AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION

The next morning Dan stood at the rail of the Tampico , gazing out over the quay to the distant walls of the city, over which hung a heavy saffron pall. The faint pat-a-pat-pat-pat of machine guns and the roar of heavier ordnance was incessant. At first he had been disposed to go out and participate in the fighting.

But second thought had altered his inclination. He had come to know something of the business methods of Mr. Howland and men like him; and while he had no doubt that his employer considered them legitimate, and could, if he had to, submit many strong reasons for various measures which capital seems to find it necessary to employ in its relations with Latin-American Governments, yet he decided that the wholesale slaughter then in progress had far better be left to those who were employed for that purpose.

How did he know but the men who had been fighting to capture the city and were now being shot down like sheep were not the real patriots, anxious to govern their own country in their way and not in the interests of foreign corporations? As for Rodriguez, he knew enough of him to—

Virginia Howland, coming up from behind, touched him on the arm, while her father, who followed her, placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.

"Captain," said the girl, "I am disappointed. I wagered a box of candy with father that you were already out fighting."

Dan, unable to suppress the thoughts which had filled his mind, smiled grimly.

"I don't think I have any desire to turn butcher," he said, with just a tinge of bitterness.

The girl flushed and regarded Dan for a moment with a curious expression, and then glanced at her father.

"Is it really—that?" she said.

Mr. Howland smiled easily.

"Butchery? It seems to amount to about that. Poor beggars! But war is war," Mr. Howland tapped the rail with his finger by way of emphasis, "and those who attempt to overthrow governments generally do either one of two things: they succeed, or they pay the penalty of failure."

"In this case," said Dan, coolly, "they seem to be paying the penalty."

"Yes, thanks to you," replied Mr. Howland, "which is what I wish to speak to you about."

He paused, and as Dan made no reply he continued:

"You did a mighty fine piece of work for us in landing those guns—you have placed my company considerably in debt to you; but of that more later. At the present time I want to tell you that these infernal revolutionists have burned Belle View—which," turning to his daughter, "may alter your sympathies a trifle, Virginia—and therefore necessitates more or less of a change of programme—"

"Belle View burned!" interpolated Virginia. "Why, father, what—"

"As I was saying," resumed Mr. Howland, "we've got to shift things about. In the first place, if Belle View were not burned, I should hardly feel safe in having the crowd there with conditions as they are—and things are not especially pleasant in this city. However,—how long will it take to get away from here, Captain?"

"We must take on some coal, and Hendrickson has drawn the fires and is reaming in some new boiler-tubes. We could get away inside of forty-eight hours, I think."

"Good; let's do it, then. We'll call at San Domingo, Hayti, Jamaica, and other places to make up for spoiling your house-party, Virginia. In the meantime I have secured good quarters for our guests at the Hotel Garcia, where to-night I give the Government a dinner. I shall expect to see you there, Captain."

Dan would have preferred to stay away from that dinner. The thought of his practical connivance at the day's slaughter, so obviously suggested by Mr. Howland, grated on him, and the implied command in the invitation to the dinner bothered him too. The day was to be filled with duties about ship, and he wanted the evening to himself, to sit in his cabin with his pipe and his books and mull over these and other things.

Of course he might have known what would follow the landing of the guns from the Tampico . He did know, as a matter of fact, but orders are orders, and duty is duty; and when you are employed by a man you accept your salary and any other accruing benefits solely upon the understanding that you shall serve his interests to the best of your ability.

Yes, Dan could see that perfectly, and he could also see the bad taste that lay in intimating dissatisfaction with his employer's methods while wearing the uniform of Mr. Howland's company and receiving good pay therefor. And anyway, Mr. Howland had not asked him to cut Blancan warships in two and endanger the lives of the entire ship's company and guests. No, that was on his own head, his own hot head.

In the days of the present voyage he had felt a strong tendency to look beyond the bridge of the Tampico into the future. Of course he liked adventure, but of late he had begun to feel that perhaps he had had enough of the strenuous life to last him the remainder of his years. He certainly did not intend to grow gray on coastwise lines. Bluff, gnarled old Harrison, his predecessor on this vessel, had served as a striking object lesson. He could spin yarns of his adventures by the hour, but at best no one would call him anything but an interesting old character, a retired shell-back on half pay. Dan found no pleasure in looking forward to anything of the sort.

Since he had gained a command in the famous Coastwise and West Indian Shipping Company, he had begun to commend himself to persons who never before had played a part in his life, principally a cousin of his father's, a wealthy merchant of Boston, who had written him a long letter, received just before the Tampico sailed on her present voyage, expressing a desire to meet him.

