“I reflected for a moment, then asked him if he thought the commandant of the prison would keep his faith.
“‘We must take some chances, of course,’ answered Rosenthal. ‘For your part, Doctor, there is no risk, and you may name your own figure. Remember that I am already deeply in your debt.’
“I turned the thing over in my mind, Doctor, and it seemed quite a reasonable proposition. You have seen the prison at Porto Cabello; it is on that little sandy island about five hundred yards from the town and only about eighty miles from Curaçao. The prison guards were a lot of shiftless half-breeds and would no doubt be drunk by ten o’clock of the appointed night. Curaçao schooners were always coming and going—on the whole, it seemed no difficult achievement, and it certainly is a commendable act to get any one out of a Venezuelan prison, whether he belongs there or not. I made a bargain with Rosenthal for five hundred dollars, which he paid me on the spot. The next day we sailed for Curaçao on the Red D.
“There was no difficulty about my part of the programme. I chartered one of the chunky little tubs which you saw in Curaçao, engaged three _Papiemento_-jabbering negroes and a cook and cleared for Porto Cabello, giving it out that I was on a collecting cruise along the coast.
“It took me six days to slam that old tub against the trade to Porto Cabello, about eighty miles in a straight line; weather just as it is now—as it always is down there—the wind dead ahead and blowing the top off the water, and the sky bright and clear and blue. Arrived, I anchored near the mouth of the little inlet, and, after being duly inspected, went ashore to see if I could gather any information; but there was nothing to be learned.
“For a week I hung about that hot, wretched hole; then the Dutch mail steamer arrived from La Guayra, and on going aboard to greet some old acquaintances the first man I met was Isidore Rosenthal.
“The Jew’s Satanic face was more malignant than ever; the glare in his green eyes put one in mind of a jaguar; I saw at once that something had gone wrong.
“‘Ah, the ——!’ he snarled, when we were alone. ‘You were right, Leyden! The pigs! The robbers! The vile liars!’ His rage was positively alarming. His black eyebrows worked up and down, and his yellow teeth gnawed at the corner of his black mustache.