The Pirate of Panama | Page 2

had no premonition of what that faded bit of parchment meant, no
picture of men in deadly battle, of the flash of knives or the gleam of
revolvers, of lusty seamen lying curled on the deck where they had
fallen at the call of sudden death. The only feeling that stirred in me
was a faint curiosity at the odd markings on the sheet.
My foot moved forward and pinned the paper to the cement walk.
Should I pick it up? Of what use? It would turn out to be only some
Chinese laundry bill. Already the gong of the street-car was not more
than a block away as it swept down the hill.
Was it some faint sound that drew my eyes up? Or was I answering the
call of my destiny when my lifted gaze met the figure of a young
woman framed in a second-story window? She was leaning far out,
with arm stretched down and fingers opened wide.
Behind her stood a man, also out of the window to his waist. One of his
hands clutched her wrist, the other reached toward hers. That he had
been trying to take from her the paper she had flung away was an easy
guess.
I had but the fraction of a second before my car was slowing for the
crossing, but it was long enough to read in his dark face a malignant
rage, in her fair, flushed one a defiant triumph. Stooping, I gathered the
document that lay under my foot, then ran forward and swung to the
platform of the car.
If there had been time for second thought I might have stayed to see the
drama out, or I might have left the cause of quarrel where it lay. As it
was I had done neither one thing nor the other. Having yielded to
impulse so far as to pick up the paper, I had then done the conventional
thing and ignored the little scene above.
But when I glanced back up the hill I glimpsed a man flying
bareheaded from a doorway and pursuing the car with gestures of
impotent fury.
All the way down to the business quarter the odd affair challenged my

interest. What did it mean? The picture in the window was no laughing
romp meant to end in kisses. So much I was willing to swear. There
was passion in both the faces.
Out of those two lives I had snatched a vivid moment, perhaps one of
many common to them, perhaps the first their intersecting life-lines had
developed.
Was the man her husband? I was not willing to think so. More likely a
brother, I persuaded myself. For it was already being borne in upon me
that freakish chance had swept me into the orbit of the thing we spell
Romance.
A petty domestic quarrel suggested itself as the obvious solution, but
the buoyant youth in me refused any such tame explanation. For the
girl was amazingly pretty.
After a glance at it I put the crumpled paper in my pocketbook. In that
crowded car, hanging to a strap, I could make nothing of it. At the
office my time belonged to Kester & Wilcox until noon, for I was still
in that preliminary stage of my legal career during which I found it
convenient to exchange my inexperience for fifteen dollars a week. A
clouded real-estate title was presumably engaging my attention, but
between my mind and the abstract kept jumping a map with the legend
"Doubloon Spit" above it.
Faith, the blood sang in my veins. The scent of adventure was in my
nostrils. A fool you may think me, but I was already on the hunt for
buried treasure. Half a dozen times I had the paper out furtively, and as
soon as my hour of release came I cleared the desk and spread the
yellow, tattered document upon it.
The ink had been originally red, but in places it was faded almost to
illegibility. The worn edges at the folds showed how often it had been
opened and scanned. One lower corner had been torn away, leaving
perhaps seven-eighths of the original manuscript. Yet in spite of its
imperfect state of preservation I found this relic of a dead and forgotten
past pulse-stirring.

Before me lay the map of a peninsula, the upper part sketched in
vaguely but the toe marked apparently with the greatest care. The first
detail that caught my eye was a sketch of a brig in the bay, beneath
which was written:
"Here Santa Theresa went to Hell."
It was plain that the coast line was charted accurately so as to show the
precise location of the inlets. It was a contour map, giving the hills,
sand reaches, and groves. At the nearest