When the squadron dropped anchor

For a full hour they had talked it over, and every word of the white-haired admiral had burned into his memory. His ten years of clean service. His brilliant record overseas. His taut performance of duty in the squadron. His heavy poker losses for two straight months, and then his phenomenal change of luck. At its end, the admiral had delivered his edict.

“Here is my verdict, Graydon: Trial by general court-martial, or your resignation for the good of the service. I may have no right to offer you that alternative, but your record merits it. With all my heart I wish that you may be able to disprove these damnable charges. I will give you a fortnight and the assistance of any officer you may name.”

His fine old face was twitching, and his voice a bit shaky.

The fortnight had expired, a space of veritable exile. At its end the net of circumstantial evidence had tightened slowly and inexorably. He had dully accepted the alternative of resignation, for he had to find sanctuary for a while, some place where he would have time to think more clearly. But the thought rankled in his mind that his choice would be construed as a tacit admission of his guilt.

It was the admiral himself who had suggested Santander as a temporary anchorage in which he might have time to plan his course. Santander was in the vicinity, and its rich coffee and sugar plantations and its forests of hardwoods might lead to some business opening, while he fought for vindication.

The schooner tied up alongside the wharf at Santander, with disorderly tumult. Its very antithesis of the orderly man-of-war discipline that was steeped in his blood brought a wry smile to his lips. He made his way to the Hotel Grande Centrale, a rambling white hostelry facing the Plaza Concepcion.

The inevitable statue of a general, with cocked hat and brandished sword, astride of a fiery rocking-horse, dominated the sleepy plaza. At its sight Stanley Graydon’s native optimism was beating back to full tide. He raised his hat in mock salute.

“Greetings, old-timer!” he said softly. “I knew you when you were masquerading as Dessalines, in the Champ de Mars, at Port-au-Prince. I ran across your bows in Caracas, as Simon Bolivar. The day we hit the beach in Guatemala last March, you were holding the spotlight of a dusty old square as Carrera. Some day I’ll set up a little banana republic of my own. Then I’ll write out a treasury warrant for the price of ‘One (1) statue, imitation bronze. Model AA, Series 2408,’ and the big mail-order house in Chicago will ship me your twin brother. Wait until I get into the café, my dear general, and I’ll drink your health.”

A barefooted waiter placed a green “swizzle” on his marble-topped table. As he raised it to his lips, he was aware that a group of officers at a near-by table was watching him with undisguised interest. One was a swaggering, swarthy giant of a man, with a sweeping black mustache and the rank devices of a colonel on his shoulders and cuffs. The others were, with one exception, conventional tyes of Central American soldiery. The exception was a youngster, barely out of his teens, but with a captain’s devices on the freshly starched khaki, with its red piping. His face was oval, and his features were clearly cut. Stanley Graydon appraised him as far superior in birth and breeding to his mates.

The swarthy colonel returned his casual glance with an ill-favored scowl. He turned to the others, and a ripple of laughter swept over them at his remark. It was clear to Stanley Graydon that they were in the mood for sport with a gringo. He paid his score, and, as he passed their table, a roar of derisive, raucous laughter followed.

“Damned ‘spigs!’” he muttered contemptuously. “Probably had as much as two drinks, and feeling them.”

Out he went, blissfully unconscious that his straight, flat back, trim shoulders, and precise stride marked him indelibly in a caste strikingly at variance with the business men, generous of girth, careless of bearing, who ventured into Santander.

Early the next morning he started for a ride into the savannas. His mount was a spirited stallion, and his spirits rose, as he cleared the cobbled streets and cantered briskly on. Ahead lay the panorama of the rolling savannas. For miles the lush acres, pale green with sugar cane, rippled like an inland sea. Here and there showed irregular patches of varied crops. The red roofs of haciendas loomed above their blotched huddles of outbuildings. Above them tossed the silhouetted feathers of giant palms against the pale blue of the tropical sky.

To the south the sun danced on a broad expanse of water, where a great bay, with a bottle-neck entrance between bold headlands, lay like a silver mirror in the frame of dark-green shores.

“Ramona Bay! Lord, what a picture!”

His mind raced back to the charts and maps over which he and Dixon had worked out maneuver problems for the admiral. With his background of overseas service, he had been detailed as Dixon’s assistant. All the plans of naval action on the West coast had stressed the overwhelming importance of a base on Ramona Bay. Its seizure by a hostile force would have exposed the fleet’s line of communications to a deadly menace; the home coast to dangerous raids; the diversion of naval units that would be vitally needed in the main theater of operations.

The sudden thunder of hoofs and boisterous laughter broke into his reflective mood. Out from the cover of a patch of woods came the riders. The distance narrowed, and he saw the red piping on khaki uniforms and recognized the riders as the group in the café. There was studied insolence in their faces, and Stanley Graydon reined to one side to give them a wide berth.

The horseman on the near flank, the swarthy colonel, deliberately moved toward him at a lively canter. His own mount, crowded uncomfortably close to the cactus hedge, wheeled and lashed out with his heels. The unshod hoofs drummed viciously into the flank of the colonel’s mount. A riding crop slashed across the rump of Stanley Graydon’s stallion, and a burst of derisive glee greeted the animal’s frenzied leap.

His crop lashed back with retaliatory slash across the colonel’s hands. His stallion, now panicky, bolted. A pistol shot whistled overhead. Furious at his apparent flight, he was unable to check his racing animal until he had covered a full half mile beyond the wooded stretch.

The rest of the day passed without incident, while he gathered information about Santander’s commercial life from the loquacious manager of the hotel. By deft questioning he also learned that the bellicose colonel was Henriquez, commandant of the Palace Guard. The youngster was Captain Juan Navarro, whose father, Don Rafael, was a wealthy landowner on the shores of Ramona Bay, and highly esteemed throughout Santander.