Hearts of Three 7

Hearts of Three 7

“You told me you were a Morgan,” the stranger said. “I am a Morgan. That

man on the wall fathered my breed. Your breed?”

 

“The old buccaneer’s,” Francis returned. “My first name is Francis. And

yours?”

 

“Henry—straight from the original. We must be remote cousins or

something or other. I’m after the foxy old niggardly old Welshman’s

loot.”

 

“So’m I,” said Francis, extending his hand. “But to hell with sharing.”

 

“The old blood talks in you,” Henry smiled approbation. “For him to have

who finds. I’ve turned most of this island upside down in the last six

months, and all I’ve found are these old duds. I’m with you to beat you

if I can, but to put my back against the mainmast with you any time the

needed call goes out.”

 

“That song’s a wonder,” Francis urged. “I want to learn it. Lift the

stave again.”

 

And together, clanking their mugs, they sang:

 

“Back to back against the mainmast,

Held at bay the entire crew....”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

 

But a splitting headache put a stop to Francis’ singing and made him

glad to be swung in a cool hammock by Henry, who rowed off to the

_Angelique_ with orders from his visitor to the skipper to stay at

anchor but not to permit any of his sailors to land on the Calf. Not

until late in the morning of the following day, after hours of heavy

sleep, did Francis get on his feet and announce that his head was clear

again.

 

“I know what it is—got bucked off a horse once,” his strange relative

sympathised, as he poured him a huge cup of fragrant black coffee.

“Drink that down. It will make a new man of you. Can’t offer you much

for breakfast except bacon, sea biscuit, and some scrambled turtle eggs.

They’re fresh. I guarantee that, for I dug them out this morning while

you slept.”

 

“That coffee is a meal in itself,” Francis praised, meanwhile studying

his kinsman and ever and anon glancing at the portrait of their

relative.

 

“You’re just like him, and in more than mere looks,” Henry laughed,

catching him in his scrutiny. “When you refused to share yesterday, it

was old Sir Henry to the life. He had a deep-seated antipathy against

sharing, even with his own crews. It’s what caused most of his troubles.

And he’s certainly never shared a penny of his treasure with any of his

descendants. Now I’m different. Not only will I share the Calf with you;

but I’ll present you with my half as well, lock, stock, and barrel, this

grass hut, all these nice furnishings, tenements, hereditaments, and

everything, and what’s left of the turtle eggs. When do you want to move

in?”

 

“You mean...?” Francis asked.

 

“Just that. There’s nothing here. I’ve just about dug the island upside

down and all I found was the chest there full of old clothes.”

 

“It must have encouraged you.”

 

“Mightily. I thought I had a hammerlock on it. At any rate, it showed

I’m on the right track.”

 

“What’s the matter with trying the Bull?” Francis queried.

 

“That’s my idea right now,” was the answer, “though I’ve got another

clue for over on the mainland. Those old-timers had a way of noting down

their latitude and longitude whole degrees out of the way.”

 

“Ten North and Ninety East on the chart might mean Twelve North and

Ninety-two East,” Francis concurred. “Then again it might mean Eight

North and Eighty-eight East. They carried the correction in their heads,

and if they died unexpectedly, which was their custom, it seems, the

secret died with them.”

 

“I’ve half a notion to go over to the Bull and chase those

turtle-catchers back to the mainland,” Henry went on. “And then again

I’d almost like to tackle the mainland clue first. I suppose you’ve got

a stock of clues, too?”

 

“Sure thing,” Francis nodded. “But say, I’d like to take back what I

said about not sharing.”

 

“Say the word,” the other encouraged.

 

“Then I do say it.”

 

Their hands extended and gripped in ratification.

 

“Morgan and Morgan strictly limited,” chortled Francis.

