The Missourian Part 5

Suddenly the quartermaster touched the skipper's arm under the shrouded binnacle. "I s'y sir," he whispered excitedly, "they're--_there!_ There, anch.o.r.ed at the insh.o.r.e station, just off the bar! My eye, but hain't they beastly idiots? They'll smash to pieces."

The skipper looked and Murguia tried to look. But they saw nothing.

Except for the booming of the surf, they might have been on a landless sea, alone in the black night. Don Anastasio was shaking at such a rate that his two companions in the dark wheelhouse were conscious of it. He cursed the quartermaster for a pessimist. The skipper, though, was brave enough to believe.

"We're expected, that's gospel," he muttered. But he did not change his course, for he knew that on his other side there was a second fleet, tugging at drift leads off the entrance to the main s.h.i.+p channel. It was near hopeless, but he meant to dart between the two.

"Now for a reception as 'ull touch us to the quick, as Loo-ee Sixteenth said----" The skipper cut himself short. "Aye, aye, sir," he cried, "they've spied us!"

"They haven't!" groaned Murguia. "How could they?"

"'T'aint important now, sir, how they could. There might be a gleam in our wake. But any'ow they 'ave."

They had indeed. Less than a mile to port there suddenly appeared two red lights, two sullen eyeb.a.l.l.s of fire. Then, a rocket cleft the darkness, its slant proclaiming the fugitive's course. Hurriedly the _Luz's_ quartermaster sent up a rocket also, but in the opposite direction. It was useless. A third rocket from the signaling blockader contradicted him.

"We're bein' chased," announced the skipper. "One of 'em 'as slipped her chain and got off."

As _La Luz_ had gained the open, the skipper let his quartermaster take the wheel. "'Old her to the wind, lad," he cautioned. "A beam sea 'ud swamp us." Next he whistled down to the engine room. They were to stoke with turpentine and cotton. At once Murguia began to fidget. "It, it will make smoke," he whined.

"An' steam. We're seen a'ready, ain't we, sir?"

"But it costs more."

"Not if it clears us. Soft coal 'ud seem bloomin' expensive, sir, if we got over'auled."

The race was on. In smooth water it would scarcely have been one. But the boiling fury cut knots from the steamer's speed, while the Federals sent after her only their sailing vessels, which with all canvas spread bent low to the chase. They had, however, used up time to unreef; and with the terrific rolling they would not dare cast loose a gun.

When morning dawned thickly behind the leaden sky, the three men in the wheelhouse made out a top-gallant sail against the horizon. "By noon,"

said the skipper, "the beggars 'ull 'ave us."

He was a small pert man, was the skipper, with a sharp face, an edge to his voice, and two little points of eyes that glowed. Salt water had not drenched his dry c.o.c.kney speech, and he was a gamin of the sea and as keen to its gammon ways as in boyhood he had been to those of pubs around the old Bow Bells.

Don Anastasio heard the verdict with a shudder. Given the nature of the man, his mortal fear was the dreadfullest torture that could be devised.

The game little c.o.c.kney peered into his distorted face, and wondered.

Never was there a more pitiful coward, and yet the craven had pa.s.sed through the same agony full twenty times during the last few years.

Murguia knew nothing of the n.o.ble motives which make a man stronger than terror, but he did know a miser's pa.s.sion. He begrudged even the costlier fuel that was their hope of safety.

"Your non-payin' guest, sir," said the skipper, pointing downward.

"'Spose he wants to buy them 'ere smokestacks?"

The trooper had appeared on deck. He was clinging to a cleat in the rail with a landsman's awkwardness and with the cunning object of proving to the s.h.i.+p that he wasn't to be surprised off his feet another time. He swayed grandly, generously, for'ard and aft, like a metronome set at a large, sweeping rhythm. Every billow shot a flood from stern to bow, and swished past his boots, but he was heedless of that. His head was thrown back, a head of stubborn black curling tufts, and he seemed absorbed in the _Luz's_ two funnels. They gave out little smoke now, for with daylight the skipper had changed to anthracite again, in the forlorn hope of hiding their trail. But it had lessened their steam pressure, and in a short time, the skipper feared, the pursuer would make them out, hull and all.

A moment later the pa.s.senger climbed into the wheelhouse. "Look here--Mur--Murgie," he said, "for a seven-hundred-dollar rate that was a toler'ble unsteady cabin I had last night; restless, sort of. It's mighty curious, but something's been acting up inside of me, and I can't seem to make out _what_ it is!" As he spoke, he glanced inquiringly from owner to skipper. He might have been another Panurge envying the planter of cabbages who had one foot on solid earth and the other not far away. He looked pale.

It afforded Don Anastasio little satisfaction to find a young man not more than twenty-two or three. Without his great coat the Southerner proved lithe rather than stocky. There was even an elusive angular effect to him. Yet the night before he had looked as wide and imposing as the general of an army. His cheeks were smooth, but they were tight and hard and brown from the weathering of sun and blizzard. His features had that decisive cleanliness of line which makes for strong beauty in a man. Evidently nature had molded them boyishly soft and refined at first, but in the hardening of life, of a life such as his, they had become rugged. Most of all, the face was unmistakably American. The large mouth had that dry, whimsical set, and that sensitiveness to twitching at the corners, which foretells a smile. The brown eyes sparkled quietly, and contour and expression generally were those which one may find on a Missourian, or a Texan, or on a man from Montana, or even on a New Yorker born; but never, anywhere, except on an American.

Whatever is said to the contrary, the new Western race in its fusing of many old ones has certainly produced not one but several peculiarly American types, and Driscoll's was American. It was most so because it had humor, virility, and the optimism that drives back despair and holds forth hope for all races of men.

