The Arrow of Gold | Page 6

mustn't be shouted on housetops. Why?
I understood very well why, when he told me that he had joined in the
Clyde a small steamer chartered by a relative of his, "a very wealthy
man," he observed (probably Lord X, I thought), to carry arms and
other supplies to the Carlist army. And it was not a shipwreck in the
ordinary sense. Everything went perfectly well to the last moment
when suddenly the Numancia (a Republican ironclad) had appeared and
chased them ashore on the French coast below Bayonne. In a few
words, but with evident appreciation of the adventure, Mills described
to us how he swam to the beach clad simply in a money belt and a pair
of trousers. Shells were falling all round till a tiny French gunboat
came out of Bayonne and shooed the Numancia away out of territorial
waters.
He was very amusing and I was fascinated by the mental picture of that
tranquil man rolling in the surf and emerging breathless, in the costume
you know, on the fair land of France, in the character of a smuggler of
war material. However, they had never arrested or expelled him, since
he was there before my eyes. But how and why did he get so far from
the scene of his sea adventure was an interesting question. And I put it
to him with most naive indiscretion which did not shock him visibly.
He told me that the ship being only stranded, not sunk, the contraband
cargo aboard was doubtless in good condition. The French
custom-house men were guarding the wreck. If their vigilance could
be--h'm--removed by some means, or even merely reduced, a lot of
these rifles and cartridges could be taken off quietly at night by certain

Spanish fishing boats. In fact, salved for the Carlists, after all. He
thought it could be done. . . .
I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly quiet nights
(rare on that coast) it could certainly be done.
Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements. It was the highly inconvenient
zeal of the French custom-house people that had to be dealt with in
some way.
"Heavens!" I cried, astonished. "You can't bribe the French Customs.
This isn't a South-American republic."
"Is it a republic?" he murmured, very absorbed in smoking his wooden
pipe.
"Well, isn't it?"
He murmured again, "Oh, so little." At this I laughed, and a faintly
humorous expression passed over Mills' face. No. Bribes were out of
the question, he admitted. But there were many legitimist sympathies in
Paris. A proper person could set them in motion and a mere hint from
high quarters to the officials on the spot not to worry over-much about
that wreck. . . .
What was most amusing was the cool, reasonable tone of this amazing
project. Mr. Blunt sat by very detached, his eyes roamed here and there
all over the cafe; and it was while looking upward at the pink foot of a
fleshy and very much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted on
the ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian style that he let
fall casually the words, "She will manage it for you quite easily."
"Every Carlist agent in Bayonne assured me of that," said Mr. Mills. "I
would have gone straight to Paris only I was told she had fled here for a
rest; tired, discontented. Not a very encouraging report."
"These flights are well known," muttered Mr. Blunt. "You shall see her
all right."

"Yes. They told me that you . . . "
I broke in: "You mean to say that you expect a woman to arrange that
sort of thing for you?"
"A trifle, for her," Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently. "At that sort of
thing women are best. They have less scruples."
"More audacity," interjected Mr. Mills almost in a whisper.
Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: "You see," he addressed me in
a most refined tone, "a mere man may suddenly find himself being
kicked down the stairs."
I don't know why I should have felt shocked by that statement. It could
not be because it was untrue. The other did not give me time to offer
any remark. He inquired with extreme politeness what did I know of
South American republics? I confessed that I knew very little of them.
Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a look-in here and there;
and amongst others I had a few days in Haiti which was of course
unique, being a negro republic. On this Captain Blunt began to talk of
negroes at large. He talked of them with knowledge, intelligence, and a
sort of contemptuous affection. He generalized, he particularized about
the blacks; he told anecdotes. I was interested, a little