The San José would not have been seriously troubled by the gale that wrecked Dick Garland. She had gone down in the flat calm before dawn. She belonged to the fishing fleet of Zumaya, a port in the Basque country two hundred miles to the east. The fleet had been working out of sight of land, with the San José sailing about two miles closer to the shore than the rest. They saw her masthead lights and the faint glow of her furnace. Then the lights suddenly vanished. A moment later they heard a dull thud, followed by the roar of the exploding boiler as the San José went under.
Cutting their nets adrift the fleet steamed to the spot at full speed. Nothing was left of the San José but a few oars and casks floating on the water. The Erreguiña raced to the port of Villadonga to get help and information from the local fishermen. The rest of the fleet stood by, steaming to and fro in spite of the rising storm. Those Basques felt that they owned the seven seas. Their ancestors, trained by the grey gales of the Bay of Biscay, had shared the north Atlantic with the Vikings long before Spain or England had ever dreamed of sea power.
At sunrise a busy crowd was gathered on the waterfront of Villadonga. Several of the larger boats were preparing to put to sea. Blue-shirted men, stolid and careful, were overhauling the running gear. The women hurried back and forth between the quay and the cottages that lined it, clearing the boats of nets and baskets and bringing dinner pails to their husbands. The Erreguiña rocked importantly at the quay-side, while her captain, roaring Basque curses at the laziness of all Spanish officials, hammered at the door of the village postmaster, who was also the telegraph operator. The little man protested feebly from under his bedclothes, but, finding that this unreasonable seaman would not let him sleep, at last appeared at the door in his night-shirt. Hearing what the captain wanted, he vanished inside again and grabbed his official gold-braided cap, as if he could not send a telegram without it. Then, clad only in the cap and his night-shirt, he scampered down the village street to the post office with the captain pounding heavily after.
One telegram, in Spanish, went to the harbour-master of Zumaya, reporting the loss of the San José. A second, in Basque, was addressed to Ramon Echegaray, Harbour Café, Bilbao. The captain did not know where Echegaray lived, but he knew where he invariably was to be found in the afternoon. The telegram read
San José sunk with all hands seven miles northeast by north of Villadonga. Apparent cause uncharted rock or submerged wreck but no trace of either. Sea dead calm. Can you explain.
Olazábal, master S.S. Erreguiña.
Strolling back to the quay, Captain Olazábal found Pablo waiting for him. Pablo, knowing the local waters better than anyone else, acted as a sort of non-official pilot for the port on the rare occasions when any strange craft visited it.
“Good-morning, señor capitan”, said Pablo. “How do you do?”
“Well, I thank you,” answered the captain firmly. “And yourself?”
“Well, thanks be to God.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“Pablo Candelas, at your disposition,” said Pablo.
“Olazábal of Zumaya, who seeks only to be of service to you,” replied the captain, not to be outdone in politeness by any barbarous Asturian.
The ceremonies now being duly completed, Pablo exploded:
“I spit in the milk ! Captain, half an hour ago I’d have been with you. Am I not Pablo Candelas who will help his fellows up to the last drop of his blood? But some robber, the son of a robber, whose mother was a stupendous dog, and whose grandmother defiled her grey hairs with banditry, has stolen my boat! Carajo, what a life! As the song says, one mystery is followed by another. Now let me hear, captain! Ay! This villainous mother of ours, the sea—what has she done now?”
The captain told him. Pablo cross-examined him in questions which, for all their eloquence and profanity, showed that he knew his coast. Before long Olazábal was treating him with that respect which a ship’s captain only gives to a skilled pilot. They looked a reckless pair; Pablo, short and swarthy, with gold rings in his ears, had all the swagger of a pirate; Olazábal, tall, massive, and grey-eyed, had the calm confidence of a man who is sure of his physical force. Olazábal used to open bottles by tearing off the cap with his teeth. Pablo knocked off the necks with one dexterous flick of his knife.
