The Terms of Surrender

His strength was that of the mind. He was of the order of chivalry. His renunciation would have been well understood by a few men who lived and had their being a thousand years ago. In the America of the early ’90’s, had his undertaking been known, which it was not, nor ever has been till this writing, the heedless majority must have wagged sapient noddles, and cried in chorus, “He is mad!”

A discriminating purser allotted him to the captain’s table, and at dinner that evening he found himself next to a Chilean merchant. This man sat on his left. On the right was an empty chair, which adjoined the commander’s position at the head of the table.

The captain greeted him with the ready camaraderie of the sea.

“My ward has not put in an appearance,” he said, nodding toward the vacant place. “She can’t be ill yet, anyhow; but, like most women, I suppose, she is unpunctual.”

“Is lack of punctuality a feminine failing?” said Power, seeing that he was expected to answer.

The sailor laughed. “It is evident you are not a married man, Mr. Power, or you wouldn’t need to ask,” he said.

“How true!” piped the Chilean, in a singularly high-pitched voice. The people at that end of the table grinned, and the Chilean instantly won a reputation as a humorist. Some days passed before they discovered that he had brought off his only joke thus early in the voyage. He possessed a fund of information about nitrate and guano; but these topics were not popular, so his conversational talent exhausted itself in that one comment. On this occasion it happened to be appropriate.

Power, who had summed him up as a dull dog at a glance, was surveying him with a degree of surprise when he became aware that the missing lady had arrived. She had slipped into her chair quietly, and was apologizing for being late.

“I am usually a most methodical person,” she said; “but I mislaid a key – ”

She broke off, in smiling embarrassment, because of the general laughter, and the captain had to explain that the wretched males present had been vilifying her sex.

“There was one exception, though,” he rattled on. “Our friend on your left seemed to think otherwise. Mr. Power, let me introduce you to Miss Marguerite Sinclair.”

Yielding to convention – most potent of human ties – Power turned with a polite bow; but not even his preoccupied mind was proof against the feeling of stupefaction caused by his first impression of the captain’s “ward.” She certainly owned a girlish and graceful figure, and her brown hair was glossy and abundant; but her skin was withered, and that side of her face which was visible bore a number of livid scars. It was impossible to determine her age. The slim, willowy body and really beautiful hair apparently indicated youth; but the appalling disfigurement of the face, which extended from the top of the cheek to the slender column of her neck, simply forbade any accurate estimate. The pity of it was that her profile was faultless, and a little pink shell of an ear was almost fantastically opposed to the shriveled and scar-seamed features adjoining it. Yet, in some indescribable way, she reminded him of Nancy, and the notion was so grotesque and abhorrent that he shuddered.

Luckily, her attention was drawn for a moment by a steward, and he had recovered his wits before she looked at him. Then he found that her eyes were peculiarly brilliant. He noted, with positive relief, that they were not blue, like Nancy’s, but brown. They had a curiously penetrative quality, too, which seemed to dispel the repugnant effect of the accident. He saw now that she must have sustained some grave injury, which marred her good looks.

“Thank you,” she said composedly. “Usually, I have to fight my own battles. It will be quite a relief to count on an ally so valiant that he draws the sword without waiting to see the person whose cause he espouses.”

Her voice was cultured and incisive. It seemed to offer a challenge to all the world; yet it held an arresting note of cheerful irony that betokened an equable temperament. After the first shock of surprise, almost of dismay, had passed, Power fancied that she carried herself thus bravely as a protest against the brutality of fate.

They spoke but little during the progress of the meal, and he avoided looking at her. Somehow, he was aware that she would resent such delicacy; but the alternative of a too curious inspection was distasteful. Of two evils he chose the less; though the fact that any choice was called for in the matter was embarrassing.

He gathered that the captain and Miss Sinclair were old acquaintances. There were allusions to relatives and friends. She was addressed as “Meg.” It was to be inferred that her mother was dead, that she had been attending a session of the Los Angeles University, and that she was now on the way to rejoin her father.

Some man at the table spoke of the pending Presidential campaign, and the “sixteen to one” currency ratio started a lively argument. An advocate of a gold basis snorted derisively that silver could be mined profitably at eighteen cents an ounce.

