The Pirate of Panama:
A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure
(William Macleod Raine)
Chapter II: Captain Bothwell Interrupts
Chapter III: Concerning Doubloon Spit
Chapter IV: The Man With the Secret
Chapter VI: The Missing Corner
Chapter VIII: Aboard the Argos
Chapter IX: Bothwell Makes a Move
Chapter XII: My Unexpected Guest
Chapter XVII: A Taste of the Inquisition
Chapter XVIII: Anchored Hearts
Chapter XIX: Sense and Nonsense
Chapter XXI: A Message From Bucks
Chapter XXIII: Aboard the Schooner
TO
CAPTAIN FORRESTER
FIRST MATE ROBERT, QUARTERMASTER WILLIAM
AND BO'SUN KENNETH
THIS VOYAGE OF THE ARGOS IS DEDICATED
Ho, gallant tars and true, fall to!
Up anchor, lads, and sheets unfurl.
Let engines throb a low tattoo;
It's "All aboard for Panama."
The snell wind whistles shrill o'erhead,
The bullets spatter thick below,
By candle light we count our dead,
While we are bound for Panama.
For all true men waits hidden gold,
'Gainst all true hearts fight pirate foes,
Who bears him with a courage bold
Will land with us at Panama.
Into the deep drive strong and sure,
Straight as an arrow for the goal,
From off the course let nothing lure,
The breeze is fair for Panama.
Chapter I.
A Scrap of Paper
It was a dismal, sodden morning, with heavy clouds banked in the western sky. Rain had sloshed down since midnight so that the gutter in front of me was a turbid little river.
A chill wind swept across the city and penetrated to the marrow. From the summit of the hill, three blocks above me, my car was sliding down, but I clung to the curb to postpone until the last moment a plunge into the flowing street.
Since I was five-and-twenty, in tip-top health, and Irish by descent, I whistled while the windswept drops splashed the shine from my shoes. Rain or sun, 'twas a good little old world, though, faith! I could have wished it a less humdrum one.
For every morning I waited at that same time and place for the same car to take me to my desk in the offices of Kester & Wilcox, and every day I did the same sort of routine grubbing in preparation of cases for more experienced lawyers to handle.
Sometimes it flashed across me that I was a misfit. Nature had cast me for the part of a soldier of fortune, and instead I was giving my services to help a big corporation escape the payment of damages for accidents caused by its cars. I had turned my back on the romance of life. Well, it was the penalty one must pay to win success.
And while I stood on the curb there fluttered down to me from the dun heavens an invitation to the great adventure my soul longed for. It came on a gust of wind and lay on the sidewalk at my feet, a torn sheet of paper yellowed with age.
I had no premonition of what that faded bit of parchment meant, no picture of men in deadly battle, of the flash of knives or the gleam of revolvers, of lusty seamen lying curled on the deck where they had fallen at the call of sudden death. The only feeling that stirred in me was a faint curiosity at the odd markings on the sheet.
My foot moved forward and pinned the paper to the cement walk. Should I pick it up? Of what use? It would turn out to be only some Chinese laundry bill. Already the gong of the street-car was not more than a block away as it swept down the hill.
Was it some faint sound that drew my eyes up? Or was I answering the call of my destiny when my lifted gaze met the figure of a young woman framed in a second-story window? She was leaning far out, with arm stretched down