As they talked, Pablo saw Lola running from the direction of the cliffs; running, running over the bridge and on, staggering utterly spent down the village street, until she collapsed in his arms. He laid her on a pile of brown nets, his arm under her head. As she fought to get back her breath, she looked like a long, silver, graceful fish, gasping out its life.
“Who is she?” asked Olazábal.
“La condesita de Ribadasella,” answered Pablo. “The little flower of our country.”
Lola opened her eyes.
“He’s caught on the lee-shore,” she panted, “off the Cave of the Angels. Hurry, Pablo!”
“Who’s caught?”
“Ricardito.”
“In the name of all the saints!” exclaimed Pablo. “What’s he doing there?”
“Quick! Quick!” cried Lola. “I’ll explain as we go. Let’s take this big boat.”
She sprang to her feet and jumped into the Erreguiña. Olazábal looked at her in admiration.
“A countess indeed!” he said slowly. “Act first and talk later—that was the way of those who made Spain.”
He snapped a crisp order in Basque. The mooring rope splashed on to the water. The engine throbbed into life. Olazábal and Pablo vaulted over the edge of the quay into the already moving boat.
“Tell Doña Mariquita where her daughter is!” yelled Pablo to the onlookers.
Before they were halfway down the river Lola had told the whole story—how she had taken Pablo’s boat and sailed to the Cave of the Angels, and how on her way back by land she had run up to the edge of the cliff to see how Dick was faring in the rising wind.
“When he couldn’t make Offering Key,” she said, “he went about and ran back along the coast. He was being driven nearer and nearer to the cliffs, and when I saw I couldn’t help him I ran to find you. Has he got a chance, Pablo?”
“How long is it since you saw him?” asked the fisherman.
“Less than an hour ago.”
“An hour, and another hour before we can reach him—even I, Pablo Candelas, could not keep afloat once I was on the ledge in a north-west gale. Be brave, condesita.”
“Oh, Pablo!” cried Lola. “Why, why did I take your boat?”
“As the song says,” remarked Pablo, shaking his head sadly, “love knows no law.”
The Erreguiña was out of the river now, and plunging madly. She was slightly larger than the other boats of the Zumayan fishing fleet. She had a deck-house just forward of the engine containing tiny cabins for Olazábal and his engineer. On top of it was a bridge and the wheel. The broad stern was decked over for a distance of about twelve feet, forming cramped but comfortable quarters for the crew of five. Otherwise, she was just a long, open boat. Her funnel and upper works were pale orange, and the hull olive green.
Olazábal ordered full speed, weather or no weather, and even Pablo held his breath as the launch swooped dizzily down into the trough of a wave, looking as if she must surely go through, and not over, the next one. But this was the weather for which ugly little Erreguiña had been designed. She revelled in it.
“So do the Americans amuse themselves at Coney Island,” said Olazábal with a grin, as Erreguiña slid with a sickening lurch from the crest of a big sea, rolled through a complete semicircle, and then sat down on her stern.
He had once taken Erreguiña to the cod banks of Newfoundland for a bet. Then he and his crew had gone to New York with their winnings, and in three days of heroic juerga—which is Spanish for a binge—had spent the lot on the shutes and switchbacks at Coney Island. Captain Olazábal never forgot it. As for his fellow citizens of Zumaya, they never had a chance to forget it.
Opposite the narr
ow strait which separated Offering Key from the mainland, Olazábal raised his eyebrows, looking an unspoken question at Pablo.
“Hard a starboard!” yelled Pablo. “We’ll put her through!”
He went to the wheel, which Olazábal instantly gave up to him.
“Dead slow!” commanded Pablo.
“Dead slow!” repeated the engineer.
The strait was sown with jagged rocks, and so narrow that Lola often swam across it in calm weather to lie in the sun on Offering Key. In storm, it seethed with mad, white water. So impossible was the passage that Dick, although he could not get round the Key, had never even thought of attempting the strait.
