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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

J ES U S A S PH IL O S O P HE R
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Jesus as Philosopher
The Moral Sage in the Synoptic Gospels

RUNAR M. THORSTEINSSON

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Runar M. Thorsteinsson 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Acknowledgements

This study is the main result of a research project initiated at the

Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University in
2011. The project was financed by the Swedish Research Council
(Vetenskapsrådet). I am grateful to the Council for this opportunity,
as well as to the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund
University for providing me with the necessary locus and tools to
work on the project. I am also grateful to the Theological Research
Institution at the University of Iceland (Guðfræðistofnun HÍ) for a
grant enabling a linguistic revision of the study. I thank Anna Benassi
for greatly improving its language. Needless to say, any errors that
remain are my own.
I wish to express my gratitude to the Senior New Testament Seminar
at Lund University for commenting on Chapter 4 as well as on the
project as a whole at its very beginning. I also wish to thank the Senior
New Testament Seminar at the University of Copenhagen for a helpful
discussion of Chapter 3. I am particularly grateful to Troels Engberg-
Pedersen for detailed comments on that chapter. I give my thanks to
the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of
Iceland for giving me the opportunity to continue to work on the
project, and for granting me research leave during the autumn of
2016 to complete it.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Oxford University Press for accept-
ing this work for publication. I wish to thank the staff of the Press for
working with me to complete the work. I am thankful as well to the
anonymous readers for the Press who commented on the final draft
and made many helpful suggestions.
I wish to dedicate this book to my mother, Rut Meldal Valtýsdóttir.
Runar M. Thorsteinsson
Reykjavik
June 2017
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Contents

Abbreviations ix

Introduction: Purpose and Approach 1

The Purpose and Aim of the Study 1
What Is Addressed and What Is Not? Jesus of the Gospels
and the Historical Jesus 3
Moral Character, Classical Virtue Theory, and
Early Christianity 11
1. Philosophy and Philosophical Sages in the
Graeco-Roman World 15
Philosophy as a Way of Life 15
The Philosophical Sage 21
2. Jesus as Philosopher in the Gospel of Mark 33
‘Take nothing for the journey except a staff ’:
Ascetic Appearance 35
‘We have left everything and followed you’: Abandoning
One’s Family 38
The Camel and the Needle: Attitude towards Material
Possessions and Outward Appearance 46
The Divine Mission: Jesus and the Philosophers as
Messengers of God 51
‘What is this sophia that has been given to him?’ The Wisdom
of Jesus 55
A Tranquil Mind—or Not: The Philosopher’s Emotions 62
The Example of Socrates: The Philosopher’s Suffering and Death 68
Summary 71
3. Jesus as Philosopher in the Gospel of Matthew 72
The Cynic Image: Ascetic Appearance 73
The Socratic Gadfly: Abandoning One’s Family 74
Treasure in Heaven: Attitude towards Material Possessions
and Outward Appearance 75
‘Be perfect’: Jesus as a Teacher of Ethics 78
Theory and Action: The Congruence between
Words and Deeds 101
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

viii Contents
The House on Rock: The Wisdom of Jesus 107
We Shall Overcome: The Philosopher’s Emotions 119
Enduring till the End: The Philosopher’s Suffering and Death 122
Summary 124
4. Jesus as Philosopher in the Gospel of Luke 125
The Wandering Philosopher: Ascetic Appearance 127
Redefining a Concept: Abandoning One’s Family 131
Losing and Gaining: Attitude towards Material Possessions and
Outward Appearance 134
The Reformer of Sinners: Jesus as a Teacher of Ethics 143
The Master of Reasoning and Debate: The Wisdom of Jesus 152
The Call to Metanoia: Jesus and the Philosophers as Messengers
of God 160
Jesus the Stoic: The Philosopher’s Emotions 165
The Innocent Martyr: The Philosopher’s Suffering and Death 170
Summary 177
Conclusion 178

Bibliography 185
Index of Modern Authors 195
Index of Ancient References 197
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Abbreviations

