“Den I look again. Undt den I see vy oldt man Abbott lies so still on der edge of der rock. Der face of der man on der spar vos der face of his son Harry! Undt oldt man Abbott is deadt.
“Der ship dot der oldt man, in some mysterious vay, heardt drive to her death on der rocks, vos his son’s ship, der vun on vich he vos making his homevard voyage. Vell, for a day I stay on der rock midt der dead fadder undt der deadt son, undt den der relief ship come. Dey bury der oldt man undt der boy side py side der next day, undt I leave dot part of der country; undt since den I nefer see a lighdthouse budt I dink of oldt man Abbott undt der homevard bound son he never saw.”
Not long after the conclusion of the old sailor’s story, which left him glum and taciturn, the white spiral of the Sombrero Island Light came into view, sticking up like a finger on the sandy islet whose name it bore. As they drew closer, Jack could make out a solitary figure on the beach. It was the light keeper, who was soon greeting them with heartfelt gratitude. He was probably a young man, but the anxiety he had been through had aged him in a few nights.
While the sailors were unloading the provisions and water, for drinking water on that desolate island could only be caught in tanks when it rained, Jack visited the other light keeper. He found him much better than he had been when the wireless message was sent out. In fact, after some of the remedies Dr. Flynn had sent had been administered, he declared he would be strong enough to go about his duty that night.
The light keepers explained that they were doubly anxious for a sight of the relief ship, for her appearance meant that they would go on a month’s vacation, their places to be taken by two other men the relief craft was bringing out. Before they left the island, Jack had the satisfaction of spying a distant sail on the horizon. The light keeper, who was up and about, scrutinized it through his glass. He broke into an exclamation of thankfulness the next minute.
“It’s the old Solitaire, sure enough!” he cried. “She must have been delayed by storms.”
“Looks as if one of der top masdts, idt has been carried avay,” declared Schultz, who had borrowed the glass.
“Is the Solitaire the relief ship?” asked Jack.
“Yes; the same old schooner that always comes. Oh, won’t Barney be glad! It’ll be better to him than medicine.” And the keeper of the light ran toward the tower to tell his companion the good news.
And so, as they rowed back to the ship, they left the light keepers happy, but nevertheless old Schultz shook his head as he spoke of them.
“Aber, I’d radder pe a sea-cook dan a keeper py a lighdthouse,” he said with deep conviction; and added, nodding his head solemnly, “I know.”
CHAPTER XXII – A DECOY MESSAGE
The following days passed quickly and pleasantly. The friendship between De Garros and Jack ripened, being nourished, of course, by their mutual interest in wireless, of which De Garros was a capable exponent. He did not revert again to the subject of any previous acquaintance with Jarrold and his niece and, seeing his reticence concerning it, Jack avoided the topic.
At last Jamaica was sighted on the horizon. Some hours later they were steaming through a deep blue sea along brilliantly green shores, above which rose rugged peaks and mountains. Jack and Sam gazed with delight at the scene as it unrolled.
The big steamer slowly rounded the long, sandy arm of Port Royal and took on the black pilot. Then she proceeded up the harbor, following a twisted, tortuous channel, past mangrove swamps, ruined batteries and rankly growing royal palms.
As soon as the ship had docked, Jack and Sam both received leave to go ashore. As may be imagined, they did not waste much time on preparations, but were on the deck almost as soon as the gang-plank was down. Most of the passengers followed their example, and as but few of the ship’s company were leaving the Tropic Queen at Kingston, the quaint town, with its cement stores and hotels, its dusty streets and swarming negroes, was soon thronged with sightseers.
Jack and Sam chartered one of the hacks that are everywhere present in the town, and ordered the driver to show them about the city. They found that while the main town was businesslike and substantial with its concrete structures and stores, the back streets still showed abundant evidences of the earthquake, which some years ago shook down most of the city and caused a tremendous loss of life.
Some of the houses looked as if they had been shell-ridden. The roofs had fallen in, showing the bare rafters. Walls were cracked, and in some places the entire front was out of a house, revealing the interior of the bare rooms.
“I don’t see very much that is interesting here,” said Jack at length. “Suppose we go back to the hotel that was recommended to us?”
“I’m agreeable,” said Sam. “So far, my chief impression of Kingston is dust and noisy niggers.”
The order was given to the black driver, and they were soon rolling back to the hotel that Jack had mentioned. It was a picturesque structure in the Spanish style of architecture, which harmonized well with the tropic gardens surrounding it. Passing through the lobby, where they stopped to buy postcards, the boys found themselves in a palm grove facing the blue waters of the harbor.
