The Buccaneer Farmer Part 18

Osborn looked at him with frank surprise. Then he said, "We'll make an end," and turned to Kit. "If you speak to my daughter again, she will be forbidden to leave the Tarnside grounds; if you write to her, your letter will be burned. She cannot resist my control for the next three or four years. There's nothing more to be said."

He went out and Peter, who walked to the porch with him, came back and looked quietly at Kit.

"A proud and foolish man, but he's. .h.i.t hard!" he said. "Mayhappen it will hurt, my lad, but you must be done wi' this. Osborn's daughter is none for you."

Kit looked straight in front, with his hands clenched. "So it seems, for some years. It does hurt. I cannot give her up."

Peter lighted his pipe and there was silence for a few minutes. Then as Kit did not move he remarked: "I ken something o' what you're feeling; aw t' same you've got to fratch. There's nowt against the la.s.s except that she's...o...b..rn's child, but she's none o' our kind and it's sense and custom that like gans to like."

"It would be easier if I could get away. I can't stop in the dale, knowing she's about and I mustn't see her."

Peter went into the next room and opened an old desk. He had for some time expected that the moment he now shrank from would come and his heart was sore, but he knew his son's steadfast character and meant to save him pain. Going back he gave Kit his brother's last letter.

"Mayhappen it's better that you should gan," he said quietly.

Kit read the letter and looked up with a strained expression. "I never thought I'd want to leave Ashness and I feel a selfish brute! All the same it would be a relief."

"Just that!" said Peter. "I'll miss you when you've gone, but it's no'

my part to stand in your way. We'll write Adam to-morrow and tell him you'll come."

Kit crossed the floor and put his hand on his father's arm. "Thanks; I think I know what this means to you. It will cost me something; but I must go."

He went out and Peter sat still, looking gloomily at the fire. He felt old and knew he would be very lonely soon. The fire burned low and the kitchen got cold, but Kit did not come back and when Peter heard his housekeeper's clogs on the stones outside he got up and crossed the floor, to get his hat. Old Bella was curious and he did not want to talk, but there was something to be done in the barn and when his heart was sore it was a relief to work.

PART II--ON THE CARIBBEAN

CHAPTER I

THE OLD BUCCANEER

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and Kit Askew lounged in a chair on the bridge-deck as the _Rio Negro_ steamed slowly across the long swell of the Caribbean. The wrinkled undulations sparkled with reflected light in a dazzling pattern of blue and silver, and then faded to green and purple in the shadow of the s.h.i.+p. A wave of snowy foam curled up as the bows went down and the throb of the propeller quickened as the p.o.o.p swung against the sky. Then the lurching hull steadied and the clang of engines resumed its measured beat.

The _Rio Negro_ was old and ugly, with short iron masts from which clumsy derricks hung, tall, upright funnel, and blistered, gray paint. Her boats were dirty and stained by soot, and a belt of rust at her waterline hinted at neglect, but no barnacles and weed marred the smoothness of the plates below. Her antifouling paint was clean, and her lines beneath the swell of quarter and bows were fine. In fact, the _Rio Negro_ was faster than she looked when she carried her regular load of two thousand tons and her under-water body was hidden. She traded in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and at certain ports Customs officials carefully scrutinized her papers. At others, they smiled and allowed her captain privileges that strangers did not get.

Kit wore spotless white clothes, a black-silk belt, and a Panama hat of the expensive kind the Indians weave, holding the fine material under water. A gla.s.s occupied a socket in his chair, and when the _Rio Negro_ rolled a lump of ice tinkled against its rim; a box of choice cigars lay on the deck. Kit, however, was not smoking, but drowsily pondered the life he had led for the last three years. He was thinner and looked older than when he left Ashness. He had lost something of his frankness and his raw enthusiasm had gone. His face was quieter and his mouth set in a firm line.

He remembered his surprise when he first met his uncle at a luxurious Florida hotel. Adam Askew wore loose white clothes, a well-cut Tuxedo jacket, a diamond ring, and another big diamond in his scarf. His skin was a curious yellowish brown and his eyes were very black; he rather looked like a Spanish Creole than an Englishman. He had nothing of his brother's quiet manner. Although he was getting old, he walked with a jaunty step; he had a humorous twinkle, and his laugh was careless. In fact, he had an exotic, romantic look that harmonized with Kit's notions of the pirates who once haunted the Gulf of Mexico. When Kit afterwards learned why Adam's friends called him the "buccaneer," he saw that his first impression was not extravagant.

Now he remembered that when they sat behind the imitation Moorish arches on the hotel veranda Adam studied him and laughed.

"You're certainly Peter's son," he remarked. "I can imagine I'd just left him at the end of the Ashness lonning thirty years since. Except that he's got older, I reckon he hasn't changed, and for that matter, Peter was never young. Well, you are surely like him, but if you stop in this country we'll put a move on you."

"If I'm like my father, I am satisfied," Kit rejoined.

Adam's black eyes twinkled. "Now I see a difference; there's red blood in you. But don't take me wrong. Peter's a white man, straight as a plumb-line, one of the best; he's a year the younger of us, but when the old man died he brought me up. There are two kinds of Askews and I belong to the other lot. I don't know why they called you after roystering Kit."

