University of Virginia Library

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.

At noon the Lolotte, a broad-beamed, flat-floored brig of light draught
and good sailing qualities, hove up her anchor and began beating out of the
Bay of San Francisco, with Coronado and Clara on her quarter-deck.

“You have no other passengers, I understood you to say, captain,” observed
Coronado, who was anxious on that point, preferring there should be none.

The master, a Dane by birth named Jansen, who had grown up in the American
mercantile service, was a middle-sized, broad-shouldered man, with a red
complexion, red whiskers, and a look which was at once grave and fiery. He
paused in his heavy lurching to and fro, looked at the Mexican with an air
which was civil but very stiff, and answered in that discouraging tone with which
skippers are apt to smother conversation when they have business on hand,
“Yes, sir, one other.”

Coronado presently slipped down the companionway, found the colored
steward, chinked five dollars into his horny palm, and said, “My good fellow,
you must look out for me; I shall want a good deal of help during the passage.”

“Yes, sah, very good, sah,” was the answer, uttered in a greasy chuckle,
as though it were the speech of a slab of bacon fat. “Make you up any little
thing, sah. Have a sup now, sah? Little gruel? Little brof?”

“No, thank you,” returned Coronado, turning half sick at the mention of
those delicacies. “Nothing at present. By the way, one of the staterooms is
occupied I see. Who is the other passenger?”

“Dunno, sah; keeps hisself shut up, an' says nothin' to nobody. 'Pears like
he is sailin' under secret orders. Cur'ous' lookin' old gent; got only one eye.”

One eye! Coronado thought of the face which had frightened him out of
San Francisco, and wondered whether he were shut up in the Lolotte with it.

“One eye?” he asked. “Short, stout, dark old gentleman? Indeed! I
think I know him.”

Stepping to the door of a stateroom which he had already noticed as being
kept closed, he tapped lightly. There was a muttering inside, a shuffling as of
some one getting out of a berth, and then a low inquiry in Spanish, “Who is
there?”

“Me, sah,” returned Coronado, imitating, and imitating perfectly, the accent
of the steward, who meantime had gone forward, talking and sniggering to himself,
after an idiotic way that he had.

The door opened a trifle, and Coronado instantly slipped the toe of his little
boot into the crack, at the same time saying in his natural tone, “My dear
uncle!”

Seeing that he was discovered, Garcia gave his nephew entrance, closed the
door after him, locked it, and sat down trembling on the edge of the lower berth,
groaning and almost whimpering, “Ah, my son! Ah, my dear Carlos! Oh,
what a life I have to lead! Madre de Dios, what a life! I thought you were
one of my creditors. I did indeed, my dear Carlos, my son.”

“I thought you went back to Santa Fé,” was Coronado's reply.

“No, I did not go; I started, but I came back,” mumbled Garcia. Then,
plucking up a little spirit, he turned his one eye for a moment on his nephew's
face, and added, “Why should I go to Santa Fé? I had no business there.
My business is here.”

“But after your attempt at the hacienda?”

“My attempt! I made no attempt. All that was a mistake. Because I
was sick, I was frightened and did not know what to do. I ran away because
you told me to run. I had given her nothing. Yes, I did put something in her
chocolate, but it was my medicine. I meant to put in sugar, but I made a mistake
and went to the wrong pocket, the pocket of my medicine. That was it,
Carlos. I give you my word, word of a hidalgo, word of a Christian.”

It was the same explanation which Coronado had invented to forestall suspicions
at the hacienda. It was surely a wonderful coincidence of lying, and
shows how great minds work alike. Vexed and angry as the nephew was, he
could scarcely help smiling.

“My dear uncle!” he exclaimed, grasping Garcia's pudgy hand melodramatically.
“The very thing that occurred to me! I told them so.”

“Did you?” replied the old man, not much believing it. “Then all is
well.”

He wanted to ask how it was that Clara had survived her dose; but of
course curiosity on that subject must not find vent; it would be equivalent to a
confession.

“Where is she going?” were his next words.

“To Fort Yuma.”

“To Fort Yuma! What for?”

“I may as well tell it,” burst out Coronado angrily. “She is going there to
nurse that officer. He escaped, but he has been sick, and she will go.”