"It is not possible," the letter read, "you will want to follow the sea all your life. There must be plenty of opportunities ashore for men of your evident executive ability and initiative. I want you to come to Boston at your first opportunity. I know I can give you good advice, and it may be I can prove of material assistance to you."

When he first read the letter, Dan smiled to himself, not failing to note the interest taken in him by relatives, now he seemed to be proving his ability, who, heretofore, had known little about him and cared less. But that is life, and he had a great deal rather be accepted for what he had done than because of mere ties of blood. Thus thinking, he came to attach greater significance to the letter. He would go on to Boston when the Tampico returned to the United States. In the meantime he was Captain of a Howland boat, and he would obey orders, he smiled grimly, and go to the dinner.

The dinner was a memorable one in San Blanco City. The revolution had been shattered. The Rodriguez Government was supreme. The Presidente's palace was a blaze of lights. Conspirators were being arrested and cast into prison. Vehicles of all sorts were bearing dinner guests to the Hotel Garcia and dashing away. There were foreign consuls in uniforms, and their wives; there was Rodriguez and his cabinet, and officers of the army in resplendent garb, and women who, when they threw their mantillas aside, revealed tawny necks and shoulders.

The Presidente , Mr. Howland, and high officers of the Government sat on a long dais at the head of the room; the other guests, including the Tampico's party, were at round tables with red-shaded lamps. It was a pleasing picture, and Dan, for the first few courses, was glad he had come. However, when he found that those with whom he was seated could not speak English, while he could understand little of Spanish, the evening began to wear. At length, with the long post-prandials at hand, he arose.

Flanking one side of the room, which was large, were windows reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling, which, when the weather was fair, were opened, giving access to a garden of small, twisted trees and tropical plants with small tables beneath, to which the pleasure-loving population came at night, to sip iced drinks and listen to the music of the orchestra as it flowed out of the dining-room.

Here Dan made his way and, stepping out of one of the windows, paused on the garden's edge. The cool air was grateful, and with a sigh of relief he drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it slowly, From beneath the trees came little patters of conversation, and the red lights of cigarettes and the glint of white gowns enlivened the darkness.

As he stood there, Virginia Howland and Oddington came out of one of the windows. The girl was talking vivaciously, familiarly, and Oddington was laughing. She was in what she would have termed one of her "Oddington moods," when his personality appealed to her most, when the congenial bond seemed closest. To-night the lights, the music, the soft air rustling the lampshades, after all the long days on shipboard, exalted her. She looked at her companion with kindling eyes.

It seemed hardly the moment to run full upon the Captain of the Tampico , who had just thrown his cigar away with the intention of returning to the dining-hall.

Dan realized this instinctively. He smiled at the two in an abstracted manner, as though his mind were occupied with thoughts which he did not care to interrupt, and turned toward the window, when Virginia, who had greeted him simultaneously with a smile obviously designed to convey a similar impression, and, piqued to perversity by the fact that Dan had so readily interpreted her wishes, paused in the middle of a sentence and looked back over her shoulder.

"Captain," she said, "is it possible you prefer speeches in Spanish to our company?"

Dan paused. Oddington was smiling in an exceedingly perfunctory manner, and the young Captain was about to make some laughing acknowledgment when the girl, still looking at him, said:

"Mr. Oddington and I were just arguing about the night air of San Blanco. He says it is filled with malaria. Is it?"

Dan walked slowly toward them.

"Not any more than the day air," he replied, declining Oddington's proffered cigarette case and drawing his pipe and pouch from his pocket. "I should say that San Blancan air is filled with malaria at all times—and with other bad things."

Oddington laughed.

"It is like most of these cities," he said; "things get pretty messy here, I imagine. I could not exactly commend its sanitary—"

A voice calling him from the window broke the sentence. It was Reggie Wotherspoon.

"Yes," said Oddington.

"That you, Ralph? Oh, I see you. Say, come in here like a good chap, will you? I've run across a sort of an anarchist circular about Rodriguez. I want you to come up with me while I put it up to him."

"All right," replied Oddington. "Will you go in, Virginia?"

"Thank you, I'll wait here for you. I've had enough of that dreary old dinner; at least until father speaks. And now," said the girl, smiling at Dan, "what have you to tell me that is thrilling?"

Dan looked at her as she stood framed against the light of the window, tall, straight, in the full glow of youth and health and animal spirits. One bare arm was stretched down, clutching the train of her dress. With the other hand she was idly lashing her gloves against her skirt. As she spoke she reached out a gleaming slipper, extremely small for a girl of her height, to push an overturned flower-pot away, and Dan caught the flash of the silk ankle and a foam of lace.

