The deck of the derelict presented as dismal a scene as had her hulk. The seams gaped whitely, and the litter of broken spars and mildewed canvas showed only too plainly through what an ordeal she had passed before being abandoned. Ensign Conkling lost no time in making his way down a companionway leading into what had been the captain’s quarters astern.
The two Dreadnought Boys, thus left to themselves, walked forward toward the deck-house. This erection, which had once been painted white, had been almost torn from the deck by the fury of the storm which had resulted in the casting away of the Donna Mercedes. Its doorway hung by one hinge, flapping to and fro in melancholy rhythm as the ship rolled to the swell.
“It’s a good while since any one made their[69] way in here,” remarked Ned, as he plunged through the portal into the dark interior of the place.
The house had apparently been utilized as both a bunk house for the inferior officers of the Donna Mercedes and likewise as a kind of galley. Cooking utensils lay higgledy-piggledy about the rusty stove, and in the forepart of the deck-house were a few rude bunks. The tumbled state of the bedclothes, still lying in these, showed that the ship must have been abandoned in a hurry.
Suddenly something white stuffed into a crack near the ceiling of the place caught Ned’s eye.
“Papers!” he exclaimed. “Let’s have a look at them, Herc.”
“All right,” agreed Herc, bending over Ned’s shoulder as, having pulled the bundle from its place, the Dreadnought Boy moved toward the door and the light.
The papers which Ned found proved to be a mass of water-soaked writing in faded ink, consisting of two or three pages.
“Well, they are doubtless very interesting, but[70] unfortunately for us we can’t read them,” exclaimed Ned, in a tone of disappointment, as the bright sunlight fell on the moldy writing.
“Why not?”
“Because it is written in Spanish. Hullo! here’s a signature. Well, we can make that out, anyway. Let’s see, Maritano de Guzman. And look here, Herc, here’s the remains of a seal.”
“Well, what are you going to do with them?” asked Herc curiously. To him the bundle was simply so much old junk. Ned, however, had a dash of the romantic mingled with his intensely practical qualities, and he thrust the papers into his blouse.
“I’ll give them to Lieutenant Timmons, I guess,” he said; “he may be able to understand what all the writing is about. I can’t, and am not going to try to.”
“Who do you suppose Maritano what-you-may-call-um was?” asked Herc.
“Haven’t the faintest idea,” laughed Ned lightly. “Some sea cook, I imagine, for he seemed to have his quarters in the galley.
“Well, come on; we’d better hurry aft. The ensign may want us,” reminded Ned, and hastily the two boys made their way sternward along the bleached decks. It was well they had hastened, for just as they reached the break in the deck marking the rise of the old-fashioned stern-cabin, they heard a voice hailing them. The tones floated up from below, through the broken glass panel of the cabin skylight.
“Herc, Strong and Taylor, come below here.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” cried Ned with alacrity. Followed by Herc, he bounded up the few steps to the raised deck above the cabin, and dived down the companionway.
They found the officer standing at the cabin table, which a shaft of sunlight, falling through the broken skylight, illuminated brightly. He was examining the contents of a stout wooden box, brass bound and about a foot square, which had evidently once contained the ship’s papers. The documents lay littered about the table, opened, as the officer had been examining them.
The boys waited for Ensign Conkling to speak.
“You had better put those papers back in the box, and I’ll take it aboard with me,” he said.
“Yes, sir——,” began Ned. He was just about to hand over the papers he found in the forward deck-house when there came a sudden sharp hail from outside.
“Aboard the Donna Mercedes!”
“Ay, ay!” shouted the ensign, who had recognized Stanley’s voice, “what is it?”
“A squall coming up from the southeast, sir!” came the reply.
“Come on, there, look lively, boys,” ordered the officer, and in the hurry of packing the documents back in the square box Ned, for the moment, quite forgot all about what he deemed were the unimportant papers in his blouse.
The light that had flooded the cabin table was suddenly blotted out before they finished. The officer, having rummaged the cabin thoroughly without finding anything more of interest, ordered a quick return to the boat. They gained it just as the tropical squall swept down on them.
“Shove off, quick!” came the command, as a[73] rolling wall of white water rushed toward them.
Just in time the brown arms shoved off the ship’s boat. The next instant she was half buried in a flying smother of white spray, as the squall, in all its fury, struck them.
“Toot! toot! toot!”
It was the siren of the Beale blowing a recall.