“She must not go,” whispered Garcia. “Oh, the—.” And here he
called Clara a string of names which cannot be repeated. “She shall not go
there,” he continued. “She will marry him. Then the property is gone, and
we are ruined. Oh, the—.” And then came another assortment of violent
and vile epithets, such as are not found in dictionaries.

Coronado was anxious to divert and dissipate a rage which might make
trouble; and as soon as he could get in a word, he asked, “But what have you
been doing, my uncle?”

By dint of questioning and guessing he made out the story of the old man's
adventures since leaving the hacienda. Garcia, in extreme terror of hanging,
had gone straight to San Francisco and taken passage for San Diego, with the
intention of not stopping until he should be at least as far away as Santa Fé.
But after a few hours at sea, he had recovered his wits and his courage, and
asked himself, why should he fly? If Clara died, the property would be his,
and if she survived, he ought to be near her; while as for Carlos, he would

surely never expose and hang a man who could cut him off with a shilling. So
he landed at Monterey, took the first coaster back to San Francisco, lurked
about the city until he learned that the girl was still living, and was just about
to put a bold front on the matter by going to see her at the hacienda, when he
learned accidentally that she was on the point of voyaging southward. Puzzled
and alarmed by this, he resolved to accompany her in her wanderings, and succeeded
in getting himself quietly on board the Lolotte.

“Well, let us go on deck,” said Coronado, when the old man had regained
his tranquillity. “But let us be gentle, my uncle. We know how to govern
ourselves, I hope. You will of course behave like a mother to our little cousin.
Congratulate her on her recovery; apologize for your awkward mistake. It
was caused by the coming on of the fit, you remember. A man who is about to
have an attack of epilepsy can't of course tell one pocket from another. But
such a man is all the more bound to be unctuous.”

Clara received the old man cordially, although she would have preferred not
to see him there, fearing lest he should oppose her nursing project. But as
nothing was said on this matter, and as Garcia put his least cloven foot foremost,
the trio not only got on amicably together, but seemed to enjoy one another's
society. This was no common feat by the way; each of the three had a
great load of anxiety; it was wonderful that they should not show it. Coronado,
for instance, while talking like a bird song, was planning how he could get rid
of Garcia, and carry Clara back to San Francisco. The idea of pushing the old
man overboard was inadmissible; but could he not scare him ashore at the
next port by stories of a leak? As for Clara, he could not imagine how to
manage her, she was so potent with her wealth and with her beauty. He was
still thinking of these things, and prattling mellifluously of quite other things,
when the Lolotte luffed up under the lee of the little island of Alcatraz.

“What does this mean?” he asked, looking suspiciously at the fortifications,
with the American flag waving over them.

“Stop here to take in commissary stores for Fort Yuma,” explained the
thin, sallow, grave, meek-looking, and yet resolute Yankee mate.

The chain cable rattled through the hawse hole, and in no loug while the loading
commenced, lasting until nightfall. During this time Coronado chanced to
learn that an officer was expected on board who would sail as far as San Diego;
and, as all uniforms were bugbears to him, he watched for the new passenger
with a certain amount of anxiety; taking care, by the way, to say nothing of him
to Clara. About eight in the evening, as the girl was playing some trivial game
of cards with Garcia in the cabin, a splashing of oars alongside called Coronado
on deck. It was already dark; a sailor was standing by the manropes with a
lantern; the captain was saying in a grumbling tone, “Very late, sir.”

“Had to wait for orders, captain,” returned a healthy, ringing young voice
which struck Coronado like a shot.

“Orders!” muttered the skipper. “Why couldn't they have had them
ready? Here we are going to have a southeaster.”

There was anxiety as well as impatience in his voice; but Coronado just
now could not think of tempests; his whole soul was in his eyes. The next instant
he beheld in the ruddy light of the lantern the face of the man who was
his evil genius, the man whose death he had so long plotted for and for a time
believed in, the man who, as he feared, would yet punish him for his misdeeds.
He was so thoroughly beaten and cowed by the sight that he made a step or two
toward the companionway, with the purpose of hiding in the cabin. Then desperation
gave him courage, and he walked straight up to Thurstane.