AB Anchor Bible
ABRL Anchor Bible Reference Library
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und
Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Edited by
H. Temporini and W. Haase. Berlin/New York, 1972–
ANTC Abingdon New Testament Commentaries
BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentaries
CBET Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology
CQ Classical Quarterly
EC Early Christianity
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments
HDR Harvard Dissertations in Religion
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
ΗΝΤ Handbuch zum Neuen Testament
HTKNT Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament
HTR The Harvard Theological Review
ICC International Critical Commentary
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JR The Journal of Religion
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supplement Series
JTS The Journal of Theological Studies
KNT Kommentar till Nya testamentet
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LNTS The Library of New Testament Studies
LSJ Liddel, H. G., R. Scott, H. S. Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon.
9th edn with revised supplement. Oxford, 1996
NCBC New Century Bible Commentary
NIGTC New International Greek Testament Commentary
NovT Novum Testamentum
NovTSup Supplements to Novum Testamentum
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NTS New Testament Studies
OSAP Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
SBLAB Society of Biblical Literature Academia Biblica
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBLSBS Society of Biblical Literature Sources for Biblical Study
SCHNT Studia ad corpus hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

x Abbreviations
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
STAC Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum/Studies and
Texts in Antiquity and Christianity
SVF Stoicorum veterum fragmenta. H. von Arnim. 4 vols. Leipzig,
1903–24
TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by G. Kittel
and G. Friedrich. Translated by G. W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand
Rapids, 1964–76
ThH Théologie Historique
THKNT Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament
TLNT Theological Lexicon of the New Testament. C. Spicq. Translated
and edited by J. D. Ernest. 3 vols. Peabody, MA, 1994
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
YCS Yale Classical Studies
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Introduction
Purpose and Approach

The words of Socrates, for some strange reason, still endure and
will endure for all time, though he himself did not write or leave
behind him either a treatise or a will.
(Dio Chrysostom, Or. 54.4)

THE PURPOSE AND AIM OF THE STUDY

Largely due to the age-old Judaism/Hellenism divide and the distinc-

tion traditionally made between theology and philosophy, Jesus of
Nazareth, as a Jew and ‘son of God’, is usually associated with Jewish/
theological as opposed to Hellenistic/philosophical thought and way
of life. Recent research has shown that this ‘Jerusalem vs. Athens’
distinction is highly misleading and results in some very unfortunate
invitations to anachronism. Long before the time of Jesus, large areas of
Palestine/Israel/Judea were deeply influenced by Hellenistic thought
and way of life, as were most areas around the Mediterranean, and the
distinction between theology (or religion) and philosophy is by and
large a modern phenomenon, virtually alien to the ancients. However,
while many, if not most, New Testament scholars would probably agree
with these new insights, few have fully brought them into play with
respect to the person of Jesus. As literature, most of the New Testament
writings have been well studied in their Graeco-Roman context, but
when it comes to the portrayal of Jesus himself in these writings,
especially in the Synoptic Gospels, the scholarly landscape proves to
be quite different. It appears that the closer one gets to the person of
Jesus, the stronger the grip of the traditional Judaism/Hellenism divide
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

2 Jesus as Philosopher
and the stronger the denial that early Christianity had anything to do
with philosophy.
To be sure, there are some valuable studies available related to the
subject of Jesus and ancient philosophy, but these are relatively few
and some of them rest on rather weak methodological foundations.
The problem facing New Testament scholarship in this area is pri-
marily hermeneutical and has to do with the perspective and mind set
of the interpreters themselves who carry out (or do not carry out) the
research. Despite all scholarly willingness to move beyond the trad-
itional Judaism/Hellenism divide, there is still a great reluctance
among scholars to bring philosophy in as a relevant aspect of New
Testament exegesis. And some of those who do bring in philosophy as
such seem rather uncertain about how exactly to approach the sub-
ject. A recent book entitled Jesus and Philosophy (2009) mirrors this
problem well: in his preface to the book, the editor rightly states that
‘no substantial scholarly book has been devoted to the topic of Jesus
and philosophy’.1 The editor then informs his readers that this
particular book ‘fills this gap in the literature of philosophy’ and
‘offers wide-ranging substantial coverage that will be of interest to
philosophers and to other readers, including scholars and students in
theology, religious studies, and history’. And yet, out of five chapters
that deal with ‘Jesus in his first-century thought context’, including
the general introduction of the book, only two chapters really discuss
the topic of Jesus and philosophy.2 Somewhat ironically, not even the
editor’s (primarily historically oriented) introduction, entitled ‘Intro-
duction: Jesus and Philosophy’, deals with the question—it contains
much about Jesus, but not much about Jesus and philosophy.3 There is
clearly a need for further research in this neglected aspect of early
Christianity, research that is open-minded not only towards a ‘theo-
logical Jesus’ but also towards a ‘philosophical Jesus’.
The main purpose and aim of the present study, then, is to make
some contribution to such research by examining the ways in which
early Christian authors may have associated Jesus of Nazareth/Jesus