A delightful breeze rustled through the palms and the boys contentedly threw themselves into chairs and ordered two lemonades. They sipped them slowly while they enjoyed the view and the shade. Many others from the ship had found their way there, too. Among them was Colonel Minturn with a party of friends.
He passed the boys with a friendly nod. He had hardly gone by, when Jack, who had happened to look around, gave a start.
Standing behind a palm and watching the Minturn party intently, was Jarrold. The trunk of the tree afforded him ample protection from the observation of the man he was watching with an unwavering scrutiny.
Apparently he had not seen the boys. Jack nudged Sam and gave him a whispered warning not to turn around.
“Jarrold is there, watching Colonel Minturn. He is plotting some mischief. I am sure of it.”
“Wherever he is, there is trouble,” agreed Sam.
“That’s just where you are right,” replied Jack.
“Is his pretty niece with him?” inquired Jack’s companion.
“I don’t see her. By the way, I wonder where De Garros met them. Queer that, although they know each other, as De Garros admits, they never speak.”
“They probably met abroad somewhere,” hazarded Sam.
“I suppose so,” was the reply, and then the talk drifted to other subjects. But Jack had shifted his chair so as to watch Jarrold without appearing to do so. Before long, the man turned and strolled in the direction of a terrace which opened on the palm garden.
Jack half rose from his chair as if he intended to follow him.
“What’s the trouble?” asked Sam.
“I don’t mean to let Jarrold out of my sight, that’s all,” said Jack. “But look! He has stopped. He is talking to someone. That chap in a sun helmet. I can’t see his face, but somehow he looks mighty familiar to me.”
The young man who had joined Jarrold strolled along the terrace with him till they both found chairs. Then they sat down and seemed to be engaged in earnest conversation. The stranger, who yet seemed familiar to Jack, had his back turned to them so that it was impossible to see his features.
At length they arose, shook hands as if they had come to an agreement on some matter, and parted. Jarrold came into the garden and took a seat at a table. He scowled heavily at the boys as he passed them, but gave no other sign of recognition. Suddenly Jack rose to his feet.
“I’m a fine chump!” he exclaimed. “I ought to have brought my camera along. Hanged if I didn’t forget it!”
“Why don’t you go back to the ship for it?” asked Sam. “It’s not very far. You can get there and back in twenty minutes or less if you drive.”
“That part of it is all right. But I hate to leave His Nibs, there, unwatched.”
“Oh, as for that, I’ll take care of him till you get back,” Sam promised.
“Bully for you! Then I’ll go. And say – ”
But at that moment a page came into the garden. He was calling for “Mr. Ready.”
“Means me, I guess,” laughed Jack, “although it sounds new to be called ‘Mr. Ready.’ What do you want?” he asked, stopping the boy.
“You are Mr. Ready? All right then, there’s a telephone message for you. You’re wanted back on the ship as soon as possible.”
“That’s a funny coincidence,” murmured Jack; “just as I was ready to go, too.”
As the page hurried off, Jack turned to Sam:
“I can’t think what they can want me for; still, orders are orders. You stay here and watch His Nibs yonder, then, Sam, till I get back. If he goes anywhere, follow him, but don’t take any chances. He’s got no great love for either of us, I fancy.”
“Well, I guess not, after the pummeling you gave him,” laughed Sam.
Jack hurried off. Orders were orders, and although he could not imagine what he could be wanted for on board the Tropic Queen, he knew that it was his duty to obey at once. But, to his astonishment, when he reached the ship he found that there had been no message for him so far as anybody knew. All the ship’s officers were ashore and the ship deserted, except for the crew unloading the bulky cargo, while black stevedores sung and swore and steam winches rattled and roared to the accompaniment of the harsh screaming of the bos’n’s pipe.
A good deal puzzled, Jack was retracing his steps to the hotel and the pleasant coolness of the garden, when he was suddenly accosted by a young man who stepped from around the corner of a building.
“Hello there, Jack Ready! Well, if I’m not glad to see you!”
It was Ralph Cummings, the operator whose place had been taken by Sam Smalley on Jack’s recommendation.
CHAPTER XXIII – FALSE FRIENDSHIP
Jack had no great liking for Cummings. In fact, at the time the latter lost his job on the Tropic Queen, he had left in a rage, swearing that he would “get even.”
But now he held out his hand with a frank smile, or one that was intended to be frank but was not, for Cummings hadn’t that kind of a face. He was about Jack’s age, with sandy hair, low, rather receding forehead and shifty, light eyes that had a habit of looking on the ground when he spoke.