“My dear Lieutenant!” he cried, trying to seize the young fellow's hand.
“Once more welcome to life! What a wonder! Another escape. You are a
second Orlando—almost a Don Quixote. And where are your two Sancho
Panzas?”

“You here!” was Thurstane's grim response, and he did not take the proffered
hand.

“Come!” implored Coronado, stepping toward the waist of the vessel and
away from the cabin. “This way, if you please,” he urged, beckoning earnestly.
“I have a word to say to you in private.”

Not a tone of this conversation had been heard below. Before the boat had
touched the side the crew were laboring at the noisy windlass with their shouts
of “Yo heave ho! heave and pawl! heave hearty ho!” while the mate was
screaming from the knight-heads, “Heave hearty, men—heave hearty. Heave
and raise the dead. Heave and away.”

Amid this uproar Coronado continued: “You won't shake hands with me,
Lieutenant Thurstane. As a gentleman, speaking to another gentleman, I ask
an explanation.”

Thurstane hesitated; he had ugly suspicions enough, but no proofs; and if
he could not prove guilt, he must not charge it.

“Is it because we abandoned you?” demanded Coronado. “We had reason.
We heard that you were dead. The muleteers reported Apaches. I
feared for the safety of the ladies. I pushed on. You, a gentleman and an officer—what
else would you have advised?”

“Let it go,” growled Thurstane. “Let that pass. I won't talk of it—nor
of other things. But,” and here he seemed to shake with emotion, “I want
nothing more to do with you—you nor your family. I have had suffering
enough.”

“Ah, it is with her that you quarrel rather than with me,” inferred Coronado
impudently, for he had recovered his self-possession. “Certainly, my poor
Lieutenant! You have reason. But remember, so has she. She is enormously
rich and can have any one. That is the way these women understand life.”

“You will oblige me by saying not another word on that subject,” broke in
Thurstane savagely. “I got her letter dismissing me, and I accepted my fate
without a word, and I mean never to see her again. I hope that satisfies you.”

“My dear Lieutenant,” protested Coronado, “you seem to intimate that I
influenced her decision. I beg you to believe, on my word of honor as a gentleman,
that I never urged her in any way to write that letter.”

“Well—no matter—I don't care,” replied the young fellow in a voice like
one long sob. “I don't care whether you did or not. The moment she could
write it, no matter how or why, that was enough. All I ask is to be left alone—
to hear no more of her.”

“I am obliged to speak to you of her,” said Coronado. “She is aboard.

“Aboard!” exclaimed Thurstane, and he made a step as if to reach the
shore or to plunge into the sea.

“I am sorry for you,” said Coronado, with a simplicity which seemed like
sincerity. “I thought it my duty to warn you.”

“I cannot go back,” groaned the young fellow. “I must go to San Diego.
I am under orders.”

“You must avoid her. Go to bed late. Get up early. Keep out of her
way.”

Turning his back, Thurstane walked away from this cruel and hated counsellor,

not thinking at all of him however, but rather of the deep beneath, a refuge
from trouble.

We must slip back to his last adventure with Texas Smith, and learn a little
of what happened to him then and up to the present time.

It will be remembered how the bushwhacker sat in ambush; how, just as he
was about to fire at his proposed victim, his horse whinnied; and how this
whinny caused Thurstane's mule to rear suddenly and violently. The rearing
saved the rider's life, for the bullet which was meant for the man buried itself in
the forehead of the beast, and in the darkness the assassin did not discover his
error. But so severe was the fall and so great Thurstane's weakness that he
lost his senses and did not come to himself until daybreak.

There he was, once more abandoned to the desert, but rich in a full haversack
and a dead mule. Having breakfasted, and thereby given head and hand a
little strength, he set to work to provide for the future by cutting slices from the
carcass and spreading them out to dry, well knowing that this land of desolation
could furnish neither wolf nor bird of prey to rob his larder. This work done,
he pushed on at his best speed, found and fed his companions, and led them back
to the mule, their storehouse. After a day of rest and feasting came a march to
the Cactus Pass, where the three were presently picked up by a caravan bound
to Santa Fé, which carried them on for a number of days until they met a train
of emigrants going west. Thus it was that Glover reached California, and
Thurstane and Sweeny Fort Yuma.

