CHAPTER FIVE

The Resurrection

AT eight bells that morning, Lars was again on duty, by choice. He wanted to be busy. He felt angry with the world at large after what he had witnessed in the dawn.

But his woes were not yet complete. He had not been on watch a bell before Terry and Aunt Agatha came up on the bridge to see him.

“Captain,” said Terry, almost reprovingly but very sad, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Tell you what, ma’am?” said Lars.

“About Paco. You were his friend. You must have known who he was. Or did he swear you to secrecy?”

“I don’t know what it’s all about,” said Lars.

“Young man,” sniffed Aunt Agatha, “you certainly must have known. Such a dear, sensitive boy as Paco . . . ” She wept.

“We will have to put in to the nearest port,” said Terry.

“What’s happened?” demanded Lars. “Can’t we bury him at sea?”

“At sea!” said Aunt Agatha in amazement. “Bury a prince at sea?”

Lars scowled. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t understand.”

“It was not right of us, of course,” said Terry. “But Ralph and Alice kept insisting and we finally looked at his papers to find out whom he wished to notify. And this is what we found.”

She handed Lars a packet and he opened up the first sheet. It was an ornate birth certificate which proclaimed to the world that Enríque Mendoza José Jesús Jorge Christofo de Mayal, of the House of Habsburg-Bourbon, had been born to the world.

Lars blinked at it. He took another and found that it was not yet opened, but was sealed with the arms of Aragon. Another was addressed to Alphonse XIII. Other sealed packets, with directions for dispatch followed. They were most imposing.

But the payoff, to Lars, was the note to Miss Norton which read, in part, “I regret this necessary deception after your great kindness and wish you to have some part of the monies I have hidden in French Guiana. (Signed) Enríque Mendoza José Jesús Jorge Christofo de Mayal, Prince of Aragon.”

“You see,” said Terry, “we must take him to the nearest port so that he can be buried with fitting honors. The poor fellow was driven out of his own country and had to take refuge among us and it is enough that he die unknown without burying him in that fashion. I . . .”

“Have you looked this up in a peerage?” demanded Lars. “There’s some mistake! He’s Paco Corvino, a—”

He stopped himself in time. To confess Paco’s complete identity would be to ruin himself.

Terry was very cold to him. “It is not good taste to doubt the dead.”

Aunt Agatha was wholly hostile on the instant. “The idea!” she sniffed, and tottered down the ladder to the main deck.

Lars was left to his amazement. What was this all about? And with Paco dead . . . What good could it do anyone now?

He moodily saw his watch through and at noon he finished his notes and went down to see if there were any further orders. He had already changed the course and speeded up for Pernambuco.

In his commodious cabin, at one, he sat down to eat his luncheon in solitary gloom. His appetite was small, completely taken away by the knowledge that Paco, ex-convict, dope-smuggler and multi-murderer, would be buried as he had lived, in complete deceit.

He could not dispel the lowering cloud of apprehension which closed gradually in upon him. Something was wrong with all this. The danger had not ceased. He felt it had just begun. A nameless premonition of disaster hung around him. Paco, certainly, was not through with this ship and Miss Norton. But there was no arguing the slowness of the wavering pulse and the death rattle he had heard in Paco’s throat.

Bleakly, he hunched over his laden board and stared unseeing at the shining riot guns and rifles in locked racks on his walnut wall.

Had Paco made some rendezvous with criminals at sea?

Lars reproached himself for not acting in Rio. But how could he have done anything without bringing about his own return to the Penal Colony? Certainly a man owed himself some protection.

Shock-haired Ralph knocked on the door and Lars bade him enter. Ralph Norton would have been handsome had he thought more about his personal appearance and less about his dreams. He was younger than Terry—Lars judged about eighteen.

“This is a pretty awful thing,” said Ralph, lying back in the captain’s easy chair and shoving his long legs out before him. “I’ll bet you feel pretty bad about losing your pal, huh?”

Lars thought it better not to answer that.

“The whole ship is in an uproar,” said Ralph. “Nobody had the least idea Paco was a real prince. Aunt Agatha will never get over making him wait upon her. Think of it! A real prince all the time. The girls feel pretty silly and pretty sad over the way they talked about wanting to meet princes when they had one right there.”

“Ever think that might be a fake?” said Lars.

“A fake!” cried Ralph. “Why should it be a fake? Good God, the man wouldn’t own up to it until he was dying, would he? And a man on his deathbed wouldn’t tell a lie. There’d be no point in it.”

“That is what is worrying me,” said Lars.

“What?”

“Nothing. I suppose Terry will radio the news this afternoon.”

“She can’t,” said Ralph. “Those documents are a sacred trust. She isn’t supposed to let anybody know about it until those letters he wrote have been placed in the right hands. Terry keeps her word. You don’t seem very excited about it.”

Lars speared a potato with his fork and ate it.

“Wasn’t he your best friend?” persisted Ralph. “He said he was.”

“Sure,” said Lars. “My very best friend.”

Ralph missed the irony. “I get it. You’re taking it big. Sure you would. A fellow like you who’s been all around wouldn’t break down or get excited. Say, this ship is sure getting its share of dead men. First Simpson and then Paco. Wonder who’ll be next? These things run in threes, you know.”

“Do they?” said Lars.

“Sure. Everything I read says they do. Railroad wrecks and drownings and things. Of course there’ll be three.”

Ralph found it very unsatisfactory to try to talk to this big blond fellow who had come into the Norton employ. For the space of a minute he scrutinized Lars. Here was a man, thought Ralph, who had seen things and been places. He was toughened and could be expected to put up a mean fight against anything from a lion to a pirate crew. He ended up by respecting Lars’ reticence. Ralph got up.

“Gee, I sure wish you’d told us Paco was a prince, Skipper. You’d have saved the ladies a lot of worry about the things they didn’t do. Well, see you later.”

He did not get out of the door. Kenneth charged through the opening and collided with him. Kenneth was too excited to launch into any preliminaries. He threw his news into the room as though it were a hand grenade.

“He’s alive! A couple sailors just went in to dress him up before we made port and they found his heart was still beating! Now what the hell do you know about that!”

Lars put down his fork and looked at the racked riot guns. The keys were sharp against his thigh.

“Paco’s alive?” cried Ralph excitedly, as he came up recovering from the collision. “Gee whiz, lemme see him!”

Kenneth was already on his way out. He was babbling to Ralph, “His pulse was clear stopped last night. I felt it myself! And now he’s breathing and he’s got some color in his cheeks. Good God, Ralph, do you realize we’ve got a real, live prince aboard the Valiant?”

Lars went over to his desk and sat down. He opened a series of drawers until he found the cartridges which fitted the guns. He checked them and then locked them up. He examined his .38 and found it in good order. He slid it into his waistband and smoothed his crisp white jacket over the bulge it made.

He went to the racks and made certain that he had the right keys. He locked them securely and then placed his keys in the pocket nearest his .38.

He went back to his desk and sat down facing the door, cap pulled down hard, mouth tight with anger.

“Damn him,” said Lars venomously. “I might have known. Arabian benj! He dared take the risk of dying from it just to slow down his black heart. God knows what he’ll do with this new power.”