“Well, well, Ready,” he exclaimed. “It’s good to see a face from home.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, “but if I recollect rightly you were not so crazy about seeing me again, the last time we met.”
He instinctively distrusted this fellow. There was something assumed, something that did not ring true about his apparent heartiness.
“Oh, come now, Ready, here we are thousands of miles from home and you’re still holding that old grudge against me! Shake hands, man, and forget it.”
Jack began to feel rather ashamed of his brusqueness. After all, Cummings might be more unfortunate in manner than intentionally unpleasant.
“That’s all right, Cummings,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m glad to see you, too. Here on a ship?”
“Yes, a small one, though. Not a liner like the Tropic Queen, but it was the best I could get.”
Jack felt a twinge of remorse. Cummings said this uncomplainingly and yet with an emphasis that made Jack feel uncomfortable. The man was incompetent, it was true, but still, Jack almost began to think that he ought to have given him another chance.
“When did you get in?” pursued Cummings.
“This morning. We’ll lie here two days, I guess. We’ve got a big cargo.”
“Is that so? Well, I hope we’ll see a lot of each other.”
“I hope so, too,” said Jack, without, however, very much cordiality.
“Well, come and have a drink before you go,” suggested Cummings.
“Thanks, but I never drink. I think it would be better for you, too, Cummings, if you did not touch liquor.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that. I wanted you to try some cola. It’s a native drink. They make it here. It’s very cool and nice.”
Jack had been walking fast and was hot. The idea appealed to his thirsty, dust-filled throat.
“All right, Cummings. Where do you go?” he said.
“Down here. We could get it at a soda fountain in the drug store yonder; but it’s better in the native quarter right down this street.”
He motioned down the side street from which he had emerged when Jack encountered him.
“All right; but I can’t stay long. I’ve got a friend waiting for me.”
“That’s all right,” Cummings assured him. “It’s not more than a block and you can take a short cut back to the hotel to save time.”
They walked down a curious narrow street with high-walled gardens on either side. Over the tops of the walls, in some places, great creepers straggled, spangled with gorgeous red and purple flowers. In other spots, drooping above the walls could be seen the giant fronds of banana plants, or tenuous palm tree tops.
Cummings stopped in front of a plaster house, badly cracked by the earthquake.
“Right in here,” he said.
Jack followed him into the dark, cool interior. After the blinding glare of the sun outside, it was hard at first to make out the surroundings. But Jack’s eyes soon became accustomed to the gloom, and he saw that they were in a small room with a polished floor and that two or three chairs and tables were scattered about.
An old negro woman of hideous appearance, with one eye and two solitary teeth gleaming out of her sooty, black face, shuffled in. She wore a calico dress and a red bandana handkerchief and was smoking a home-made cigar.
Cummings, who seemed quite at home in the place, greeted her as Mother Jenny. He ordered “two colas.”
“Great place this, eh?” said Cummings with easy familiarity, leaning back. “You know I’ve made several voyages to the tropics, and when I’m in Kingston I always like to come in here. There’s a sort of local color about it.”
“And a lot of local dirt, too,” commented Jack, rather disgustedly sniffing at the atmosphere, which was an odd combination of stale tobacco smoke, mustiness and a peculiar odor inseparable from the native quarters of tropical cities.
However, the cola, when it arrived, quite made up for all these deficiencies. It was served in carved calabashes and tasted like a sort of sublimated soda pop.
“Great stuff, eh?” said Cummings, gulping his with great relish.
“It is good,” admitted Jack. “You’d be a lot better off, Cummings, if you only drank this sort of stuff.”
“Now don’t preach, Ready,” was the rejoinder. “You can’t be a man and not drink liquor.”
“That might have been true a hundred years ago, but it certainly isn’t to-day,” retorted Jack. “The great corporations won’t hire men who drink. It’s gone out of date. The man who drinks is putting himself on the toboggan slide.”
“Say, you ought to have been in the Salvation Army,” said Cummings, with what amounted to a veiled sneer.
Strangely enough Jack did not resent this. His head felt very heavy suddenly. The bright patch of sunlight outside began to sway and waver queerly.
“I – I don’t feel very well,” he said presently in a feeble tone.
“Must be the sun,” said Cummings. “I’d better call a hack and take you to the hotel. The sun often effects newcomers like that.”
“I wish you’d get a rig,” said Jack feebly, preventing himself from falling forward on the table only by a rigid effort.
Cummings jumped to his feet and hurried from the place.
“That native stuff worked quicker than I thought,” he muttered. “Now to get a rig and meet Jarrold. I guess he’ll think I’ve done a good job. Anyhow, I’m getting square on that conceited young fool for losing me my position.”