“How true!” said the Chilean, and again he scored.

Power escaped to the deck. He lit a cigar, and leaned on the starboard rail, gazing at a magnificent sunset which glorified the infinity of waters. He wished now he had avoided a mail steamer, with its elaborate elegancies. Had he not acted so precipitately he could have sought the rough hospitality of some grimy tramp, whence woman was barred, and whose skipper would leave him in peace.

Suddenly he was disturbed by Miss Sinclair, who joined him at the rail with a quiet confidence of demeanor that spoke volumes for her self-possession.

“Though I appeared to make light of it at the moment, I was glad to hear that you defended me,” she said, smiling at him with those lustrous, deep-seeing eyes.

He was rendered nearly tongue-tied by confusion; but managed to blurt out, awkwardly enough, that his championship had been involuntary. She laughed quite pleasantly.

“Does that mean that, now you have seen me, you deem me capable of any iniquity?” she said.

“You give me credit for a faculty of divination which I do not possess,” he retorted, wondering if she was really alluding to her own unsightliness.

“Ah, I think I shall like you,” she said. “Most people whom I meet for the first time try to show their pity by being sympathetic. They simply daren’t say, ‘Good gracious! what has happened to your poor face?’ so they put on their best hospital-ward-visitor air, and feel so sorry for me that I want to smack them. Now, you admit candidly that I may be as villainous as I look, and such honesty is a positive relief.”

“Even to earn your good opinion I refuse to accept that unfair reading of my words,” he said.

“Then what did you mean?”

“I’m afraid I was talking at random.”

“You don’t look that sort of person. Really, Mr. Power, you and I will get on famously together if we tell each other the real truth. Are we to be fellow-passengers as far as Valparaiso?”

“Yes.”

“There, you see! Those other Philistines would have smirked and said, ‘I hope so.’ I shall enjoy this trip. Generally, a sea-voyage bores me.”

“Are you much traveled, then?”

“I live in Patagonia.”

“Does that statement answer my question?”

“Well, yes. No one lives in Patagonia for amusement, and some among those who are compelled to reside there get away as often as their means permit. Patagonian boarding-houses don’t advertise ‘young and musical society,’ I assure you. Our population is something under one to the square mile.”

“My knowledge of the Patagonian is limited; but I have always understood that he requires just about that amount of space.”

“Ah, no! Our poor giants are nearly extinct. There is hardly a hundred of them, all told.”

“My! Who, or what, cleared them out?”

“Measles. Just imagine a Brobdingnagian measle!”

“Are you, then, a type of the present inhabitants?”

“No. My ailment was due to being knocked insensible during a fire.”

Power reddened. “You are an adept in twisting the sense of the most commonplace remarks, to say the least,” he said, careless whether or not he annoyed her.

She parried this thrust with sublime unconcern: “I know. It’s horrid. But I had to tell you. Now I’ll be good, and take myself off. You’ll be heartily sick of my company after five thousand miles of it.”

Certainly Miss Marguerite Sinclair’s unusual methods of expressing herself struck a jarring note, and, whether by chance or by the exercise of rare intuition, the one note able to penetrate Power’s armor of indifference. Her somewhat bizarre personality was vivid in his mind long after she had left him; but night and the stars brought other thoughts, and blurred the sharp lines of the vignette.

Next morning he breakfasted early, and alone. After a long tramp on the upper deck, he asked a steward where a deck-chair ordered overnight had been placed. The man inquired his name, consulted a list, and led him through the music-room to the port side. The chair stood aft of the companionway, and it was irritating to find the neighboring chair occupied by a young and remarkably pretty woman, who seemed to be deeply engrossed in a book.

“I prefer the starboard side,” he said sharply. “Bring it along, and I’ll show you where to put it.”

The lady lifted her eyes to his in an amused, sidelong glance.

“Good-morning, Mr. Power,” she said. “You are pardoned for thinking there is a conspiracy floating around; but there isn’t.”

Power was staggered; but he did not mean to provide a permanent target for the shafts of Miss Marguerite Sinclair’s wit. At present she was treating him as though she were “rotting” some small schoolboy.