Lola covered her eyes. Olazábal lit a pipe and, with the sweat streaming down his forehead, sat watching Pablo. Erreguiña shuddered and quivered as the current tore her this way and that. A line of black rock and white water closed the passage halfway through. Pablo swung the boat broadside on to the current.
“Slow astern!”
“Slow astern!” echoed the engineer.
Erreguiña tore down on the rocks, backing all the while towards the mainland. In an instant she was between two lines of spouting water.
“Full ahead!” ordered Pablo.
Erreguiña dashed towards Offering Key, Pablo fighting to keep her straight between the reefs. With the bows almost touching the Key, he span the wheel and put her hard a starboard. There was a horrible rasping sound as a rock tore a sliver of wood off the planking, but Erreguiña shot through the gap, and out into the open sea.
“I suppose fishermen don’t live very long in Asturias,” said Olazábal as he took over the wheel again.
“It saved us twenty minutes,” replied Pablo, “and I’m pretty fond of this Ricardito. As the song says, friendship knows neither age nor nation.”
“Man, don’t think I’m complaining!” answered Olazábal. “I was just interested, that’s all!”
Erreguiña rolled her way along the coast and was soon opposite the Cave of the Angels.
“Can I take her in any closer?” the captain asked.
“Better not,” answered Pablo. “Give me your glasses. If there’s hair or hide of him to be seen, I’ll make it out from here. And don’t think I’m forgetting the San José. It’s a likely place for her bones. Things get swept in this direction,” he added grimly.
Pablo searched the coast with the glasses. There was no sign of Dick, but it surprised him that there was no wreckage. Then Lola, who had been watching the water closer to, cried:
“Look!”
Pablo followed the direction of her outstretched, trembling arm. There, heaving up and down on the waves, was a mast with a bit of torn sail attached to it. Olazábal ran up alongside, and the crew hauled it aboard.
“Is it?” asked Lola.
Pablo nodded.
“Poor Ricardito!” he said.
They cruised up and down the coast for two hours more. Meanwhile search-parties had reached the spot by land and were climbing about the cliffs looking for Dick.
At last the Erreguiña headed out to sea to speak to the fishing fleet. The other captains intended to return to Zumaya, but agreed that Olazábal should remain a week or more in Asturian waters to pick up what information he could about the loss of the San José. At three in the afternoon the Erreguiña was back at Villadonga. All the way Lola had sat hunched up in the bows, her head resting on her knees, staring desperately out to sea.
There was a crowd on the quay waiting for their arrival. Paca, her black Sunday mantilla on her head, was weeping loudly and being comforted by Lola’s mother. Doña Mariquita tried to put her arms around her, but they were little, delicate arms, and Paca was very tall and stout; it looked as if Doña Mariquita were holding Paca up rather than trying to draw her closer. Lola ran to her mother and the two stood side by side and hand in hand, white-faced, dry-eyed, with set, red lips, looking extraordinarily alike. Just so they had stood when the news came that the Count of Ribadasella had fallen in action at the head of his battalion in Morocco. Just so the Countesses of Ribadasella had heard of the violent deaths of sons and husbands at the taking of Granada, in the loss of the Armada, in Flanders, and in the two Americas.
Hal, back from the mountains, went on board the Erreguiña with Father Juan.
“Well?” he asked.
“Wrecked—I spit in the milk!” answered Pablo. “But we haven’t found his body, and we’ve only found the mast of the boat. We won’t give up hope yet.”
The postmaster pushed his way importantly through the crowd of little boys surrounding the Erreguiña.
“Telegram for you!” he said to Olazábal.
The captain opened it. It read:
“Deeply regret loss of San José. Cannot explain yet. Wire exact state of tide at time of foundering.
Echegaray.”
“The old one knows something,” said Olazábal. “But, caray! What matters the state of the tide when the San José had five hundred fathoms of water under her keel? Hola, Señor Candelas!”
“What is it?” asked Pablo, looking up from a deep conference with Hal and Father Juan.
“Echegaray wants to know the state of the tide at three this morning. About the top of the spring, wasn’t it?”
