"Good; let's do it, then. We'll call at San Domingo, Hayti, Jamaica, and other places to make up for spoiling your house-party, Virginia. In the meantime I have secured good quarters for our guests at the Hotel Garcia, where to-night I give the Government a dinner. I shall expect to see you there, Captain."
Dan would have preferred to stay away from that dinner. The thought of his practical connivance at the day's slaughter, so obviously suggested by Mr. Howland, grated on him, and the implied command in the invitation to the dinner bothered him too. The day was to be filled with duties about ship, and he wanted the evening to himself, to sit in his cabin with his pipe and his books and mull over these and other things.
Of course he might have known what would follow the landing of the guns from the _Tampico_. He did know, as a matter of fact, but orders are orders, and duty is duty; and when you are employed by a man you accept your salary and any other accruing benefits solely upon the understanding that you shall serve his interests to the best of your ability.
Yes, Dan could see that perfectly, and he could also see the bad taste that lay in intimating dissatisfaction with his employer's methods while wearing the uniform of Mr. Howland's company and receiving good pay therefor. And anyway, Mr. Howland had not asked him to cut Blancan warships in two and endanger the lives of the entire ship's company and guests. No, that was on his own head, his own hot head.
In the days of the present voyage he had felt a strong tendency to look beyond the bridge of the _Tampico_ into the future. Of course he liked adventure, but of late he had begun to feel that perhaps he had had enough of the strenuous life to last him the remainder of his years. He certainly did not intend to grow gray on coastwise lines. Bluff, gnarled old Harrison, his predecessor on this vessel, had served as a striking object lesson. He could spin yarns of his adventures by the hour, but at best no one would call him anything but an interesting old character, a retired shell-back on half pay. Dan found no pleasure in looking forward to anything of the sort.
Since he had gained a command in the famous Coastwise and West Indian Shipping Company, he had begun to commend himself to persons who never before had played a part in his life, principally a cousin of his father's, a wealthy merchant of Boston, who had written him a long letter, received just before the _Tampico_ sailed on her present voyage, expressing a desire to meet him.