“About time,” muttered Ensign Conkling grimly, as the men rowed with all their might to keep from being dashed against the hulk. “If we’d been a few minutes later we’d have lost the boat.”
The wind fairly screamed about the boat, and the rain beat with furious force in their faces, as they pulled through the squall for the distant hull of the destroyer. Before they were half way there, however, the sun was brightly shining again, making their soaked garments steam as they labored. With such fury and suddenness do tropic squalls descend and vanish. But as the men raised their eyes and looked at the sparkling sea, darkened to the northwest, where the just departed squall was hastening onward, an exclamation[74] of surprise burst from the lips of every occupant of the boat.
Not a trace of the derelict was to be seen! She had vanished as utterly as a figure on a slate obliterated by the passing of a wet sponge. The squall had wiped out the Donna Mercedes and sent the poor battered wanderer to the bottom of the sea.
Of course, an officer being on board the boat, the men made no comment at the time, but many were the speculations indulged in during the noon smoke hour concerning the old derelict. The old sailors on board were inclined to think that, weakened as she was by long drifting, her half-opened seams had admitted a great flood of water when the squall struck, causing her instantly to founder.
Although not officially transmitted, the “wireless telegraphy” which begins at the commander’s orderly and ends in the forecastle of all naval ships soon transmitted details of what Ensign Conkling had discovered on board the Donna Mercedes. She had been a chartered vessel,[75] owned by a merchant of Costaveza, the very place for which they were bound. Laden with dye woods and hides, she had set out for a northern port some months before. A hasty note scribbled on the captain’s papers, in his own hand apparently, stated that after battling with a gale for three days the Donna Mercedes had begun to sink, and had been abandoned in a hurry. The name of Senor de Guzman appeared as a passenger.
“They must have quit her in a hurry if the captain left his papers,” was Stanley’s comment. “A skipper would almost rather leave his head than leave those behind.”
“I wonder what became of those on board her,” said Ned musingly, his mind busy with thoughts of the fate of that unhappy ship’s company.
“That’s a question,” rejoined Stanley, expelling a great cloud of blue smoke. “They may have been picked up, and again they may not.”
“And if not?”
“Well, in that case it ain’t hard to guess that[76] they drifted around till they died. That’s all that castaways in the tropics can do,” grunted Stanley.
“Unless they made land,” supplemented Ned.
“As I understand it, the captain wrote down his latitude and longitude as near as he could figure it out when they abandoned ship,” said Stanley. “The figures show him to have been blown most 1,000 miles off his course.”
“But how did the ship get back near to the coast again?” inquired Herc.
“The set of the Gulf Stream, I reckon, or maybe some of those mysterious currents that nobody knows much about. Derelicts have a queer habit of bobbing up where no one expects them.”
The morning after this conversation the Beale steamed slowly between two high headlands of rock, clothed with palms and other tropical growth, and after proceeding some distance into the basin formed by the two “horns” of the harbor came to an anchorage. Immediately the Stars and Stripes went up at her blunt stern,[77] and men were set to work rigging the starboard gangway.
“Doesn’t look much as if there was a revolution going on ashore there, does it?” asked Stanley, who had joined the boys as they stood leaning over the starboard rail forward, gazing at the scene that unfolded itself before them. It was a gorgeous panorama of color and light.
In the foreground was the harbor, almost landlocked at its entrance by two projections of rocky cliff. Across the glassy water, dotted with small native craft, with here and there a coasting steamer lying at anchor, was the town—a mere huddle of red roofs and white walls, as seen from the Beale’s decks. Behind the town came a belt of vivid greenery, and beyond that shot up like a huge rampart a wall of blue mountains, with sharply serrated skyline and densely wooded sides, covered, seemingly, to their summits.
“It’s like a scene in a theater,” said Herc admiringly. And so it was.
Lieutenant Timmons, with sword and cocked hat, and accompanied by his officers, all in full[78] dress uniforms, shortly emerged from his cabin. His boat, of which Herc and Ned formed part of the crew, was called away at once.
“You’ll have a good chance for a run ashore,” whispered Stanley, as they briskly came alongside the starboard gangway and the officers stepped on board. Ned and Herc already knew that the Lieutenant’s destination was the American consulate.
The row ashore occupied but a brief space of time. The eight men composing the crew had never rowed with greater vigor. Somehow the sight of land close at hand seems to endow Jack with wonderful muscles and energy. Soon they were at a landing, on which several inquisitive townsfolk and barefooted loungers, with yellow cigarettes between their fingers, were assembled.