“Half an hour after the turn.”
Olazábal wrote out a reply, and sent it “urgent.”
“Who’s Echegaray?” asked Father Juan.
“A shipwright,” said Olazábal simply, “and a Basque. His family have built boats ever since there was anyone to sail them”
“Carajo! The coldness of these Basques!” exclaimed Pablo. “That’s all he can find to say of the Echegarays, when everyone knows that the first of the family married a woman of the sea people, and that the toes of every eldest son are webbed like a duck’s. On one night of the year a porpoise swims into Bilbao harbour—”
“Vaya—what a porpoise!” interrupted the captain. “He must swim in fuel oil and feed on boiler plate!”
“A porpoise swims into Bilbao harbour,” Pablo continued, repeating a tale his grandmother had told him of the Echegarays, and adding to it freely from his own rich imagination, “and takes the eldest Echegaray on his back. And the Echegaray visits all the ships with Basques aboard them and chases the flying fish so that they jump out of the water into the pot in the cook’s galley. And he visits all the ports where there are Basques in gaol— yes, caballeros, all the ports in the world!—and brings them water from the Bidasoa to cool their heads. He even went to Coney Island, and mistaking Captain Olazábal for a hogshead of wine, he drank him, and thus carried him back to Bilbao in safety!”
“And the porpoise?” roared Olazábal. “The porpoise, barbarian?”
“As the song says,” replied Pablo, “the best horse cannot carry two riders. The porpoise bought the Harbour Café and stayed ashore from that day on.”
They all laughed, even Lola who was listening at the quayside. Pablo meant them to laugh. There was work to be done, and he did not want them to set about it despairingly. Dick’s fate must be discovered, and the loss of the San José explained.
“Hal, why don’t you go and see Echegaray?” suggested Lola, who didn’t believe in the porpoise, but wasn’t at all sure about the webbed feet. “He might be able to find Ricardito.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much hope, little one,” said Hal.
“He isn’t dead,” Lola cried. “I know it. I’m quite sure. I feel he needs us awfully badly—and I couldn’t feel that if he were dead.”
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings cometh wisdom,” quoted Father Juan. “My son, I don’t want to give you any hope when all my reason tells me there can be none, but I’d go and see Echegaray if I were you. Captain Olazábal wants to speak to him, I know, and you can go together. Be sure that meanwhile we’ll keep up the search for Dick night and day.”
“ Echegaray can’t do anything for Dick,” said Hal hopelessly, “ but if I can help the Captain to solve his problem, lord know
s I’m at his service.”
“Then off with you!” said Father Juan cheerfully.
“In the Erreguiña?” asked Hal.
“Naturally, Señor Garland,” answered Olazábal.
“Not on your life!” Hal exclaimed. “It would take us three days to get there and back. Why don’t we call Echegaray on the telephone?”
“He won’t use it,” replied Olazábal, chuckling. “If you want to see him, you can see him. If you don’t want to see him, why talk to him? Thus says Echegaray.”
“All right,” said Hal. “Then let’s get Bilbao airport on the phone.”
He strode down the street to the post office, where the only telephone in the village was located. It was an event when any private person used it, an unheard of event that he should talk to so distant a town as Bilbao, and an incredible event that he should want to talk to an airport. All the inhabitants of Villadonga at once pretended that they had business in the neighbourhood of the post office, and stood around listening. The postmaster obligingly opened the office windows so that they could hear what was going on.
The line was clear and there was no delay.
“Oiga, Bilbao!” said Hal. “Oiga! Oiga!”
“Bilbao speaking.”
“Señorita, give me the airport please … is this the airport?”
“It is—and at your service, caballero.”
“Have you got a seaplane in the harbour …? You have! Good! Can you send it at once to Villadonga to take a party of three to Bilbao?”
The Bilbao official consulted his charts.
“I think so,” he answered, “if you’ll clear the infernal fishing boats out of the fairway. How’s the wind?”
The Spanish Cave Page 3
