"A week after I was shipped from San Salvador," he said, "they found Dutchey's body in the dock with a noose round his neck. Poor old Dutchey who never harmed anybody! Listen!"
The rich, full-throated tenor voice, which I had heard as I was following Doña Luisa through the negro quarter, suddenly burst into song quite close at hand. On a sad and plaintive melody it sang with a liquid enunciation which made every chord distinct:--
"_Se murio, y sobre su cara "Un panuelito le heche "For que no toque la tierra "Esa bocca que yo bese!_"
The beach-comber held up his hand as the melody died away on a minor key.
"It is time for you to go!" he whispered. "The door over there, opposite the one by which you came in, leads to the yard at the back. Cross the yard, take the path through the plantation, bear always to the right and you will strike the main road to the docks. Go as quietly as you can and don't dawdle on the way.... Ah!"
Again the singer in the lane sent his plaintive melody soaring to the stars. He chanted his little verse through once more. Feebly, the sick man beat time with his hand.
"He's been singing on and off all the evening, Okewood," he murmured. "Always the same song. I Englished it while I was waiting for you. Listen!"
In a soft, quavering voice he whispered rather than sang:--
"_She died and on her face I laid a napkin fine Lest the cold earth should touch Those lips I pressed to mine...._"
"Ah!" he sighed as the song died away and silence fell on us once more; "when the hour strikes for me, Okewood, there'll be no one, except, maybe, old Mammie Luisa there, to lay a pretty thought like that in my coffin!"
"Now go!" he bade me. "And good luck go with you!"
"I will come again and see you, Adams," said I. "I expect you'll want to hear what I've made of the message!"
"No, Okewood," he said, shaking his head, "I'm thinking we shan't meet again!"
I was thinking the same; for, in truth, the man looked at death's door.
The unseen singer had attacked another verse.
The opening words came resonantly to me as I quietly stole from the room. At the door I turned for a last look at the beachcomber. The candle was guttering away and its trembling light illuminated only the pinched, worn features and the sombre, suffering eyes. The grossness of that broken body was mercifully swallowed up in the shadows. To and fro across the candle's feeble gleam the hands moved in cadence with the song....