Ray's Daughter Part 9

"Feller want me take him outside Miowera," was the answer, "him behind warehouse."

"The deuce you say!" exclaimed Stuyvesant, turning about in the stern-sheets and gazing back to sh.o.r.e. "Are there landing-stairs at the warehouse, and is he waiting for you there?"

"Huh," nodded Joe.

"Then here," said Stuyvesant, glancing moon-ward and noting with satisfaction that the luminary was behind a thick bank of clouds. "Turn back and row to the warehouse steps. I want to look at that fellow." So saying, he quickly threw off his uniform coat with its gleaming shoulder-straps and collar device, stowed his forage-cap under the seat, and sat bareheaded and in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves.

Obedient to Joe's powerful strokes, the little boat was speedily gliding in among the shadows of the sailing-s.h.i.+ps moored along the quay, and presently her stern was swung round to a flight of stone steps, and Stuyvesant bounded ash.o.r.e. Over at the boat-landing the electric lights were gleaming and the sound of many voices chaffering over boat-fares was heard. Here among the sheds and warehouses all was silence and darkness, but Stuyvesant unhesitatingly strode straight to the corner of the big building and into the blackness of the westward side, peering right and left in search of the skulker who dared not come to the open dock, yet sought means of reaching the Australian steamer.

For a moment he could distinguish no living object, then paused to listen, and within ten seconds was rewarded. Somewhere close at hand between him and a low shed to his left there was the sound of sudden collision and a muttered oath. Some invisible body had b.u.mped against some invisible box, and, turning sharply, Stuyvesant made a spring, and the next instant had grappled with some burly, powerful form, and was dragging it, despite furious resistance, towards the light.

He was conscious of the sickening odor of sour whiskey, of a volley of mad threats and imprecations, of a stinging blow in the face that only served to make him cling the tighter to his prisoner. Then, as they swayed and struggled to and fro, he felt that he was not gaining ground, and that this unseen ruffian might after all escape him. He lifted up his voice in a mighty shout:

"Police! Police! This way!"

Then he heard a savage oath, a sputtering, savage "Let go, d.a.m.n your soul!" and then felt a sharp, stinging pang in the right side--another--another! and earth and sky reeled as his grasp relaxed, and with a moan of anguish he sank fainting on the dock.

CHAPTER IX.

Vinton's fleet had reached Manila. A third expedition had coaled at Honolulu and gone on its way. More transports were coming, and still there lingered in this lovely land of sun and flowers--lingered for a time 'twixt life and death--Vinton's stricken aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Stuyvesant.

Of his brutal antagonist no trace had been found. The shrill cries of the Kanaka boat-boy, supplementing the young officer's stentorian shout for the police, had brought two or three Hawaiian star-bearers and club-wielders to the scene of that fierce and well-nigh fatal struggle.

All they found was the gallant victim writhing in pain upon the dock, his hand pressed to his side and covered with the blood that poured from his wounds.

It was half an hour before a surgeon reached them, rowed in with the general from the Vanguard. By that time consciousness had fled and, through loss of the vital fluid, Stuyvesant's pulse was well-nigh gone.

They bore him to the Royal Hawaiian, where a cool and comfortable room could be had, and there, early on the following morning, and to the care of local physicians, the general was compelled to leave him.

With the brakeman to aid them, the police searched every nook and corner of the Miowera, and without result. Murray, _alias_ Spence, _alias_ Sackett, fugitive from justice, could not be aboard that s.h.i.+p unless he had burrowed beneath the coal in the bunkers, in which event the stokers promised he should be shovelled into the furnaces as soon as discovered.

Every sailor's lodging in the town was ransacked, but to no purpose: Murray could not be found.

For a fortnight Stuyvesant's fate was in doubt. Officers of the third expedition could carry with them to Manila only the hope that he might recover. Not until the s.h.i.+ps of the fourth flotilla were sighted was the doctor able to say that the chances were now decidedly in his favor.

He was lifted into a reclining chair the day of the flag-raising--that pathetic ceremony in which, through tear-dimmed eyes, the people saw their old and much-loved emblem supplanted by the stars and stripes of their new hope and aspirations. He was sitting up, languid, pallid, and grievously thin, when the tidings reached him that the transport with six troops of the --th Cavalry among others had arrived, and the doctor, with a quizzical grin on his genial face, informed his patient that some Red Cross nurses were with the command, and that two very nice-looking young women, in their official caps, ap.r.o.ns, and badges, were at that moment inquiring at the office if they could not see the invalid officer and be of some service to him.

