A slight mist hung over the sea—sure outcome of the tremendous range of the thermometer between noon and midnight in a tropical clime. The sky was cloudless, and the stars clustered in myriads.
Though the Southern Hemisphere falls far short of the glory of the north in constellations of the first magnitude, the extraordinary clearness of the upper air near the equator enhances the stellar display. It would almost seem that nature knows she may veil her ample splendors in the north, but must make the most of her scantier charms in the south.
Maseden, swinging on his heel in sheer bewilderment, suddenly found himself face to face with the Southern Cross, hanging low above the horizon. Had an impossible meteor flamed forth from the familiar cluster of stars and shot in awe-inspiring flight across the whole arc of the heavens northward to the line, it would not have surprised him more than the discovery that his “wife” was on board the ship.
That was a stupendous fact before which the whirl of adventure of the long day now drawing to a close subsided into calm remoteness.
“Madeleine,” the woman he had married, was his fellow-passenger! He would surely see her many times during the voyage to Buenos Ayres! He would hear her voice, which he could not fail to recognize.
She, on her part, would probably identify him at the first glance. How would she handle an extraordinary situation? Would she claim him as her husband, repudiate him scornfully, or utterly ignore him? He could not even guess.
There was no telling what a woman would do who had elected to marry a man whom she had never met, whose very name, in all likelihood, she had never heard, merely because he happened to be a prisoner condemned to speedy death.
Yet she could not be a particularly cold-blooded person. She had wept for him, had whispered her heartfelt grief; had promised to pray for and think of him always. Even the man with the high-pitched voice of a hypochondriac—presumably, from the manner of his address, her father—had hinted that her suffering had already passed the bounds set for one who, to serve her own ends, had gone through that amazing ceremony.
Maseden did not actually marshal his thoughts thus clearly. If compelled to bend his wits to the task, he might have spoken or written in such wise. But an active brain has its own haphazard methods of weighing a new and distracting problem; it will ask and answer a dozen startling questions simultaneously.
In the midst of Maseden’s strange and formless imaginings the ship’s course was changed a couple of points to the southward, and the Southern Cross was shut out of sight by the forecastle head. Then, and not until then, did the coincidence of the vessel’s name with that of the constellation occur to his bemused wits.
He laughed cheerfully.
“By gad!” he said, “all the signs of the zodiac must have clustered about my horoscope on this 15th of January. When I get ashore I must find an astrologer and ask him to expound.”
The sound of his own voice brought a belated warning to Maseden of the folly he had committed in speaking aloud.
There was no other occupant of the fore deck at the moment. A look-out man in the bows could not possibly have overheard, because of the whistling of the breeze created by the ship’s momentum and the plash of the curved waves set up by the cut-water, and it was highly improbable that words uttered in a conversational tone would have reached the bridge.
But behind him rose the three decks of the superstructure, and there might be eavesdroppers on the promenade deck or in one of the two dark gangways running aft.
He glanced over his shoulder to right and left. Apparently he had escaped this time. No matter what developments took place in the near future, he was by no means anxious as yet to reveal his nationality. Each hour brought home, more and more forcibly, the misfortune of the chance which left him no alternative but the shooting of Suarez that morning.
The act was absolutely essential to his own safety, but it put him clearly out of court. At any rate, the authorities of no South American state would listen to a recital of his earlier wrongs. If, as was highly probable, a sensational account of the attempted assassination of the new president had been tacked on to the telegrams announcing the coup d’état in San Juan, and he, Maseden, were painted as a desperado of mark, it might even be feared that the settled and respectable Argentine Republic would arrest him and endeavor to send him back to San Juan for trial.
Of course, the United States Consul in Buenos Ayres would have something to say about it, but there was a very real danger of consular efforts being overruled. No matter how distasteful the rôle, Philip Alexander Maseden must continue to masquerade as Ramon Aliones, vaquero, until he could leave the ship and assume another alias.
It was soon borne in on him how narrow was the margin which still separated him from disaster. He had gone to his berth, an unsavory hutch next to a larger cabin tenanted by deck-hands, when the door was thrust wide (he had left it half open while undressing, there being no electric switch within) and a lamp flashed in his eyes.
A short, stockily-built man, whom Maseden rightly took for the captain, stood there, accompanied by another man, seemingly a Spanish steward.