“Leave the chair – I have changed my mind,” he said, and dismissed the steward with a tip. Then he sat down, and scrutinized the girl so brazenly that her eyes fell, and she blushed.

“There is no help for it,” he explained. “I suppose we ought to be able, at least, to recognize each other when we meet.”

“I should know you again in twenty years; you are not a two-faced person, like me,” she retorted.

“It is consoling to find that you can be as unfair to yourself as you were to me last night.”

“Would you have me twist my neck like a parrot, and say, ‘Please look on this picture, not on that,’ when a stranger happens to be to port instead of to starboard?”

“I do really think it would be worth while,” he said.

He saw now that she was a girl of twenty or thereabouts, and a singularly attractive one from this new point of view. He felt that he must atone for the curt order to the steward; but she only laughed at the implied compliment.

“The poor fellow saw us talking together, and arranged the chairs accordingly,” she said. “I’m frankly pleased, and you say you are; so that’s all right. Let us swap symptoms, as grand folk do in society. I have told you how I secured my keepsake. How did you acquire a limp?”

“By lying too long in one position,” he replied, unconsciously emulating her flippancy.

“Dear me! Why didn’t you try some other sort of lie?”

“Because I was pinned down to the original statement by a ton of rock.”

“I should have thought that the noise would have waked you up.”

“That remark is a trifle too subtle for my dull wits.”

“I watched you strolling about this morning, and decided that you were walking in your sleep.”

“You shouldn’t jump at conclusions. If I judged you by your pointed style of speech, I might regard you as a new species of porcupine.”

“Good!” she said approvingly. “I was sure we’d become friends. I wish my father knew you. He would like you.”

“Taking a line through you, may I say that the liking would be mutual?”

“Are you, by any chance, thinking of visiting Patagonia?”

“No,” he said.

For some reason, hard to define, he was convinced that Patagonia, though reported barren, would prove a rather unsuitable place for an anchorite.

“Are you interested in mines?” she inquired, after a pause.

“Yes.”

“What sort of mines, copper or silver?”

“Neither.”

“Really, you are most informing.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said hurriedly. “My mind wandered for the moment. I was thinking how extraordinary it was that a young lady should hit on my profession so promptly.”

“No marvel at all. Rocks fall mostly on miners.”

“An excellent example of ratiocinative reasoning.”

“Don’t imagine you can crush me with a word weighing a ton. Dad and I practise them on each other. They keep our brains from rusting, a common enough process on a ranch. Have you ever lived on one?”

He stirred uneasily. Evidently, Patagonia shared certain characteristics with Colorado. Those absurdly shrewd eyes of hers missed nothing.

“Have I stuck another quill into you?” she went on. “If so, it was an involuntary effort.”

“As it happens, I do live – I mean, I have lived – on a ranch. I own one; but it contains a gold mine. So, you see, your divination is almost uncanny.”

“I am still guessing why you are coming to South America. Don’t tell me if you prefer to make a mystery of your intentions.”

“Will you be vexed if I avail myself of your offer, and remain silent?”

“Vexed? I shall be delighted. It is a positive joy to meet a man who had rather appear uncivil than coin a polite fib. The most truthful of men lie glibly to girls. They think it is good for us. Now, I regard you as a person who hates deceit in either man or woman.”

He turned and stared at her fixedly. “May I ask how old you are?” he said abruptly.

“Nineteen.”

“You talk like a woman of forty, and a wise one at that.”

“I was grown-up at seven. At twelve I got that crack on the head I told you of last night, when our homestead was attacked and burnt by drunken Indians – ”

“Are there Indians of that sort in Patagonia?” he broke in.

“Fifty-seven varieties – all bad. Some have souls, I believe; others rank lower than the beasts. But what have I said now?” for he had sprung upright as if in a great hurry to get away.

“Forgive me,” he muttered. “I have just remembered some important letters I must write before we call at San Diego.”

“So,” she communed, when he had vanished through the companion-hatch, “even Mr. John Darien Power can prevaricate at times. But he is a nice man. I wonder why some woman treated him badly. It must have been a woman. If it were a man, he wouldn’t have run!”

