SANTA MARIA.

Dr. Fabos leaves the Yacht “White Wings.”

You should know that Santa Maria is an island of the Azores group standing at the extreme south-east of the Archipelago and being some thirty-eight square miles in extent. Its harbour, if such it can be called, is at Villa do Porto, where there is a pleasant, if puny, town, and a little colony of prosperous Portuguese merchants. Of anchorage for ships of considerable burden there is none worth speaking of. Those who ship goods to the island send them first to the neighbouring port of St. Michaels, whence they are transferred in small boats to Villa do Porto. The land is spoken of as very fertile and rich in wheat-growing soil. So much I learnt from the books before I visited it. That which my own eyes showed me I will here set down.

Now, we had always intended to make Santa Maria after sundown, and it was quite dark when we espied the island’s lights, shining over the water like the lanterns of a fishing fleet. A kindly breeze blew at that time from the south-west, and little sea was running. As we drew near to the land, the silence of an unspoken curiosity fell upon the men. Some whisper of talk had gone about that the “Master” would land at Villa do Porto, and that only the Japanese, Okyada, would accompany him. I knew that the good fellows were itching to speak out and to say that they believed me to be little less than a madman. So much had already been intimated by honest McShanus, and had been answered in the cabin below.

“Fabos, ye have more wits than the common, and I’ll believe no fool’s tale of ye,” he had said. “Good God, if your own story is true, ye’d be safer in a lion’s den than in yon menagerie of thieves. What’s to forbid the men accompanying ye? ’Tis my society that may be disagreeable to ye, perhaps. Faith, I want no man to insult me twice, nor will I stop in the yacht of the one who does so, though it were as big as Buckingham Palace and the Horse Guards thrown in.”

I clapped him kindly on the shoulder and told him not to be a fool. If I asked him to remain on board the White Wings, that was for my safety’s sake.

“Timothy,” I said, “your coat is picturesque, but I refuse to tread upon the tail of it. Don’t be a choleric ass. And understand, man, that as long as the yacht stands out to sea and has my good friends aboard, I am as safe as your maiden aunt in a four-wheeled cab. Let any harm come to me, and you know what you are to do. This ship will carry you straight to Gibraltar, where you will deliver my letters to Admiral Harris and act thereafter as he shall tell you. I do not suppose that there will be the slightest necessity for anything of the kind. These people are always cowards. I have a strong card to play, and it will be played directly I go ashore. Be quite easy about me, Timothy. I am in no hurry to get out of this world, and if I thought that by going ashore yonder my departure would be hastened, not all the men in Europe would persuade me to the course.”

“And that’s to say nothing of the other sex,” he rejoined a little savagely. “Now, don’t you know that Joan Fordibras is ashore there?”

“I think it very unlikely, Timothy.”

“Ah, to blazes with the pretty face of her! When shall we have the news of you?”

“Every day at sundown. Let the pinnace be at the mole. If not that, stand off for a signal. We will arrange it to-morrow night. You shall come ashore and dine with me when I know how the land lies. To-night I must go alone, old friend.”

He assented with great reluctance. The men had already manned the lifeboat and were waiting for me. We lay, perhaps, a full mile from the port, and had no pilot other than the Admiralty chart; but the kindness of the night befriended us, and when the half of an hour had passed, I stood safe and well in the streets of Villa do Porto and my Japanese servant was at my side. This would have been about the hour of nine o’clock. Such life as the little place can show was then at its height, and I confess not without its charm. Had I been asked to describe the scene, I would have said that it reminded me not a little of the Italian lakes. Shrubs and trees and flowers before the houses spoke in their turn of the tropics; the air was heavy with the perfume of a Southern garden; the atmosphere moist and penetrating, but always warm. Knowing absolutely nothing of the place, I turned to an officer of the Customs for guidance. Where was the best hotel, and how did one reach it? His answer astonished me beyond all expectation.

“The best hotel, se?or,” he said, “is the Villa San Jorge. Am I wrong in supposing that you are the Englishman for whom General Fordibras is waiting?”

I concealed my amazement with what skill I could, and said that I was delighted to hear that General Fordibras had returned from Europe. If the intimation alarmed me, I would not admit as much to myself. These people, then, knew of my movements since I had quitted Dieppe? They expected me to visit Santa Maria! And this was as much as to say that Joan Fordibras had been their instrument, though whether a willing or an unconscious instrument I could not yet determine. The night would show me—the night whose unknown fortunes I had resolved to confront, let the penalty be what it might.

“I will go up to the Villa at once,” I said to the Customs officer. “If a carriage is to be had, let them get it ready without loss of time.”

He replied that the Villa San Jorge lay five miles from the town, on the slope of the one inconsiderable mountain which is the pride of the island of Santa Maria. It would be necessary to ride, and the General had sent horses. He trusted that I would bring my servants, as they would be no embarrassment to his household. The cordiality of the message, indeed, betrayed an anxiety which carried its own warning. I was expected at the house and my host was in a hurry. Nothing could be more ominous.

“Does the General have many visitors from Europe?” I asked the officer.

“A great many sometimes,” was the reply; “but he is not always here, se?or. There are months together when we do not see him—so much the worse for us.”

“Ah! a benefactor to the town, I see.”

“A generous, princely gentleman, Excellency—and his daughter quite a little queen amongst us.”

“Is she now at the Villa San Jorge?”

“She arrived from Europe three days ago, Excellency.”

I had nothing more to ask, and without the loss of a moment I delivered my dressing-bag to the negro servant who approached me in the General’s name, and mounted the horse which a smart French groom led up to me. Okyada, my servant, being equally well cared for, we set off presently from the town, a little company, it may be, of a dozen men, and began to ride upward toward the mountains. A less suspicious man, one less given to remark every circumstance, however trivial, would have found the scene entirely delightful. The wild, tortuous mountain path, the clear sky above, the glittering rocks becoming peaks and domes of gold in the moonbeams, the waving torches carried by negroes, Portuguese, mulattoes, men of many nationalities who sang a haunting native chant as they went—here, truly, was the mask of romance if not its true circumstance. But I had eyes rather for the men themselves, for the arms they carried, the ugly knives, the revolvers that I detected in the holsters. Against what perils of that simple island life were these weapons intended? Should I say that these men were assassins, and that I had been decoyed to the island to be the subject of a vulgar and grotesquely imprudent crime? I did not believe it. The anchor light of the White Wings, shining across the water, stood for my salvation. These men dare not murder me, I said. I could have laughed aloud at their display of impotent force.

I say that we followed a dangerous path up the hillside; but anon this opened out somewhat, and having crossed a modern bridge of iron above a considerable chasm, the forbidding walls of which the torches showed me very plainly—having passed thereby, we found ourselves upon a plateau, the third of a mile across, perhaps, and having for its background the great peak of the mountain itself. How the land went upon the seaward side I could not make out in the darkness; but no sooner had we passed the gates than I observed the lights of a house shining very pleasantly across the park; and from the cries the men raised, the hastening paces of the horses, and the ensuing hubbub, I knew that we had reached our destination, and that this was the home of General Fordibras.

Five minutes later, the barking of hounds, the sudden flash of light from an open door, and a figure in the shadows gave us welcome to the Villa San Jorge. I dismounted from my horse and found myself face to face, not with Hubert Fordibras, but with his daughter Joan.

She was prettily dressed in a young girl’s gown of white, but one that evidently had been built in Paris. I observed that she wore no jewellery, and that her manner was as natural and simple as I might have hoped it to be. A little shyly, she told me that her father had been called to the neighbouring island of St. Michaels, and might not return for three days.

“And isn’t it just awful?............