Sore in body and spirit, wrathful at the fate that robbed him of a share of the glory he felt sure awaited his comrades at Manila, Stuyvesant was in no humor for a joke and plainly showed it. He gave it distinctly to be understood that he needed no coddling of any kind and preferred not to see the ladies, no matter what they belonged to. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Mr. Stuyvesant said he didn't "wish to be bothered,"

and this was practically the reply that reached two very earnest, kind-hearted young women, for the attendant, scenting the possible loss of a big fee if he should be supplanted by superior attractions, communicated the invalid's exact words to the Red Cross nurses, and they went back, wounded, to their s.h.i.+p.

Stuyvesant's room was on the ground-floor in one of the outlying cottages, and its Venetian blinds opened on the broad and breezy veranda. It was far more quiet and retired than apartments in the main building, the rooms overhead being vacant and the occupants of that which adjoined his having left for San Francisco within a day or two of his coming.

"I feel too forlorn to see anybody," was his explanation to the doctor.

"So don't let anybody in." But several officers from the transport got leave to come ash.o.r.e and take quarters at the Hawaiian. The rooms above had to be given to them, and their resounding footsteps made him wince.

"There's two ladies to take this next-door room," said his garrulous attendant that afternoon, and Stuyvesant thought opprobrious things.

"They'll be giggling and talking all night, I suppose," said he disgustedly when the "medico" came in late that afternoon. "I wish you'd move me, if you can't them."

The doctor went and consulted the head of the house. "Certainly," said that affable Boniface. "If Mr. Stuyvesant is well enough to be carried up one flight I can give him a larger, airier room with bath attached, where he'll be entirely isolated. It was too expensive for our visitors from the transports, but--I believe you said Mr. Stuyvesant--wouldn't mind"--a tentative at which the doctor looked wise and sagely winked.

When that able pract.i.tioner returned to the cottage two young women with Red Cross badges were seated on the veranda, just in from a drive, apparently, and a dark-eyed little chap in the uniform of a subaltern of the cavalry was with them. They had drawn their chairs into the shade and close to the Venetian blinds, behind which in his darkened room reclined the languid patient.

"That will drive him simply rabid," said the doctor to himself, and prepared a professional smile with which to tell the glad tidings that he should be borne forthwith to higher regions.

He had left Stuyvesant peevish, fretful, but otherwise inert, asking only to be spared from intrusion. He found him alert, attent, eager, his eyes kindling, his cheeks almost flus.h.i.+ng. The instant the doctor began to speak the patient checked him and bent his ear to the sound of soft voices and laughter from without.

"I've fixed it all," whispered the medical man rea.s.suringly. "We'll move you in a minute--just as soon as I can call in another man or two," and he started for the door, whereat his erratic patient again uplifted a hand and beckoned, and the doctor tip-toed to his side and bent his ear and looked puzzled, perturbed, but finally pleased. Stuyvesant said that, thinking it all over, he "guessed" he would rather stay where he was.

And then, when the doctor was gone, what did he do but take a brace in his chair and bid the attendant go out and say to the officer on the veranda, Lieutenant Ray, that Mr. Stuyvesant would be very glad to speak with him if he'd be so kind as to come in, whereat the soft laughter suddenly ceased.

There was a sound of light footsteps going in one direction and a springy, soldierly step coming in the other. Then entered Mr. Sanford Ray, with outstretched hands, and the attendant, following and peering over his shoulder, marvelled at the sudden change that had come over his master.

Three days later, when the City of Sacramento was p.r.o.nounced ready to proceed, and the officers and Red Cross nurses _en route_ to Manila were warned to rejoin the s.h.i.+p, Lieutenant Stuyvesant "shook," so to speak, his civil physician, persuaded the army surgeons with the fleet that a sea-voyage was all he needed to make a new man of him, and was carried aboard the Sacramento and given an airy stateroom on the upper deck, vacated in his favor by one of the s.h.i.+p's officers,--consideration not made public, but Claus Spreckles & Co., bankers, had never before received such a deposit from this very able seaman in all the years he had been sailing or steaming in and out of Honolulu harbor.

And now retribution overtook the invalid. The Red Cross had made a marvellous name for itself in San Francisco, and was already organized and doing wonders at Honolulu. Its ministrations had been gladly accepted by the scores of officers and men among the volunteers, to whom the somewhat bare and crude conditions of camp hospitals were doubtless very trying. Women of gentlest birth and most refined a.s.sociations donned its badge and dress and wrought in ward, kitchen, or refectory.

It was a n.o.ble and patriotic purpose that inspired such sacrifice.