The two became firm friends. As the days passed, and the Panama plodded south through tropic seas, Power learned so many details of the girl’s life that he could have written her biography. Her father was an Englishman, who found a wife in Los Angeles. After being swindled by a nitrate company, he had the good fortune to recover from the assets a tract of land in the Chubut Territory of Patagonia. It contained no nitrate; but the discovery that it would grow good cattle came in the nick of time to save him from ruin. His wife was killed in the Indian raid which had left its disastrous record on his daughter; but Argentine troops had exterminated the Araucanian tribe responsible for the outrage, a rare event in that district, and the ranch had prospered. Each year or eighteen months Marguerite visited her maternal relatives in Los Angeles, and worked hard at the university for a term. By that device, it was evident, Sinclair salved certain twinges of conscience for keeping her bright intelligence pent in a Patagonian ranch. The two hated these breaks in their home life. However, they provided a middle way; so father and daughter made the best of them.

Although the eastern route, via New York, was quicker, the girl herself elected for the long sea voyage down the Chile coast, and through the Straits of Magellan. She knew most of the ships plying in those waters, and felt more at home in them.

She was a prime favorite on board the Panama– among the men; her sharp tongue and amazing outspokenness did not endear her to the women. Some of them resented her popularity, and tried to snub her, and the result was a foregone conclusion. Quite unconsciously, Power caused one of these brief combats. A pretty, but vapid, and rather rapid lady from Iquique thought that a good-looking young man like the American was devoting far too much time to Miss Sinclair, and resolved to detach him.

She failed lamentably, and, in her pique, so far forgot herself as to inquire sarcastically what magnetic influence the girl exerted that she was able to keep Power in constant attendance.

Marguerite surveyed her rival with bland unconcern. “You are mistaken,” she cried. “He cares nothing for women’s society.”

The other thought she saw an opening, and struck viciously. “So it would appear,” she smirked. “You are the only woman on the ship he has spoken to.”

“Yes. Odd, isn’t it?”

“Distinctly so. Perhaps he is one of those rare mortals who really believe that beauty is only skin deep.”

“How consoling that great and original thought must be for you!”

“For me? Why for me?”

“Because, like charity, beauty covers a multitude of sins.”

Someone overheard this passage at arms. The quip held a barbed shaft which flew far, even unto Iquique, and the Chilean merchant regained lost ground when he heard of it by exclaiming, “How true!”

But, strive as she might, and did, Marguerite never received any confidences from Power. They talked about many things; but his past history remained a closed volume. The long, hot days succeeded one another with monotonous regularity. When the red cliffs of Valparaiso appeared beneath the snow-crowned line of the Andes, those two, perhaps, were the only people on the ship who regretted that the voyage was at an end.

“So we part here,” said the girl, as Power found her waiting near the gangway to go ashore in the tender.

“Yes,” he said. “When you are older you will realize that life consists largely of partings.”

“I know that now,” she said. She was wearing a white double veil, which was her habit when in towns, so he could not see that she was very pale. He was aware of an irksome pause – a rare thing as between Marguerite Sinclair and himself.

“You go straight to your new steamer, I believe?” he went on, forcing the conversation.

“Yes. And you?”

“I drift into a hotel for a couple of days.”

“And I cannot tempt you to visit my poor but proud Patagonia?”

“I fear not.”

“Goodby, Mr. Power.”

She shook hands with him hurriedly, and joined the crush of passengers in the gangway. She moved with the easy grace of one who lived much in the open air. For the hundredth time she reminded him of Nancy. He sighed. At last his seven years’ pilgrimage had really begun!

CHAPTER XIV

THE WANDER-YEARS

If this record were a story of romantic adventure, it might well start from the moment Power set foot in the hotel which a relative of an eminent French actress used to keep in Valparaiso. He had not been in the city many hours before a brutal assault on a woman led him to intervene. During the resultant scuffle he was robbed of his pocketbook, and, in addition to a narrow escape from being knifed, he was informed by a supercilious policeman that the whole affair, including the screams of a female apparently in fear of her life, had been cleverly engineered for the express purpose of relieving him of his money.