“Now, then,” came the gruff question, “what’s this I hear about your speaking English to yourself? Who are you? What’s your name?”
Luckily, Maseden was so surprised that he did not answer. The swarthy steward, a thin, lantern-jawed person, grinned. Maseden saw that the man was wearing canvas shoes with india-rubber soles, and guessed the truth instantly.
His nerve had been tested many times that day; nor did it fail him now. Gazing blankly at the captain, he said, in Spanish, that he did not understand.
“Tell him, Alfonso, that you heard him speaking English a few minutes since.... Hi, you! Stop that! No smoking in your berth.”
Maseden was rolling a cigarette in true Spanish style. The captain was obviously suspicious, so the situation called for a touch of stage artistry.
Alfonso translated, pricking his ears for Maseden’s reply. But he hailed from the east coast, whereas Maseden used the patois of San Juan.
“You made a natural mistake, señor,” said the American easily. “I was talking to the stars, a habit of mine when alone on the pampas, and their names would sound somewhat like the words of a barbarous tongue.”
“And a foolish habit, too!” commented the captain when he heard the explanation. “Do you know any of ’em?” and he glanced up at the strip of sky visible from where he stood.
The smiling vaquero stepped out on to the open deck. Oh, yes, all the chief stars were old friends of his. He pointed to the “Sea-serpent,” the “Crow,” and the “Great Dog,” giving the Spanish equivalents.
The steward, of course, densely ignorant in such things, and already half convinced that he had blundered, was only anxious now to avoid being rated by the captain for having gone to him with a cock-and-bull story. Somehow, Maseden sensed this fact, and made smooth the path.
“They are strange names,” he said with a laugh, “but we of the plains often have to find the way on land as a sailor on the sea.”
“Has he any papers?” demanded the captain, apparently satisfied that the passenger was really acquainted with the chief star-groups.
Maseden produced that thrice-fortunate duplicate of the receipt for cattle brought from the San Luis ranch to Cartagena by Ramon Aliones that very day. The captain examined it, and turned wrathfully on the steward.
“Be off to the devil!” he growled. “Find some other job than bothering me with your fool’s tales!”
When Alfonso had vanished, he added, seemingly as an afterthought:
“If I was a vaquero with a dirty face, I wouldn’t worry about clean fingernails or wear silk underclothing, and I’d do my star-gazing in dumb show!”
With that he, too, strode away. Undoubtedly, the captain of the Southern Cross was no fool.
Five minutes later the silk vest and pants which Maseden had not troubled to change while donning the gay attire of old Lopez’s nephew, went into the Pacific through the small port-hole which redeemed the cabin’s otherwise stuffy atmosphere. Happily the bunk, though crude, was clean, and long enough to hold a tall man.
Maseden fancied he would lie awake for hours. In reality, he was dead tired, and slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion until wakened by a loud-voiced intimation that all crimson-hued Dagoes must rouse themselves if they didn’t want to be stirred up by a hose-pipe.
Now, if there was one thing more than another that Maseden liked when on board ship, it was a cold salt-water bath. But he dared neither take a bath nor wash his face. Personal cleanliness is not a marked characteristic of South American cowboys. That he should display close-cropped hair instead of an abundance of oiled and curly tresses was a fact singular enough in itself, without inviting attention by the use of soap and water.
Perforce, he remained filthy. The captain’s hint was very much to the point.
The Southern Cross was not a regular passenger boat. Primarily a trader, carrying nitrate or grain to home ports, and coal thence to various points on the southern or western seaboard of South America, she was equipped with a few cabins, about a dozen all told, on the upper deck.
The so-called second-class accommodation was several degrees worse than the steerage on a crack Atlantic liner. That is to say, the human freight ranked a long way after cargo. The food was plentiful, though rough. Even for saloon passengers there was neither stewardess nor doctor.
As a matter of course, a passenger list would be an absurdity. The chief steward acted as purser, and knew the names of all on board after five minutes’ study of his ledger. Passengers and ship’s officers soon became acquainted. Within twenty-four hours Maseden had ascertained that a Mr. James Gray, with his two daughters, occupied staterooms; but, for the life of him, he could not learn the ladies’ Christian names.
He cudgeled his brains to try and remember whether or not his “wife” had signed the register as Madeleine Gray; but the effort failed completely. He knew why, for the best of reasons; yet the knowledge did not render failure less tantalizing.
