Сердца трех / Hearts of Three

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�And the hole?’ the Jefe demanded. �The hole in the wall?’

�Is larger than the sack, much larger,’ was Rafael’s reply. �But the sack is large. So the moso said. And he rides with it on his saddle.’

�My jail!’ the Jefe cried. He slipped a dagger from inside his coat under the left arm-pit and held it aloft by the blade so that the hilt showed as a true cross on which a finely modeled �Christ hung crucified. �I swear by all the Saints the vengeance I shall have. My jail! Our justice! Our law! Horses! Horses! Gendarme, horses!’ He whirled about upon Torres as if the latter had spoken, shouting: �To hell with Señor Regan! I am after my own! I have been defied! My jail is desolated! My law our law, good friends has been mocked.

Horses! Horses! Commandeer them on the streets. Haste! Haste!’

Captain Trefethen, owner of the Angelique, son of a Maya Indian mother and a Jamaica negro father, paced the narrow after-deck of his schooner, stared shoreward toward San Antonio, where he could make out his crowded long-boat returning, and meditated flight from his mad American charterer.

At the same time he meditated remaining in order to break his charter and give a new one at three times the price; for he was strangely torn by his conflicting bloods. The negro portion counseled prudence and observance of Panamanian law. The Indian portion was urgent to unlawfulness and the promise of conflict.

It was the Indian mother who decided the issue and made him draw his jib, ease his mainsheet, and begin to reach in-shore the quicker to pick up the oncoming boat.

When he made out the rifles carried by the Solanos and the Morgans, almost he put up his helm to run for it and leave them. When he made out a woman in the boat’s sternsheets, romance and thrift whispered in him to hang on and take the boat on board. For he knew wherever woman entered into the transactions of men that peril and pelf as well entered hand in hand.

And aboard came the woman, the peril and the pelf Leoncia, the rifles, and a sack of money all in a scramble; for, the wind being light, the captain had not bothered to stop way on the schooner.

�Glad to welcome you on board, sir,’ Captain Trefethen greeted Francis with a white slash of teeth between his smiling lips. �But who is this man?’ He nodded his head to indicate Henry.

�A friend, captain, a guest of mine, in fact, a kinsman.