto kept away, and the presence of Miss Catherine with the Cuban girl could never have aroused the doubts of the crew. The boxes were taken on without accident, and by Friday dusk the Cristobal had a thousand weapons aboard for the rebels of Pinar del Rio.

There were tears in the eyes of both girls as Captain Franklin waved them goodbye from his bridge when he was being pulled out into the Patapsco the next morning. A shade of extra seriousness had tinged his parting from them as they went ash.o.r.e from the steamer, and Catherine, no longer thinking conspiracies "great fun," began to have doubts whether she might not have her father landed in jail somewhere.

"I do hope no harm will come to dad," she said. "I never felt so queer when he went away before."

"Let us pray that all goes well," replied Manuela.

And so for eleven whole long days, in their pet.i.tions to G.o.d, in church and night and morning in their room, they invoked His blessing upon the Cristobal's filibustering mission. It was an anxious time. The period of excitement over, the interval of suspense made their spirits droop. None of the usual amus.e.m.e.nts diverted them. Even Will's now ardent attentions, which had provoked some teasing in the bosom of his family, were slighted in the strain of the long wait until, boylike, and chafing under the apparent neglect, he had impetuously sought explanations from Manuela. What she told him is not a part of the conspiracy, but from that hour there were two secrets kept in the Franklin dwelling. And when he hurried home each afternoon with The News, that they might carefully examine it for anything bearing on his father's expedition, there was a double motive in the eagerness with which Manuela met him at the door.

It was Wednesday week before the first news came. General Moreto, who had left them on the day after Captain Franklin had pa.s.sed Cape Henry outward bound, telegraphed as follows:

Glorious news; San Luis taken. We must have done it.

The girls were excitedly reading the account in The News of the victory by Pino Guerra when this cable dispatch came to them from Catherine's father:

Bocas del Toro.

Costa Rica, Aug. 22.

Machinery transferred; no trouble.

FRANKLIN.

Both girls cried from happiness at the relief.

"Oh! Catherine," said Manuela as she sobbed on the latter's neck, "I'm so glad I knew you at Notre Dame!"

"And I'm glad we struck a blow for Cuba libre," rejoined Catherine.

"It may mean annexation," said Will, as he deftly slipped his arm around Manuela's waist.

The Cuban girl grew rosy red.

Catherine was quick to understand: Cuba might be freed, but one individual who had labored for it was going to be annexed.

"I'm so happy!" she cried. And she kissed both warmly and left them to tell her mother of the latest beneficent example of American a.s.similation.

_A Two-Party Line_

I.

(Tuesday, October 23, 1906.)