Part 2 (2/2)

For a long time Peter de Peyster sat scowling at the prison, and Roddy did not speak, for it is not possible to room with another man through two years of college life and not know something of his moods.

Then Peter leaned toward Roddy and stared into his face. His voice carried the suggestion of a challenge.

”I hear something!” he whispered.

Whether his friend spoke in metaphor or stated a fact, Roddy could not determine. He looked at him questioningly, and raised his head to listen. Save for the whisper of the waves against the base of the fortress, there was no sound.

”What?” asked Roddy.

”I hear the call of the White Mice,” said Peter de Peyster.

There was a long silence. Then Roddy laughed softly, his eyes half closed; the muscles around the lower jaw drew tight.

Often before Peter had seen the look in his face, notably on a memorable afternoon when Roddy went to the bat, with three men on base, two runs needed to win the champions.h.i.+p and twenty thousand shrieking people trying to break his nerve.

”I will go as far as you like,” said Roddy.

Porto Cabello is laid out within the four boundaries of a square.

The boundary on the east and the boundary on the north of the square meet at a point that juts into the harbor. The wharves and the custom-house, looking toward the promontory on which stands the fortress prison, form the eastern side of the square, and along the northern edge are the Aquatic Club, with its veranda over the water, the hotel, with its bath-rooms underneath the water, and farther along the harbor front houses set in gardens. As his work was in the harbor, Roddy had rented one of these houses. It was discreetly hidden by mango-trees and palmetto, and in the rear of the garden, steps cut in the living rock led down into the water. In a semicircle beyond these steps was a fence of bamboo stout enough to protect a bather from the harbor sharks and to serve as a breakwater for the launch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I hear the call of the White Mice,” said Peter de Peyster.]

”When I rented this house,” said Roddy, ”I thought I took it because I could eat mangoes while I was in bathing and up to my ears in water, which is the only way you can eat a mango and keep your self-respect.

But I see now that Providence sent me here because we can steal away in the launch without any one knowing it.”

”If you can move that launch its own length without the whole town knowing it,” commented Peter, ”you will have to chloroform it. It barks like a machine gun.”

”My idea was,” explained Roddy, ”that we would row to the fortress.

After we get the General on board, the more it sounds like a machine gun the better.”

Since their return in the launch, and during dinner, which had been served in the tiny _patio_ under the stars, the White Mice had been discussing ways and means. A hundred plans had been proposed, criticised, rejected; but by one in the morning, when the candles were guttering in the harbor breeze and the Scotch whiskey had shrunk several inches, the conspirators found themselves agreed. They had decided they could do nothing until they knew in which cell the General was imprisoned, and especially the position of his window in that cell that looked out upon the harbor; that, with the aid of the launch, the rescue must be made from the water, and that the rescuers must work from the outside. To get at Rojas from the inside it would be necessary to take into their confidence some one of the prison officials, and there was no one they dared to trust. Had it been a question of money, Roddy pointed out, the friends of Rojas would already have set him free. That they had failed to do so proved, not that the prison officials were incorruptible, but that their fear of the wrath of Alvarez was greater than their cupidity.

”There are several reasons why we should not attempt to bribe any one,” said Roddy, ”and the best one is the same reason the man gave for not playing poker. To-morrow I will introduce you to Vicenti, the prison doctor, and we'll ask him to take us over the prison, and count the cells, and try to mark the one in which we see Rojas. Perhaps we'd better have the doctor in to dinner. He likes to tell you what a devil of a fellow he was in New York, and you must pretend to believe he was. We might also have the captain of the port, and get him to give us permission to take the launch out at night. This port is still under martial law, and after the sunset gun no boat may move about the harbor. Then we must have some harpoons made and get out that headlight, and spear eels.”

”You couldn't spear an eel,” objected Peter, ”and if you could I wouldn't eat it.”

”You don't have to eat it!” explained Roddy; ”the eels are only an excuse. We want to get the sentries used to seeing us flas.h.i.+ng around the harbor at night. If we went out there without some excuse, and without permission, exploding like a barrel of fire-crackers, they'd sink us. So we must say we are out spearing eels.”

The next morning Roddy showed a blacksmith how to hammer out tridents for spearing eels, and that night those people who lived along the harbor front were kept awake by quick-fire explosions, and the glare in their windows of a s.h.i.+fting search-light. But at the end of the week the launch of the Gringos, as it darted noisily in and out of the harbor, and carelessly flashed its search-light on the walls of the fortress, came to be regarded less as a nuisance than a blessing. For with n.o.ble self-sacrifice the harbor eels lent themselves to the deception. By hundreds they swarmed in front of the dazzling headlight; by dozens they impaled themselves upon the tines of the pitchforks. So expert did Roddy and Peter become in harpooning, that soon they were able each morning to send to the captain of the port, to the commandant, to the prison doctor, to every citizen who objected to having his sleep punctuated, a basket of eels. It was noticed that at intervals the engine of the launch would not act properly, and the gringos were seen propelling the boat with oars. Also, the light often went out, leaving them in darkness. They spoke freely of these accidents with bitter annoyance, and people sympathized with them.

One night, when they were seated plotting in the _patio_, Roddy was overwhelmed with sudden misgivings.

”Wouldn't it be awful,” he cried, ”if, after we have cut the bars and shown him the rope ladder and the launch, he refuses to come with us!”

”Is that _all_ that's worrying you?” asked Peter.

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