It was obvious that Adam knew the family history, for Christopher Askew was a turbulent Jacobite who lost the most part of his estate when he joined Prince Charlie's starving Highlanders in the rearguard fight at Clifton Moor. Afterwards the sober quietness at Ashness had now and then been disturbed by an Askew who inherited the first Kit's reckless temperament.

Three years had gone since Kit met Adam, and he had learned much. To begin with, Adam sent him to an American business school, and made him study Castilian and French. Then he sent him to Mexico and countries farther south, where he studied human nature of strangely varied kinds.

He met and traded with men of many colors: French and Spanish Creoles, negroes, Indians, and half-breeds with some of the blood of all. He knew the American gulf ports and their cosmopolitan hotels and gambling saloons, but Adam noted with half-amused approval that while he was not at all a prig he developed Peter's character and not Kit the Jacobite's.

Now they were going south across the Caribbean on a business venture.

By and by Adam came slowly along the bridge-deck. The three years had marked a change in him and Kit thought he did not look well. Adam suffered now and then from malarial ague, caught in the mangrove swamps.

He was thin, his yellow face was haggard, and his shoulders were bent.

Sitting down close by, he lighted a cigar and turned to Kit.

"We ought to raise the coast before it's dark and I reckon Mayne will get his bearings," he remarked. "The lagoon's a blamed awkward place to enter and I'd have waited until to-morrow only that Don Hernando is expecting us."

"It will save us a day if we can get in, since you want to land the B. F.

cargo in the dark," Kit said thoughtfully. "We pay high wages and the _Rio Negro_ is an expensive boat to run."

"That's so," Adam agreed with a smile. "You talk like a c.u.mberland flock-master. Counting every cent you spend is a safe plan, but I don't know that this trip will pan out much of a business proposition."

"Do you feel better for your sleep?" Kit asked.

"Some, though I've got a headache and a pain in my back. Guess they'll shake off when I get to work."

"I was surprised when you said you meant to sail with us."

"So I imagined," Adam rejoined dryly. "You wondered why I didn't, as usual, trust you to deliver the goods? Well, there's rather more to this job than that, and I meant to put you wise before we landed. You have heard me called a pirate, but I don't reckon on taking home much plunder now."

Kit mused while Adam beckoned a mulatto steward, who brought him a gla.s.s and some ice. His uncle's character was complex. Sometimes he was hard and exacted all that was his; sometimes he was rashly generous.

Ostensibly, he was a merchant, s.h.i.+pping tools and machines, particularly supplies for sugar mills, to the countries round the Caribbean, and taking payment in native produce. Kit, however, knew the cases landed from the _Rio Negro_ did not always hold the goods the labels stated, and that Adam's money sometimes helped to float an unpopular government over a crisis and sometimes to turn another out. It was a risky business, carried on with people who had a talent for dark revolutionary intrigue.

"Since Don Hernando Alvarez is president of the republic, I don't quite see why we need smuggle in his machine-guns," Kit remarked.

"On the surface, the reason isn't very obvious. Alvarez is president now, but mayn't be very long. It depends on whether he or his rival, Galdar, gets his blow in first. I reckon the chances are against Alvarez if Galdar puts up a fight, but the latter's not ready yet and Alvarez means to arm his troops before the fellow knows. I imagine about half the citizens are plotters and spies."

"Alvarez has been honest so far. I suppose if he wins he'll pay?"

"That's so," said Adam dryly. "If he goes down, we get nothing. Although I don't know much about his ancestors and suspect that one was an Indian, Alvarez is white, but the other fellow's a blamed poor sample of the half-breed n.i.g.g.e.r. Well, when Alvarez found things were going wrong, he sent for me."

"Ah," said Kit in a thoughtful voice, "I begin to understand."

He did understand, although he would not have done so when he met his uncle first. He had known Adam play the part of a merciless creditor, and thought few men could beat him at a bargain, but he kept his bargain when it was made, and now and then risked his money on lost causes. It looked as if he had inherited something from Christopher the Jacobite.

"You have known Alvarez long, haven't you?" Kit resumed.

"When I met him first, he was a customs officer with some perquisites and a salary that paid for liquor and tobacco. Vanhuyten and I ran the old _Mercedes_ then, and Van made a mistake that put us at the fellow's mercy. There was a good case for confiscating the schooner, which would have given Alvarez a lift while we went broke. In fact, the night of the crisis, I dropped Van's pistol overboard; he'd got malaria badly and was feeling desperate. Well, all we had given Alvarez didn't cover that kind of a job, but he'd promised to stand our friend and kept his word like a gentleman. Guess it needed some nerve and judgment to work things the way he did, and when we stole out to sea at daybreak past the port guard, I knew there was one man in the rotten country I could trust with my life.

Now he's in a tight place, he knows he can trust me."

Adam got up and crossing the deck leaned against the rails. In the distance, where the glitter faded, there was a long gray smear that seemed to float like a smoke-trail above the water. Higher up, a vague blue line ran across the dazzling sky. The first was a fringe of mangrove forest; the other lofty mountains. A minute or two later, the fat, brown-faced captain came down from his bridge.