When settling his affairs at Bison he had arranged that the bulk of his revenues should be lodged with his New York bankers, to whom letters and communications of every sort were to be sent. To provide against the unforeseen – a word of wide significance when applied to the vortex into which he was plunging – it was understood that a cablegram in his name would be acted on only if it bore the code-word “Bido,” a simple composite of the first syllables of Bison and Dolores, and, had it not been for the lucky chance that the bulk of his available ready money, some five thousand dollars, was safe in his room at the hotel, he might have been compelled to reveal his whereabouts to the bank forthwith.

Then, a Chilean gentleman, impressed by the fact that Power was an American, and therefore a millionaire, tried to extract gold from him by the safer and really more effective method of selling him a guano island. Singularly enough, this second thief’s pertinacity opened up the narrow and hazardous path for which Power was looking. The captain of a small steamer engaged in the guano trade went out of his way to warn the American that he was being exploited by a scoundrel. Such disinterested honesty in a Chilean was attractive. Some talk followed, and, three days after arriving in Valparaiso, Power quitted that lively city as a passenger on board the Carmen, bound for islands in the south.

The friendly skipper had no inkling of his new acquaintance’s intentions. He thought that the señor was veritably a speculator in guano, who, all the better-known deposits off the coast of Peru being either taken up or exhausted, was bent on exploiting fresh fields in Chile. This much is certain. Had Captain Malaspina realized that this well-spoken and pleasant-mannered stranger meant to throw in his lot with the savage race which infests the inhospitable islands and rock-strewn channels of the wildest coast in the world, he would have regarded him as a lunatic. He could never guess that his own blood-curdling yarns of these outcasts added fuel to the fire of Power’s strange enthusiasm. He believed that the Indians were cannibals. He had seen them living and eating in the interior of a putrid whale. He had found a five-year-old boy lying on the rocks with his brains dashed out, and was told that the child’s father had shown his anger in that way because the victim dropped some edible seaweed which the man had been at some pains to gather. Mere words could not describe the brutes. The worthy skipper always spat when he spoke of them.

His gruesome stories beguiled a slow voyage while the leaky boilers of the Carmen, iron steamship, of five hundred tons, pushed her sluggishly through the long rollers of the Pacific. Then a heavy sou’westerly gale sprang up, and the Carmen staggered for refuge into the Corcovado Gulf, and thence plashed and wallowed through the sheltered Moraleda Channel. To eke out her scanty stock of coal she put into the estuary of the Aisen River, where Malaspina bargained with Indians for a supply of wood.

Power saw his opportunity, and seized it eagerly. He asked to be put ashore for a couple of days in order that he might study the natives at close quarters. The friendly skipper was unwilling, arguing that a tribe of monkeys would better repay investigation, but ultimately yielded to pressure. There was really no great risk, he knew, because Chilean gunboats had taught these coast Indians to leave white men alone; so Power was landed, his total equipment being a small medicine chest, a hut, a folding bed, some few stores, and a shotgun, with a hundred cartridges, all told. He took more food than such a brief stay demanded; but the necessity of placating the head men of the village supplied a plausible excuse. A couple of silver dollars proved an irresistible bribe to a Spanish-speaking Indian who promised to guide him into the interior, and a letter to the amazed skipper of the Carmen saved the villagers from reprisals.

“I am sorry I was compelled to mislead you [he wrote]; but I mean to explore the Andes at this point, and I prefer to set out on a crazy project without undergoing the protests and dissuasion I should certainly have met with from the kind friend you have proved yourself. If all is well with you seven years from this date, write to me, care of the National Bank, New York. I will surely answer.”

“Seven years!” shouted Malaspina, shaking a huge fist at the silent hills. “Seven devils! He is mad, mad! There will be an inquiry by the American consul, and I shall be accused of killing him. Holy Virgin! What a fool I was to let him go alone!”

He was minded to flog an Indian or two, and thus extract information; but calmer counsels prevailed. After all, he had a letter proving that Power had left the ship voluntarily. At first he resolved to report the astounding incident on returning to Valparaiso, and discussed the matter volubly with José, second in command. José said, “No. Let sleeping dogs lie. Those foreign consuls are plaguy fellows. They get many a poor man hanged just to please their governments.”