 

“Assets, the whole Caribbean Sea, the Spanish Main, most of Central

America, one chest full of perfectly no good old clothes, and a lot of

holes in the ground,” Henry joined in the other’s humor. “Liabilities,

snake-bite, thieving Indians, malaria, yellow fever——”

 

“And pretty girls with a habit of kissing total strangers one moment,

and of sticking up said total strangers with shiny silver revolvers the

next moment,” Francis cut in. “Let me tell you about it. Day before

yesterday, I rowed ashore over on the mainland. The moment I landed, the

prettiest girl in the world pounced out upon me and dragged me away into

the jungle. Thought she was going to eat me or marry me. I didn’t know

which. And before I could find out, what’s the pretty damsel do but pass

uncomplimentary remarks on my mustache and chase me back to the boat

with a revolver. Told me to beat it and never come back, or words to

that effect.”

 

“Whereabouts on the mainland was this?” Henry demanded, with a tenseness

which Francis, chuckling his reminiscence of the misadventure, did not

notice.

 

“Down toward the other end of Chiriqui Lagoon,” he replied. “It was the

stamping ground of the Solano family, I learned; and they are a red

peppery family, as I found out. But I haven’t told you all. Listen.

First she dragged me into the vegetation and insulted my mustache; next

she chased me to the boat with a drawn revolver; and then she wanted to

know why I didn’t kiss her. Can you beat that?”

 

“And did you?” Henry demanded, his hand unconsciously clinching by his

side.

 

“What could a poor stranger in a strange land do? It was some armful of

pretty girl——”

 

The next fraction of a second Francis had sprung to his feet and blocked

before his jaw a crushing blow of Henry’s fist.

 

“I ... I beg your pardon,” Henry mumbled, and slumped down on the

ancient sea chest. “I’m a fool, I know, but I’ll be hanged if I can

stand for——”

 

“There you go again,” Francis interrupted resentfully. “As crazy as

everybody else in this crazy country. One moment you bandage up my

cracked head, and the next moment you want to knock that same head clean

off of me. As bad as the girl taking turns at kissing me and shoving a

gun into my midrif.”

 

“That’s right, fire away, I deserve it,” Henry admitted ruefully, but

involuntarily began to fire up as he continued with: “Confound you, that

was Leoncia.”

 

“What if it was Leoncia? Or Mercedes? Or Dolores? Can’t a fellow kiss a

pretty girl at a revolver’s point without having his head knocked off by

the next ruffian he meets in dirty canvas pants on a notorious sand-heap

of an island?”

 

“When the pretty girl is engaged to marry the ruffian in the dirty

canvas pants——”

 

“You don’t mean to tell me——” the other broke in excitedly.

 

“It isn’t particularly amusing to said ruffian to be told that his

sweetheart has been kissing a ruffian she never saw before from off a

disreputable Jamaica nigger’s schooner,” Henry completed his sentence.

 

“And she took me for you,” Francis mused, glimpsing the situation. “I

don’t blame you for losing your temper, though you must admit it’s a

nasty one. Wanted to cut off my ears yesterday, didn’t you?”

 

“Yours is just as nasty, Francis, my boy. The way you insisted that I

cut them off when I had you down—ha! ha!”

 

Both young men laughed in hearty amity.

 

“It’s the old Morgan temper,” Henry said. “He was by all the accounts a

peppery old cuss.”

 

“No more peppery than those Solanos you’re marrying into. Why, most of

the family came down on the beach and peppered me with rifles on my

departing way. And your Leoncia pulled her little popgun on a

long-bearded old fellow who might have been her father and gave him to

understand she’d shoot him full of holes if he didn’t stop plugging away

at me.”

 

“It was her father, I’ll wager, old Enrico himself,” Henry exclaimed.

“And the other chaps were her brothers.”

 

“Lovely lizards!” ejaculated Francis. “Say, don’t you think life is

liable to become a trifle monotonous when you’re married into such a

peaceful, dove-like family as that!” He broke off, struck by a new idea.

“By the way, Henry, since they all thought it was you, and not I, why in

thunderation did they want to kill _you_? Some more of your crusty

Morgan temper that peeved your prospective wife’s relatives?”

 

Henry looked at him a moment, as if debating with himself, and then

answered.

 

“I don’t mind telling you. It is a nasty mess, and I suppose my temper

was to blame. I quarreled with her uncle. He was her father’s youngest brother——”