It was a joy to the embryo soldiery to be fed and comforted day by day with the delicacies of the Red Cross tables; but there were military magnates and martinets who dared to question the wisdom of such preparation for the stern scenes of campaigning ahead of the volunteers, and who presumed to point out to the officers of this great and far-reaching charity that, while they were most grateful for such dainties for the invalids of their command, the daily spectacle of scores of l.u.s.ty, hearty young heroes feasting at the tables of the Red Cross, to the neglect of their own simple but sufficient rations, prompted the query as to what the boys would do without the Red Cross when they got into the field and couldn't have cake and pie and cream with their coffee.

The Red Cross, very properly, took umbrage at such suggestions and branded the suggesters as horrid. The Red Cross had done such widespread good and was ready to do so much more that criticism of its methods was well-nigh unbearable. And now that it had obtained the sanction of the government to send out to Manila not only supplies and dainties of every possible kind, but dozens of its members to serve as nurses to the sick and wounded, it scored a triumph over rival organizations, notably the Patriotic Daughters of America, whose vice-president, the austere Miss Perkins, first bombarded the papers in vain protest and denunciation, the Red Cross being her main objective, and with abuse of the commanding officers in camp; then called in person on the same officers to demand transportation to Manila with the next expedition.

The Red Cross held its head very high, and with reason. It ruffled its feathers and resented any slight. It sometimes mistook courteous protest against its lavish gifts to such soldiers as were in no wise needy as vicious and unhallowed criticism, and occasionally--_only_ occasionally--it grievously enlarged and exaggerated alleged slights received at the hands of luckless officials. And then even those soft and shapely hands could develop cat-like claws, and the soothing voices take on an acid and scathing intonation, and the eyes, so ready to moisten with pity and sympathy at the sight of suffering, could shoot spiteful little fires at the objects of such divine displeasure, and poor Stuyvesant's petulant words, wrung from him in a moment of exasperation and never intended to reach the fair band of sisters of the Cross, were piled high with additions, impolitic, impolite, discourteous, impudent, intolerable, yes, even profane and blasphemous.

Eleven of the twelve Red Cross nurses, packed three in a room aboard the Sacramento, swore they would not have anything to do with Mr.

Stuyvesant. The twelfth, the one soldier's daughter in the band, said nothing at all.

"Well, now, Miss Ray, _don't_ you think it was most discourteous, most ungentlemanly, in him to send such a message?" demanded a flushed and indignant young woman, one of the most energetic of the sisterhood, as they stood together on the promenade deck in the shade of the canvas awnings, shunning the glare of the August sun.

"Are you sure such a message was sent?" was the serious reply.

"Sure? Why, _certainly_ he did! and by his own servant, too!" was the wrathful answer. "Didn't he, Miss Porter?"

And Miss Porter, the damsel appealed to, and one of the two nurses who sent in their message from the office, promptly a.s.sented. Miss Ray looked unconvinced.

"Servants, you know, sometimes deliver messages that were never sent,"

she answered with quiet decision. "We have seen quite a little of that in the army, and it is my father's rule to get all the facts before pa.s.sing judgment. My brother thought Mr. Stuyvesant's attendant garrulous and meddlesome."

"But I asked him if he was sure that was what Mr. Stuyvesant said,"

persisted Miss Porter, bridling, "and he answered they were just the very words."

"And still I doubt his having sent them as a message," said Miss Ray, with slight access of color, and that evening she walked the deck long with a happy subaltern and added to her unpopularity.

There were several well-informed and pleasant women, maids and matrons both, in the little sisterhood, but somehow "the boys" did not show such avidity to walk or chat with them as they did with Miss Ray. She sorely wanted a talk with Sandy that evening, but the Belgic had come in from 'Frisco only six hours before they sailed and huge bags of letters and papers were transferred from her to the Sacramento.

There were letters for Maidie and Sandy both,--several,--but there was one bulky missive for him that she knew to be from her father, from far-away Tampa, and the boy had come down late to dinner. They had seats at the table of the commanding officer, a thing Maidie had really tried to avoid, as she felt that it discriminated, somehow, against the other nurses, who, except Mrs. Doctor Wells, their official head, were distributed about the other tables, but the major had long known and loved her father, and would have it so. This night, their first out from Honolulu, he had ordered wine-gla.s.ses on the long table and champagne served, and when dinner was well-nigh over, noticed for the first time that Ray had turned his gla.s.s down.

"Why, Sandy," he cried impulsively, "it is just twenty-two years ago this summer that your father made the ride of his life through the Indian lines to save Wayne's command on the Cheyenne. Now, there are just twenty-two of us here at table, and I wanted to propose his health and promotion. Won't you join us?"