Once in quiet, the young fellow broke down, and for weeks was too sick to
write to Clara, or to any one. As soon as he could sit up he sent off letter after
letter, but after two months of anxious suspense no answer had come, and he
began to fear that she had never reached San Francisco. At last, when he was
half sick again with worrying, arrived a horrible epistle in Clara's hand and
signed by her name, informing him of her monstrous windfall of wealth and terminating
the engagement. The cruelest thing in this cruel forgery was the sentence,
“Do you not think that in paying courtship to me in the desert you took
unfair advantage of my loneliness?”

She had trampled on his heart and flouted his honor; and while he writhed
with grief he writhed also with rage. He could not understand it; so different
from what she had seemed; so unworthy of what he had believed her to be!
Well, her head had been turned by riches; it was just like a woman; they were
all thus. Thus said Thurstane, a fellow as ignorant of the female kind as any
man in the army, and scarcely less ignorant than the average man of the navy.
He declared to himself that he would never have anything more to do with her,
nor with any of her false sex. At twenty-three he turned woman-hater, just as
Mrs. Stanley at forty-five had turned man-hater, and perhaps for much the same
sort of reason.

Shortly after Thurstane had received what he called his cashiering, his company
was ordered from Fort Yuma to San Francisco. It had garrisoned the
Alcatraz fort only two days, and he had not yet had a chance to visit the city,
when he was sent on this expedition to San Diego to hunt down a deserting
quartermaster-sergeant. The result was that he found himself shipped for a
three days' voyage with the woman who had made him first the happiest man in
the army and then the most miserable.

How should he endure it? He would not see her; the truth is that he could
not endure the trial; but what he said to himself was that he would not. In
the darkness tears forced their way out of his eyes and mingled with the spray

which the wind was already flinging over the bows. Crying! Three months
ago, if any man had told him that he was capable of it, he would have considered
himself insulted and would have felt like fighting. Now he was not even
ashamed of it, and would hardly have been ashamed if it had been daylight.
He was so thoroughly and hopelessly miserable that he did not care what figure
he cut.

But, once more, what should he do? Oh, well, he would follow Coronado's
advice; yes, damn him! follow the scoundrel's advice; he could think of nothing
for himself. He would stay out until late; then he would steal below and
go to bed; after that he would keep his stateroom. However, it was unpleasant
to remain where he was, for the spray was beginning to drench the waist as well
as the forecastle; and, the quarter-deck being clear of passengers, he staggered
thither, dropped under the starboard bulwark, rolled himself in his cloak, and lay
brooding.

Meanwhile Coronado had amused Clara below until he felt seasick and had
to take to his berth. Escaping thus from his duennaship, she wanted to see a
storm, as she called the half-gale which was blowing, and clambered bravely
alone to the quarter-deck, where the skipper took her in charge, showed her the
compass, walked her up and down a little, and finally gave her a post at the foot
of the shrouds. Thurstane had recognized her by the light of the binnacle, and
once more he thought, as weakly as a scared child, “What shall I do?” After
hiding his face for a moment he uncovered it desperately, resolving to see
whether she would speak. She did look at him; she even looked steadily and
sharply, as if in recognition; but after a while she turned tranquilly away to gaze
at the sea.

Forgetting that no lamp was shining upon him, and that she probably had
no cause for expecting to find him here, Thurstane believed that she had discovered
who he was and that her mute gesture confirmed his rejection. Under this
throttling of his last hope he made no protest, but silently wished himself on the
battle-field, falling with his face to the foe. For several minutes they remained
thus side by side.

The Lolotte was now well at sea, the wind and waves rising rapidly, the motion
already considerable. Presently there was an order of “Lay aloft and furl
the skysails,” and then short shouts resounded from the darkness, showing that
the work was being done. But in spite of this easing the vessel labored a good
deal, and heavy spurts of spray began to fly over the quarter-deck rail.

“I think, Miss, you had better go below unless you want to get wet,” observed
the skipper, coming up to Clara. “We shall have a splashing night of
it.”

Taking the nautical arm, Clara slid and tottered away, leaving Thurstane lying
on the sloppy deck.