The steamer ``Santiago,'' carrying ``passengers, bullion, and coffee,'' was headed to pass Porto Rico by midnight, when she would be free of land until she anchored at the quarantine station of the green hills of Staten Island.She had not yet shaken off the contamination of the earth; a soft inland breeze still tantalized her with odors of tree and soil, the smell of the fresh coat of paint that had followed her coaling rose from her sides, and the odor of spilt coffee-grains that hung around the hatches had yet to be blown away by a jealous ocean breeze, or washed by a welcoming cross sea.
The captain stopped at the open entrance of the Social Hall.
``If any of you ladies want to take your last look at Olancho you've got to come now,'' he said.``We'll lose the Valencia light in the next quarter hour.''
Miss Langham and King looked up from their novels and smiled, and Miss Langham shook her head.``I've taken three final farewells of Olancho already,'' she said: ``before we went down to dinner, and when the sun set, and when the moon rose.I have no more sentiment left to draw on.Do you want to go?'' she asked.
``I'm very comfortable, thank you,'' King said, and returned to the consideration of his novel.
But Clay and Hope arose at the captain's suggestion with suspicious alacrity, and stepped out upon the empty deck, and into the encompassing darkness, with a little sigh of relief.
Alice Langham looked after them somewhat wistfully and bit the edges of her book.She sat for some time with her brows knitted, glancing occasionally and critically toward King and up with unseeing eyes at the swinging lamps of the saloon.He caught her looking at him once when he raised his eyes as he turned a page, and smiled back at her, and she nodded pleasantly and bent her head over her reading.She assured herself that after all King understood her and she him, and that if they never rose to certain heights, they never sank below a high level of mutual esteem, and that perhaps was the best in the end.
King had placed his yacht at the disposal of Madame Alvarez, and she had sailed to Colon, where she could change to the steamers for Lisbon, while he accompanied the Langhams and the wedding party to New York.
Clay recognized that the time had now arrived in his life when he could graduate from the position of manager-director and become the engineering expert, and that his services in Olancho were no longer needed.
With Rojas in power Mr.Langham had nothing further to fear from the Government, and with Kirkland in charge and young Langham returning after a few months' absence to resume his work, he felt himself free to enjoy his holiday.
They had taken the first steamer out, and the combined efforts of all had been necessary to prevail upon MacWilliams to accompany them; and even now the fact that he was to act as Clay's best man and, as Langham assured him cheerfully, was to wear a frock coat and see his name in all the papers, brought on such sudden panics of fear that the fast-fading coast line filled his soul with regret, and a wilful desire to jump overboard and swim back.
Clay and Hope stopped at the door of the chief engineer's cabin and said they had come to pay him a visit.The chief had but just come from the depths where the contamination of the earth was most evident in the condition of his stokers; but his chin was now cleanly shaven, and his pipe was drawing as well as his engine fires, and he had wrapped himself in an old P.& O.white duck jacket to show what he had been before he sank to the level of a coasting steamer.They admired the clerk-like neatness of the report he had just finished, and in return he promised them the fastest run on record, and showed them the portrait of his wife, and of their tiny cottage on the Isle of Wight, and his jade idols from Corea, and carved cocoanut gourds from Brazil, and a picture from the ``Graphic'' of Lord Salisbury, tacked to the partition and looking delightedly down between two highly colored lithographs of Miss Ellen Terry and the Princess May.
Then they called upon the captain, and Clay asked him why captains always hung so much lace about their beds when they invariably slept on a red velvet sofa with their boots on, and the captain ordered his Chinese steward to mix them a queer drink and offered them the choice of a six months' accumulation of paper novels, and free admittance to his bridge at all hours.
And then they passed on to the door of the smoking-room and beckoned MacWilliams to come out and join them.His manner as he did so bristled with importance, and he drew them eagerly to the rail.
``I've just been having a chat with Captain Burke,'' he said, in an undertone.``He's been telling Langham and me about a new game that's better than running railroads.He says there's a country called Macedonia that's got a native prince who wants to be free from Turkey, and the Turks won't let him, and Burke says if we'll each put up a thousand dollars, he'll guarantee to get the prince free in six months.He's made an estimate of the cost and submitted it to the Russian Embassy at Washington, and he says they will help him secretly, and he knows a man who has just patented a new rifle, and who will supply him with a thousand of them for the sake of the advertisement.He says it's a mountainous country, and all you have to do is to stand on the passes and roll rocks down on the Turks as they come in.It sounds easy, doesn't it?''
``Then you're thinking of turning professional filibuster yourself?'' said Clay.