He felt he was viewing the girl in a new way. Hitherto he had regarded her as something almost intangible, an essence of elusive femininity, radiant, overpowering, and in nowise to be considered as a material embodiment of young womanhood.

But now, while the old spell was still potent, with the moods of the day still strong, he found new viewpoints struggling for mastery. Clearly the girl had shown a deep interest in him, and entirely on her own initiative. If it was to be in the future an interest born of friendship, why, it should be, he told himself, an engaging future for him. But he did not desire that her interest in him from now on should be offered as a sort of largess, or that he should be placed in the position of posing as an object of merely charitable attention from her. As these thoughts formulated themselves flashingly in his mind, he could not but marvel at the sudden transition in his attitude concerning her. But nevertheless, the transition had taken place, as well defined as though it had come of weeks of pondering—and unchangeable.

"I can't think of anything thrilling to talk about—unless I select you as a subject."

The girl glanced at him swiftly and then turned her face toward the harbor, where a few lights quivered on a velvet floor. She caught the new note perfectly and her bosom rose in a quick breath.

"I am sure we might select a more interesting topic. I detest personalities. Tell me how you have enjoyed your first dip into Blancan society."

"But that would be personal," smiled Dan.

The girl laughed.

"The women here to-night are a great deal less dowdy than one would imagine, don't you think?"

"I wonder if you realize your responsibility?" said Dan.

Virginia did not reply for a moment. She had not considered this outgrowing phase of her unreserved interest in the young Captain. So long as he had remained a sort of quiescent protégé , there could be no possible harm in her attitude toward him. Evidently he did not intend so to remain. There was of course, therefore, nothing to do but reestablish their relations.

"I am afraid my responsibilities are too varied and serious for discussion with—with any one," she said at length.

"But where they concern me?"

The girl stepped back slightly, drawing her skirts about her as though recoiling, or, rather, withdrawing from the question. Yet despite her desire to end the conversation, she really was curious as to his drift; and, besides, he made the most romantic sort of picture as he stood at her side, clean cut, bareheaded, and as self-assured evidently as any man she had ever talked with. Her wish was to dismiss him with admonition, gently, if plainly to be understood. But this she could not do just then, and the realization of the fact irritated her.

"I suppose," she said slowly, "at least I have read that our responsibilities do not cease with one's friends, but extend, sometimes, even to—to acquaintances, or to persons, perhaps, whom one does not know. What have I done or not done that suggested in your mind ideas of my responsibility to you?"

Dan shook the fire from his pipe and smiled. "Why, you haven't done a thing or left a thing undone," he said. "I thought the humor of my suggestion would strike you as funny, make you laugh. But it didn't, so I'll be serious. You were decent to me on the Tampico and before; and to-night, I don't know, but the lights and the music and the night and all seemed to have gone into me, and I wanted to talk to a woman—to you—out here in the moonlight, not as we've talked before, but as a man and woman who feel pretty much the same way about many things might talk. This was what I had in mind when I spoke of responsibility. Not an alarming one, would you say?"

The girl gazing out into the darkness did not speak.

"I wanted you to look down at the harbor there and exclaim over the path the moon is cutting from the horizon to that queer little lighthouse on the point; and I wanted you to talk enthusiastic nonsense about the big, soft stars and the cigarette lights under the trees; and I—I just wanted to listen and, of course, agree with all you said."

Dan was smiling as he spoke; but the girl, whose eyes had fallen beneath his steady gaze, was aware that no jest underlay his light words. By no means could she construe what he had said into impertinence, but she did feel he was presuming upon the kindly attention she had paid him.

"Captain Merrithew," she said at length, "I have been thinking. I have been wondering whether I do not think you more inspiring on the bridge of the Tampico , cutting warships in two, or fighting a storm than—"

"Than talking with you in the moonlight?" interpolated Dan.

" About the moonlight," corrected the girl.₀ "If we are to be friends you must not devise responsibilities—unadvisably."

Dan made a slight gesture, as though to assure her she had made her meaning quite clear.

"If we are to be friends, Miss Howland, you must not devise restrictions unadvisably."

Dan was still smiling, and he was speaking easily. But no man had ever spoken to her in that way before. She flushed, and her eyes sparkled angrily as he ceased. Her glance did not disconcert him. He stood looking at her—not masterfully, but with the quiet dignity of conviction. It was plain that if their association were to continue, it must be at the price of something more than the scientific, aloof, touch-and-go interest which had hitherto characterized her attitude toward him.

She must be his friend in all that the term implies. Until to-night, had the alternative been proposed, she would have had no hesitation in deciding, if only because she had no viewpoint other than their relative positions in the past year.