It is one thing to be dazzled by the prospect of escape from the seeming certainty of death within a few minutes, but quite another to be on the same ship as the lady you have married two days earlier, yet neither know her name nor be positive as to her identity.
This, however, was literally Maseden’s predicament when chance favored him with a long, steady look at the Misses Gray. He could not be mistaken, because there were no other ladies on board.
Thus when a very pretty girl, wearing a muslin dress and hat of Leghorn straw, appeared at the forward rail of the promenade deck and gazed wistfully out over the sea, Maseden’s heart fluttered more violently than he would have thought possible as the effect of a casual glance at any woman.
So, then, this fair, slim creature, whose unheeding eyes had dwelt on him for a fleeting second ere they sought the horizon, was his wife! It was an extraordinary notion; fantastic, yet not wholly unpleasing. It would be rather a joke, if opportunity offered, to flirt with her. He had never flirted with any girl, and hardly knew how to begin; but much reading had taught him that the lady herself might prove an admirable coach if so minded.
Of course, there was room for error in one respect. He might have married the sister, who, thus far, nearly midday, had not been visible during daylight. He calculated the pros and cons of the situation. If his “wife” was feeling the strain of that unnerving experience in the great hall of the Castle of San Juan, she might now be resting in her stateroom. But why should the sister, on whose shoulders, one would suppose, sat no such heavy load of care, come on deck alone and scan the blue Pacific with that dreamy air?
Yes, by Jove, this really must be his wife! Somehow, poetic justice demanded that she, and not her sister, should meet him thus unconsciously.
In covert fashion he began to study her. The deck on which she stood was fully twenty feet above him, and she was still further separated from him by some thirty feet of the fore hatch, but he noted that her eyes were of the Parma violet tint so frequently met with in the heroines of fiction, yet all too seldom seen in real life. Being a mere man, he was not aware that blue eyes in shadow assume that exact tint. At any rate, as eyes, they were more than satisfactory.
Her nose was well modeled, with broad, flexible nostrils, unfailing sign of good health and an equable disposition. Her lips were prettily curved, and the oval face, framed in a cluster of brown hair, was poised on a perfectly molded neck. She owned shapely arms; he had already had occasion to admire her hands; a small, neatly-shod foot was visible under the lowest rail as the girl leaned on her elbows in an attitude of unstudied grace.
Altogether, Mr. Maseden liked the looks of Mrs. Maseden!
He was beginning to revel in sentiment when the edifice of seemingly substantial fact so swiftly constructed by a fertile imagination was dissipated into space by hearing a voice—the voice, he was sure—coming from some unseen part of the upper deck.
“Ah! There you are, Nina!” it said. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! How long have you been here?”
Nina! So this fairy was only the sister. Maseden smiled grimly behind a cloud of cigarette smoke because of the absurd shock which the words administered. He was sharply aware of a sense of disappointment, a feeling so far-fetched as to be almost ludicrous.
What in the world did it matter to which of these two he was married? In all probability he would never exchange a word with either, and his first serious business on reaching a civilized country would be to get rid of the incubus with which a set of phenomenal circumstances alone had saddled him.
At last, however, he would really see his wife, and thus end one phase of a curious entanglement. Nina had half turned. Evidently she realized that Madeleine meant to join her. Maseden leaned back against the external paneling of his cubby-hole and looked aloft now with curiosity at once quickened and undisguised.
But he was fated to suffer many minor shocks that day. Madeleine appeared, and presented such an exact replica of Nina that, at first sight, and in the strong shadows cast by the canvas screen which alone rendered that portion of the deck habitable while the sun was up, it was practically impossible for a stranger to differentiate between them.
Maseden discovered later that Madeleine was twenty-two and Nina nearly twenty-four; but the marked resemblance between the pair, accentuated by their trick of dressing alike, led people to take them for twins. Moreover, each so admirably duplicated the other in voice and mannerisms that only near relatives or intimate friends could be certain which was speaking if the owner of the voice remained invisible.
For a little while, too, Maseden’s mind was reduced to chaos by hearing Nina address her sister as “Madge.” He was vouchsafed the merest glimpse of Madge’s face, because, after a quick, heedless look at him and at a half-caste sailor readjusting the hatches covering the fore hold, she turned her back to the rail and said something that Maseden could not overhear.
