Spanish Doubloons | Page 3

I had been obliged to be so queer and clam-like about the whole extraordinary rendezvous--for how could I expose Aunt Jane's madness to the multitude?--that I felt it would take the actual bodily presence of my aunt to convince them that she was not a myth, or at least of the wrong sex for aunts. To have traveled so far in the desperate hope of heading off Aunt Jane, only to be frustrated and to lose my character besides! It would be a stroke too much from fate, I told myself rebelliously, as I crossed the broad gallery and plunged into the cool dimness of the lobby in the wake of the bellboys who, discerning a helpless prey, had swooped en masse upon my bags.
"Miss Jane Harding?" repeated the clerk, and at the cool negation of his tone my heart gave a sickening downward swoop. "Miss Jane Harding and party have left the hotel!"
"For--for the island?" I gasped.
He raised his eyebrows. "Can't say, I'm sure." He gave me an appraising stare. Perhaps the woe in my face touched him, for he descended from the eminence of the hotel clerk where he dwelt apart sufficiently to add, "Is it important that you should see her?"
"I am her niece. I have come all the way from San Francisco expecting to join her here."
The clerk meditated, his shrewd eyes piercing the very secrets of my soul.
"She knew nothing about it," I hastened to add. "I intended it for a surprise."
This candor helped my cause. "Well," he said, "that explains her not leaving any word. As you are her niece, I suppose it will do no harm to tell you that Miss Harding and her party embarked this morning on the freighter Rufus Smith, and I think it very likely that the steamer has not left port. If you like I will send a man to the water-front with you and you may be able to go on board and have a talk with your aunt."
Did I thank him? I have often wondered when I waked up in the night. I have a vision of myself dashing out of the hotel, and then the hack that brought me is bearing me away. Bellboys hurled my bags in after me, and I threw them largess recklessly. Some arch-bellboy or other potentate had mounted to the seat beside the driver. Madly we clattered over cobbled ways. Out on the smooth waters of the roadstead lay ships great and small, ships with stripped masts and smokeless funnels, others with faint gray spirals wreathing upward from their stacks. Was one of these the Rufus Smith, and would I reach her--or him--before the thin gray feather became a thick black plume? I thought of my aunt at the mercy of these unknown adventurers with whom she had set forth, helpless as a little fat pigeon among hawks, and I felt, desperately, that I must reach her, must save her from them and bring her safe back to shore. How I was to do this at the eleventh hour plus about fifty-seven minutes as at present I hadn't considered. But experience had taught me that once in my clutches Aunt Jane would offer about as much resistance as a slightly melted wax doll. She gets so soft that you are almost afraid to touch her for fear of leaving dents.
So to get there, get there, get there, was the one prayer of my soul.
I got there, in a boat hastily commandeered by the hotel clerk's deputy. I suppose he thought me a belated passenger for the Rufus Smith, for my baggage followed me into the boat. "Pronto!" he shouted to the native boatman as we put off. "Pronto!" I urged at intervals, my eyes upon the funnels of the Rufus Smith, where the outpouring smoke was thickening alarmingly. We brought up under the side of the little steamer, and the wide surprised face of a Swedish deckhand stared down at us.
"Let me aboard! I must come aboard!" I cried.
Other faces appeared, then a rope-ladder. Somehow I was mounting it--a dizzy feat to which only the tumult of my emotions made me indifferent. Bare brawny arms of sailors clutched at me and drew me to the deck. There at once I was the center of a circle of speechless and astonished persons, all men but one.
"Well?" demanded a large breezy voice. "What's this mean? What do you want aboard my ship?"
I looked up at a red-faced man in a large straw hat.
"I want my aunt," I explained.
"Your aunt?" he roared. "Why the devil should you think I've got your aunt?"
"You have got her," I replied with firmness. "I don't see her, but she's here somewhere."
The captain of the Rufus Smith shook two large red fists above his head.
"Another lunatic!" he shouted.