Murguia was right, his pa.s.senger seemed a boy. But war and four years of hardest riding had meant more of age than lagging peace could ever hold.

Sometimes there flitted across the lad's face a vague melancholy, but being all things rather than self-inspecting, he could never quite locate the trouble, and would shake himself out of it with a sort of comical wonder. Bitterness had even touched him the night before, as it did many another Southerner on the eve of the Surrender. Yet the boy part in him made such moods rare, and only pa.s.sing at their worst. On the other hand the same boy-part gave a vigor and a l.u.s.tre to his occupation, though that occupation was--fighting. He knew no other, and in that the young animal worked off excess of animal life with a refres.h.i.+ng gusto. Even his comrades, of desperado stripe that they were, had dubbed him the Storm Centre. And so he was, in every tempest of arms. The very joy of living--in killing, alas!--always flung him true to the centre. But once there, he was like a calm and busy workman, and had as little self consciousness of the thing--of the gallantry and the heroism--as the prosiest blacksmith. He had grown into a man of dangerous fibre, but he was less aware of it than of his muscles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "JOHN DINWIDDIE DRISCOLL--THE MISSOURIAN"

"His cheeks were smooth, but they were tight and hard and brown from the weathering of sun and blizzard"]

Various items on the _Luz_ struck the trooper as amusing. There was the incongruity of his seven-hundred-dollar cabin, the secession of his stomach from the tranquillity of the federal body organic, and finally, this running away from somebody. But he quickly perceived that the last was serious enough. The skipper lowered his gla.s.ses, and shook his perky head a number of times. "_Who_ said life was all beer and skittles?" he demanded defiantly, and glared at Driscoll as though _he_ had. But getting no answer, he seemed mollified, as though this proved that the man who _had_ said it was an imbecile.

Murguia, by the way, had come to hate no truth more soulfully than the palpable shortcoming of life in the matter of beer and skittles. And now it was borne in upon him again, for the skipper announced, definitely and with an oath, that they'd have to begin throwing the cargo overboard.

Poor Don Anastas...o...b..haved like a man insane. He wrung his hands. He protested stoutly, then incoherently. He whined. He glared vengefully at the dread sail on the horizon, and then he shrank from it, as from a flaming sword. And as it grew larger, his eyeb.a.l.l.s rounded and dried into smaller discs. But at once he would remember his darling cotton that must go to the waves, and the beady eyes swam again in moisture, like greenish peas in a sickly broth. Avarice and terror in discord played on the creature as the gale through the whimpering cordage.

"No 'elp for it, sir," said the skipper, bridling like a bantam. "Didn't I try to save _my_ cargo, off Savannah, and didn't I lose my sloop to boot? Didn't I now, sir?--Poor old girl, mebby she's our chaser out 'ere this very minute."

"Try--try more turpentine," said Murguia weakly.

"Yes, or salt bacon, sir, or cognac, or the woodwork, or any blarsted thing I see fit, sir!" The little skipper hit out each item with a step downward to the deck, and five minutes later Murguia groaned, for bale after bale came tumbling out of the hold. Then over they began to go, the first, the second, the third, and another, and another, and after each went a moan from Anastasio. He leaned through the window to see one tossing in the waves, then suffered a next pang to see the next follow after. It was an excruciating c.u.mulus of grief. The trooper regarded him quizzically. Destruction of merely worldly goods had become routine for him. He returned to his contemplation of the two funnels.

The skipper came back, dripping with pray. "The wind's changin'," he said, "and that'll beat down the sea some."

"Reckon they'll get us?" Driscoll asked.

Murguia took the query as an aggravation of woe, and he turned wrathfully on the trooper. "Don't you see we're busy?"

"I see you're very d.a.m.n sullen, _gra_-cious me!--Reckon they will, captain?"

"We'll be eatin' a United States of America supper, chained, sir."

"Now look here," said Driscoll plaintively, "_I_ don't want to get caught."

"But I hope as you'll bide with us, sir?"

"Still, I was just thinking--now that smoke----"

"And I'm a thinkin' you don't see much smoke. We're keepin' out o' sight as long as G.o.d'll let us."

"But, Captain, why not smoke up--big? Just wait now--this ain't any of my regiment, I know that--but listen a minute anyway. Well, once or twice when we were in a fix, in camp, say, and we knew more visitors were coming than was convenient, w'y, we'd just light the campfires so they would smoke, and then--meantime--we'd light out too. Old Indian trick, you know."

The skipper was first impatient. But as that did no good, he c.o.c.ked himself for a laugh. Then his mouth puckered to a brisk attention, and at the last word he jumped to his feet. "Damme!" he said, and went thumping down the steps again. He splashed through the water on deck, minding the stiff wind not at all, and dived into the engine-room.

"Soft coal!" gasped Murguia with relief.

It was pouring from the stacks in dense black clouds.

The captain returned. "We'll try to save the rest o' that 'ere cotton, sir," he said.

He looked out at the trembling smoke that betrayed their course so rashly, and from there back to the pursuer on the horizon. He waited a little longer, carefully calculating; then sent an order down the tube to the engineer. The dampers were shut off, and the fuel was changed to anthracite. Soon the smoke went down, and a hazy invisible stream puffed from the funnels instead. The _Luz_ swung at right angles to her former course. The paddles threshed hopefully, and on she sped, leaving no track. The skipper gazed back at the lowering line, which ended abruptly on their port and trailed off toward the horizon with a telegraphy of deceit for the distant sail.

"You soldiers, colonel," he announced, "don't 'ave no monopoly on tricks and gammon, _I'm_ a thinkin'. But I s'y, w'at if you and me go down to my cabin and have a _noggin_?"

Thus _La Luz_ ran her last blockade, and came safely into port. She reached Tampico some two days before the _Imperatrice Eugenie_.