A man joined the two girls, whereupon Nina also faced aft. The newcomer, standing well away under the screen, could not be seen at all, and Maseden thought it must be Mr. Gray, the querulous person whose outspoken utterances had first warned Maseden that his wife was on board.
But he erred again. Some comment passed by Nina raised a laugh, and Maseden recognized the voice of Mr. Sturgess, whose baggage he had carried overnight.
“I guess not!” he was saying, with a humorous stress on each word. “As a summer resort, San Juan disagreed with my complaint, Miss Gray.”
“Have you been ill, then?” came the natural query.
“No, but I might have been had I remained there too long,” was the answer. “A change of president in one of these small republics is like a bad railroad smash—you never know who’ll get hurt. I’ve a notion that Mr. Gray must have felt sort of relieved when he brought you two young ladies safe and sound aboard this ship.”
“We didn’t see anything specially alarming,” said Nina. “Madge went out twice during the day with Mr. Steinbaum, a trader, and the streets were very quiet, she thought.”
Madge! Was “Madge” a family diminutive for Madeleine? Maseden neither knew nor cared. Nina’s harmless chatter had told him the truth. Madge most certainly did find the streets quiet, if the story brought by Lopez from Cartagena was correct; namely, that she had been carried out of the Castle in a dead faint.
And now the heartless creature was actually laughing!
“One cannot take a South American revolution quite seriously—it always has something comical about it,” she cried, and it was astounding how closely the one sister’s voice resembled the other’s. “I understand that some poor people were shot the night before last, but I saw a man who keeps a restaurant opposite Mr. Steinbaum’s house produce a device with flags and a scroll. On the scroll was painted ‘Long Live Valdez.’ He drew some fresh letters over the first part of the name, dabbed on plenty of black and white paint, and the new legend ran ‘Long Live Suarez.’ The whole thing was done, and the flags were out, in less than five minutes.”
Sturgess evidently asked for and obtained permission to smoke. He came to the rail. Both girls faced forward again, and Maseden was free to compare them.
Madge, or Madeleine, as he preferred to style her, seemed to be a trifle paler than Nina. Otherwise, her likeness to her sister was almost uncanny, if that ill-omened word might be applied to two remarkably pretty girls. Neither of the girls wore gloves, but Maseden looked in vain for the heavy gold wedding-ring which Steinbaum’s thoroughness had supplied when wanted.
At that moment an officer appeared on the main deck. The fore hold had to be opened, it seemed. A quartermaster, summoned from the forecastle, hoisted a block and tackle to a derrick. The noise effectually drowned the talk of the trio on the upper deck until the tackle was rigged, and a couple of hatches were removed. The half-caste sailor was about to descend into the hold just as Sturgess’s somewhat staccato accents reached Maseden clearly again.
“Say, did you ladies hear of the American who was to be shot early yesterday morning? A most thrilling yarn was spun by a friend of mine who knows Cartagena from A to Z. He said—”
Maseden was on the alert to detect the slightest variation of expression on Madeleine’s face. She bent forward, her hands tightly clutching the rail, and darted a piteous under look at her sister. Thus it happened that Maseden alone was gazing upward, and he saw, out of the tail of his eye, the heavy block detaching itself from the derrick and falling straight on top of the sailor, who had a leg over the coaming of the hatch and a foot on the first rung of the iron ladder leading down into the hold.
With a quickness born of many a tussle with a bucking broncho, Maseden leaped, caught the rope held by the quartermaster, and jerked it violently. The block missed the half-caste by a few inches, and clanged in the hold far beneath.
The tenth part of a second decided whether the sailor should be dashed headlong into the depths or left wholly unscathed. As it was, he and every onlooker realized that the rakish-looking vaquero had saved his life.
In the impulsive way of his race, the man darted forward, threw his arms around Maseden’s neck, and kissed him. To his very great surprise, his rescuer thrust him off, and said angrily:
“Don’t be such a damn fool!”
An exclamation, almost a slight scream, came from the upper deck. Maseden knew in an instant that this time he had blundered beyond repair. Madeleine had heard his voice, and had recognized him. Moreover, the officer, the quartermaster, even the grateful Spaniard, were eyeing him with unmixed amazement.
The fat was in the fire this time! In another moment would come denunciation and arrest, and then—back to the firing squad! What should he do?