“The men can take a run ashore for two hours, Stanley,” said Lieutenant Timmons, as he left the boat and, followed by his little escort, made his way up a narrow, dark street. In front of one balconied building on this thoroughfare the[79] American flag was floating, denoting that there was the American consulate.
As may be imagined, the jackies lost no time in mooring the boat. Lots were then quickly drawn to see who should remain on watch in it. The lot fell to a young sailor named Diamond. With eager looks about them the others quickly made off, leaving Ned, Herc and Stanley standing alone. The loungers swarmed about them. Some were begging, others had small articles of native manufacture to sell. It took some minutes to shake them off, and then the three sailormen headed up a tree-bordered street which seemed to lead toward the outskirts of the town.
Some moments of brisk uphill walking brought them to a pretty red-tiled house, in front of which, under spreading tropical vegetation, several small vine-covered booths were scattered about. A sign in front proclaimed that American soda was for sale there.
“Say, I’m as thirsty as a limekiln!” exclaimed Herc, as his eyes fell on the sign. “What do you fellows say to sampling some of that?”
He pointed to the sign.
All agreed it would be a good idea, and soon they were seated in a small booth awaiting the arrival of a waiter.
“Queer they should have soda down here,” commented Herc, gazing approvingly about at the snug nest of greenery, through which a pleasant breeze from the blue bay beneath swept refreshingly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” rejoined Stanley, “these dagoes have taken to soda amazingly since they first tasted it on American steamers. Besides, you know, the mail boats bring tourists down here in the winter.”
At this point the conversation of the trio was interrupted by the arrival of a stout, black-mustached man in a white duck suit, wearing a big panama hat and carrying a palm-leaf fan.
“How do you do?” he exclaimed in excellent English, though he was palpably a native.
The boys responded in kind, and then, to their amazement, the aristocratic newcomer inquired what it would be their pleasure to drink.
Their astonishment must have reflected itself on their faces, for, with a light laugh, the white-ducked individual burst forth with explanations. On account of the revolution his waiters had all left—been impressed into the army, he explained, so he had to do the waiting himself. Anyhow, it was the off season, so he did not so much mind. Where were the revolutionists? Oh, quien sabe? Over in the mountains somewhere. The mountains acted as a natural barrier to Boca del Sierras, he was happy to say, and so long as the brave government troops could keep the insurgents on the other side of the range all would be well.
Having taken the orders, he hurried away. While he was gone the boys’ talk reverted to various topics, when suddenly Herc, who had been gazing at the harbor below them, exclaimed:
“Why, this is the place the Donna Mercedes sailed from.”
“So it is,” responded Ned, “and, by the way, that reminds me, Stanley, that I promised to[82] show you those papers before I handed them over to Lieutenant Timmons.”
“Good gracious! haven’t you done that yet?” demanded Herc.
“Haven’t had an opportunity to,” rejoined Ned. “Unfortunately, in the service you can’t walk up to an officer and say, ‘I’d like a word with you.’”
“Like our friend in Brooklyn,” grinned Herc, recalling the dark-skinned man, Senor Charbonde.
“Exactly,” laughed Ned. The lad dived into his blouse for the papers from the Donna Mercedes. Since that night in the boat, when for a time it seemed that they were all doomed, the boys had struck up a great friendship with Stanley, who was an older man than either of them, and had seen many years of service in the navy. Like many another man of superior intelligence and character, he had had no opportunity to rise, either through lack of interest or ill luck, and was still a boatswain’s mate. Of his former life the boys knew little. But with the readiness of youth[83] to form warm friendships, they had struck up one with this man and had already told him of their discovery on board the Donna Mercedes. Not till that moment, however, had an opportunity presented itself to consult him about the papers. As Stanley knew Spanish pretty fluently both boys felt that he would be an invaluable aid in revealing to them what secret—if any—the papers held.
Just as Stanley laid his big, brown paw on the bundle of faded documents the polite waiter pro tem. of the Villa Espenza appeared, carrying the soda on a silver tray. He set it down with a bow and flourish, and accepted payment with an indifferent air. His sharp, dark eyes, however, in the roaming glance they had taken over the table, had noted the papers which Stanley had just appropriated. An expression of deep interest, which, however, he succeeded in masking from the boys, came into his face as he did so. Clearly the unctuous proprietor of the Villa Espenza was in deep thought as, with another bow and flourish, he moved away.