But his words had opened a new perspective. She could see that he might be regarded in a different light, that he already so regarded her. The transformation bewildered her, and when the heated reply died behind her lips and she smiled quiveringly instead, she felt for the first time in her life the thrill which all women, however strong, have when they yield to the dominant personality of a man. She tried to fight back the overpowering, undefinable surge; she succeeded partially. All she could now ask was time to think to recover her equilibrium. She put out her hand involuntarily and touched Dan lightly on the arm.

"Let us not say anything more about it," she said. "Tell me—tell me something about San Blanco."

As she ceased speaking, she turned slowly toward the banquet hall. Dan, following her, complied with what he knew to be a purely perfunctory request, talking in an easy conversational tone.

"I have looked into the history of the country a good bit," said he. "It is quite interesting. They have had just twenty-three presidentes and four dictators, and there have been twelve assassinations. I believe candidates for the office are liable to arrest for attempted suicide—"

The girl paused at the window. She had not been listening. Her eyes, were fastened upon the figure of a man whose skulking form she had made out where the glow of the window almost opposite the speakers' table fell upon the garden. Now she saw him again. He had a gun in his hands and was beginning to kneel.

Breathless and rigid the girl slowly stretched out her hand and touched Dan on the shoulder; with the other she pointed silently at the crouching figure. The gun was now being raised to aim, probably at the Presidente , who was speaking, possibly at Mr. Howland. Dan apprehended the situation at once. In the flash of an eye he was making for the assassin like an antelope. Hearing the approaching footfalls, the man turned his head, and then, with a cry, Virginia saw him arise and shift his weapon toward Dan.

But he was too late. At least ten feet away Dan left his feet and launched himself into one of those old-time tackles which even in Exeter had attracted the eyes of the football authorities of three universities. Hard and straight he went, head to one side, jaws shut tight. Then he struck, one brawny shoulder snapping full into the man's midriff. You have to know how to fall when tackled by a good man. This San Blancan did not. He went down like a falling tower. The gun was discharged in the air with a resounding report and flew into the bushes. The man lay still, gasping. The dinner ended abruptly and in great confusion. Guests poured out of the windows, tables were overturned.

Dan quickly dragged the prostrate man into a clump of mesquite. His first impulse had been to turn him over to the soldiers. But the defiant, if faint murmurs of the patriot, "Long live San Blanco; death to Rodriguez!" bringing back to him his emotions of the morning, caused him to decide differently. He seized the man by the collar.

"Stand up," he said, "you are not hurt; only a bit winded. I guess Rodriguez has had enough heads without yours. You thought you were acting for your country's good; I guess you were, from all I hear."

The man had been looking at the speaker wonderingly, not understanding a word. Dan turned to him impatiently.

"Get out!" he said. He pushed the man, searching his brain for the Spanish equivalent. "What the mischief—oh," he glared at the trembling prisoner. " Vayase Vd! Largo de aqui! "

The poor wretch needed no more. With a quick, smiling gleam of white teeth he bowed, and the next instant was loping through the garden. Dan sauntered slowly toward the hotel. Soldiers acting upon information given by Miss Howland were beating the grounds, and there was much shouting and occasionally a pistol shot.

But the hotel was deserted of the brilliant guests who had filled it but a quarter of an hour before. The spell of darkness lay upon the banquet hall. A few men and women were loitering in the court, awaiting developments. Oddington was there, and another man of the party, but the rest, including the Howlands, had evidently gone to their rooms.

"Miss Howland told us you made rather an interesting tackle, Merrithew," said Oddington as Dan nodded to him. "I am sorry I missed it. Where is your prisoner?"

Dan smiled. "The tackle was so artistic," he said, "that I jarred most of my senses out of me. He got away. Here's his gun," and Dan held up an old-fashioned carbine.

Oddington glanced at the weapon.

"Howland will be sorry you let your man escape, if only because he prevented the carefully prepared speech he had been laboring over. It was pretty nervy of you, although Howland tells me they are all the time potting at Rodriguez and missing him. Still, I should think they would give you the Order of San Blanco."

"I think I can struggle along without it," said Dan. "Good-night."

He turned toward the harbor and the Tampico . The moon had now broken from the clouds which had partially hidden it all evening, and the hotel grounds and the slope leading to the water front were bathed in light. Dan's mood was rather bitter. They might have waited for him, he thought. At least, Miss Howland and her father might have, in view of what had happened. But still, why should they? The old feeling of aloofness filled him, and all the self-assurance which had characterized his attitude with Miss Howland a half-hour before vanished. He was angry with himself for having dared to maintain such an attitude.

He turned to look at the hotel and bowed gravely.

"It seems that one Daniel Merrithew has been forgetting he is a mere steamship captain. He will remember it in future—at all times."

And then he walked slowly to his ship.

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