CHAPTER XXIV – KIDNAPPED
A rig was passing and Cummings hailed the driver.
“There’s a sick man in here and I want you to give me a hand to get him out, and drive where I tell you,” he said. “You’ll be paid well if you don’t ask questions.”
“Dere’s been berry many sick mans come out’n Mother Jenny’s,” volunteered the man with a grin as he pulled up his aged horse.
“You just keep your mouth shut. That’s all I want you to do,” said Cummings with a scowl.
“Oh, berry well, Busha,” said the black with a grin.
“Wait here, I’ll be out in a minute,” said Ralph Cummings. He hurried back into the unsavory interior of the place and presently issued again, supporting Jack, who was reeling and swaying from side to side and who gazed about him with a vacant expression.
It was at this moment that a dapper little man came hastening along the street.
“Good gracious, can it be possible that that is Jack Ready in such a condition?” he exclaimed. “Being led out of a low dram shop! It’s incredible! I’d not believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
He bustled up to Cummings, who was just putting Jack into the cab, where the young wireless boy collapsed, breathing heavily and rolling his eyes stupidly about.
“My friend, pardon me,” he exclaimed, addressing Cummings, “but my name is De Garros. I am a friend of this young man’s from the Tropic Queen. In fact I owe my life to him. Is he ill?”
“Ill nothing! He’s just taken a drop too much. Sea-faring men often do.”
De Garros threw up his hands in horror.
“I would never have believed it,” he cried incredulously; “yet it must be true! Ready, are you ill?”
Jack mumbled something incoherently in rejoinder. De Garros looked his disgust.
“What did I tell you?” sneered Cummings. “I’m taking him to a hotel. He’ll be all right in a few hours.”
“I am glad he has a friend to take care of him,” declared the dapper little aviator, and he hurried on, shaking his head over the intemperance which he had been led by Cummings to believe was the cause of Jack’s plight.
“That’s another spoke in your wheel, my lad,” muttered Cummings as he got in beside the now senseless youth. “I don’t know who your friend is, but he won’t think much of you after this, if, indeed, he ever sees you again.”
He leaned forward and gave a direction to the driver.
“Drive out along the Castle Road,” he said, mentioning an unfrequented road that led to the outskirts of Kingston.
The darky nodded. All these queer proceedings were none of his business. Their road led through the negro quarter of the town and they passed hardly a white face. Such negroes as they encountered merely stared stolidly at the white-faced, reeling youth seated at Cummings’ side.
By and by the houses began to thin out. Then, in the distance, down the dusty road, they came in view of an automobile halted at the roadside.
“Stop at that car,” ordered Cummings.
“At dat mobolbubbul?” asked the black.
“That’s what I said, you inky-faced idiot,” snapped Cummings.
“My, my, dayt am a nice gen’mums, fo’ sho’,” muttered the old darky. “Ah don’ jes’ lak de looks ob dese circumloquoshons nohow, an’ Ah am goin’ ter keep mah eyes wide open. Yes, sah, jes’ dat berry ting.”
By the side of the halted car stood Jarrold. He wore a broad Panama hat and a long white dust coat.
“Well, you got him, I see,” said Jarrold, with an evil grin that showed all his tusk-like teeth, as the darky’s rickety old vehicle came to a halt.
“Yes, it was like taking candy from a child,” responded Cummings. “Now if you’ll just give me a lift in with him, governor, we’ll get started.”
Between them, the two rascals half pushed, half carried Jack’s limp form into the back of the auto. Jarrold dug down into his pockets.
“This is the right road for the Lion’s Mouth, isn’t it?” he demanded of the darky. “It’s years since I was there and I’ve forgotten much about it.”
The black looked at him with dropping jaw.
“De Lion’s Mouf out by der ole castle, Busha?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” was the impatient response. “This is the right road?”
“Oh, yas, sah, yas, sah,” sputtered the driver.
Jarrold gave him a big bill and told him to “keep his mouth shut with that.” The darky looked at the bill and his eyes rolled with astonishment.
“Dere’s suthin’ wrong hyer,” he muttered as he climbed into his rickety old rig and prepared to drive back to town. “Hones’ folks wouldn’ give ole Black Strap dat amoun’ uv money fo’ dat lilly bitty ride ’less dey was suthin’ fishy. Reckon Ah’ll do some ’vestigatin’ when Ah gits back to der town.”
In the meantime, Jarrold had taken the driver’s seat of the car and Cummings sat beside him. In a cloud of dust they started down the road, the old darky gazing after them till long after they had passed out of sight.
Then he whipped up his bony old nag to its best speed and hurried back to Kingston.