"The Senora Markham is perhaps beloved by the Pirate Perkins?"In spite of her danger, in spite of the uncertain fate hanging over her party, Miss Keene could with difficulty repress a half hysterical inclination to laugh.Even then, it escaped in a sudden twinkle of her eye, which both the Commander and his subordinate were quick to notice, as she replied demurely, "Perhaps."It was enough for the Commander.A gleam of antique archness and venerable raillery lit up his murky, tobacco-colored pupils; a spasm of gallantry crossed the face of the secretary.
"Ah--what would you?--it is the way of the world," said the Commander."We comprehend.Come!"He led the way across the corridor, and suddenly opened a small barred door.Whatever preconceived idea Miss Keene may have had of her unfortunate country-woman immured in a noisome cell, and guarded by a stern jailer, was quite dissipated by the soft misty sunshine that flowed in through the open door.The prison of Mrs.
Markham was a part of the old glacis which had been allowed to lapse into a wild garden that stretched to the edge of the sea.
There was a summer-house built on--and partly from--a crumbling bastion, and here, under the shade of tropical creepers, the melancholy captive was comfortably writing, with her portable desk on her knee, and a traveling-bag at her feet.A Saratoga trunk of obtrusive proportions stood in the centre of the peaceful vegetation, like a newly raised altar to an unknown deity.The only suggestion of martial surveillance was an Indian soldier, whose musket, reposing on the ground near Mrs.Markham, he had exchanged for the rude mattock with which he was quietly digging.
The two women, with a cry of relief, flew into each other's arms.
The Commander and his secretary discreetly retired to an angle of the wall.
"I find everything as I left it, my dear, even to my slipper-bag,"said Mrs.Markham."They've forgotten nothing.""But you are a captive!" said Eleanor."What does it mean?""Nothing, my dear.I gave them a piece of my mind," said Mrs.
Markham, looking, however, as if that mental offering had by no means exhausted her capital, "and I have written six pages to the Governor at Mazatlan, and a full account to Mr.Markham.""And they won't get them in thirty years!" said Miss Keene impetuously."But where is this letter from Senor Perkins.And, for Heaven's sake, tell me if you had the least suspicion before of anything that has happened.""Not in the least.The man is mad, my dear, and I really believe driven so by that absurd Illinois woman's poetry.Did you ever see anything so ridiculous--and shameful, too--as the 'Ulricardo'
business? I don't wonder he colored so."Miss Keene winced with annoyance.Was everybody going crazy, or was there anything more in this catastrophe that had only enfeebled the minds of her countrywomen! For here was the severe, strong-minded Mrs.Markham actually preoccupied, like Mrs.Brimmer, with utterly irrelevant particulars, and apparently powerless to grasp the fact that they were abandoned on a half hostile strand, and cut off by half a century from the rest of the world.
"As to the letter," said Mrs.Markham, quietly, "there it is.
There's nothing in it that might not have been written by a friend."Miss Keene took the letter.It was written in a delicate, almost feminine hand.She could not help noticing that in one or two instances corrections had been made and blots carefully removed with an eraser.
"Midnight, on the Excelsior.