The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 187: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SAILING WITH MORGAN. case my mission would be ended be- fore it was well begun. Before I had time to even formulate my fears I heard steps in the corridor, the door opened slowly, and a heavily cloaked figure entered the room. The single candle threw but a dim light about the room, but there was no possibility of my mistaking that figure even when it was wrapped in a heavy cloak. It was Dolores. I sprang for- ward and raised her hand to my lips. “Oh, sewiora—Dolores !—TI could not go away without a farewell word to you. You have been so much to me in this past month. I never knew how brightly the sun shines nor how blue is the sky till I came down here.” She laughed musically—but she let her hand lie lightly in mine as a rose- leaf lies in a muddy road. “T have thought of you so much, Don Esteban,” she said. “ And I have wondered what you were about—l have thought of you. And, sewor” her voice took on a serious note—* [ have prayed for you.” “Then I am safe, at least,’ I said gently. “ Ah, Dolores, a week ago yes, or even to-night, when I first en- tered this room—you could have sent me hopeless from you, but now—’ “Yes! Yes! Now” she = ques- tioned softly. “ What now, Esteban? ” “Why, now neither Spanish king nor priest nor all the crews of the buc- caneers shall keep you from me! Will you marry me, Dolores? ”’ “Tf you can find a way,” she said. “Do you love me indeed enough to leave this place and come with me to a new land, America, where no man lives in idleness? To live, in short, not the life to which you are accus- tomed, but—” “One with you,” she said, and I was content. But to save my soul I could not see any way by which it could be done; for even if everything else was smoothed away, still there remained the fact that the fleet of the buccaneers was no place for my wife. 889 Then I remembered the money that Oakes and I had at Tortugas, and it came to me that when we returned to the island I could easily get passage on a Spanish trader from San Marco to Caracas, so that at most a year would find me back again at Maracaibo. I told this to Dolores very quickly. “It seems an eternity,” I said, “ but will you wait a year for me?”’ “A year? Yes, or twenty,” she re- pled. ‘‘ Here comes Sefior Cabrera.” “You must leave, sefor,’ he said breathlessly. “At midnight every night the ships of war yonder send a patrol-boat around the harbor, and it is nigh that time. I do not like to hasten you, but you must go. I will light you to your boat.” He picked up the lantern and made as if to accompany me. “ Not for a thousand pesos. would mean my destruction. you will, but no light.” I made my adieus to Dolores and stepped outside the door. It clanged into place again, and to my surprise a hand gripped my arm. Cabrera was ahead of me, and my heart stopped beating for a second. “ Did you think,” said the sweetest voice in the world, “‘ that I would let you go in this way—when I am not to see you for a year? Not till your boat puts off, indeed, is my farewell said. And, Esteban, you need not be so discreet, for Senor Cabrera knows. Do you not, sefior?”’ [ heard the old man chuckle in the darkness. “ You two”—he laughed wheezily—“ you two! An old man is not always a fool or blind. The star- light told me your tale out there by the edge of the jungle, sevwor—and I have heard a little of the other side in my own house. The saints-send you hap- piness, sevior. Your betrothed is very dear to me.” He led us down toward the beach by a path different from the one by which I had come. We crossed the plaza and the main street, and were walking slowly down a narrow alley A light Come if. Ch CopnielooOoks (C@)