1
Paul K. Moser (ed.), Jesus and Philosophy: New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), vii.
2
The two chapters are those of Luke Timothy Johnson (see section ‘What Is
Addressed and What Is Not?’) and Paul W. Gooch (who deals with the apostle
Paul’s understanding of Christ).
3
Paul K. Moser, ‘Introduction: Jesus and Philosophy’, in Jesus and Philosophy:
New Essays (ed. P. K. Moser; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1–23.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Introduction: Purpose and Approach 3

Christ with contemporary philosophical schools and figures and used
such associations to persuade their audience that Jesus was not only
on a par with these philosophical figures, but also superior to them:
that Jesus was in every way the ideal human being. The study
concerns both what Jesus did and what he said (or is said to have
said). Rather than simply serving as interesting parallels, the Graeco-
Roman texts referred to and discussed are primarily used as a means
to better understand the Gospels’ portrait of Jesus. The main focus of
attention is pointed at the interpretation of the Synoptic Gospels
themselves. To the best of my knowledge, there is no thorough
study available today that deals with the subject under discussion as
defined in the next section.4

WHAT IS ADDRESSED AND WHAT IS NOT? JESUS

OF THE GOSPELS AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS

But there is another problem facing New Testament scholarship in

this respect, in addition to the underlying hermeneutical problem.
There is also a methodological one, namely, the problem of how to
deal properly with our (lack of ) sources on Jesus. It has to do with the
question of whether we decide to focus on the ‘historical Jesus’ or the
figure of Jesus as narrated in early Christian texts.
One scholar in particular has addressed the question of the rela-
tionship between the historical Jesus and contemporary philosophers.
In a number of studies, F. Gerald Downing has argued that Jesus of
Nazareth, i.e. the historical Jesus, can best be understood in analogy
to the Cynic teacher.5 Pointing to a number of impressive parallels

4
Translations of biblical texts follow (mostly) the NRSV. Unless otherwise noted,
translations of classical texts follow the LCL.
5
See, in particular, F. Gerald Downing, Christ and the Cynics: Jesus and Other
Radical Preachers in First-Century Tradition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1988); F. Gerald Downing, Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh: Clark, 1992).
See also Bernhard Lang, Jesus der Hund: Leben und Lehre eines jüdischen Kynikers
(Munich: Beck, 2010); F. Gerald Downing, ‘Jesus among the Philosophers: The Cynic
Connection Explored and Affirmed, with a Note on Philo’s Jewish-Cynic Philosophy’,
in Religio-Philosophical Discourses in the Mediterranean World: From Plato, through
Jesus, to Late Antiquity (ed. A. Klostergaard Petersen and G. van Kooten; Ancient
Philosophy & Religion 1; Leiden: Brill, 2017), 187–218; John Moles, ‘Cynic Influence
upon First-Century Judaism and Early Christianity?’ in The Limits of Ancient
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

4 Jesus as Philosopher
between the sayings of Jesus and the sayings of Cynic philosophers,
and providing a helpful overview of the (potential) presence of
Cynicism in and around Galilee at the time of Jesus, Downing has
contributed much to the scholarly discussion. However, as Hans
Dieter Betz has rightly pointed out, there are several serious meth-
odological shortcomings in Downing’s studies, among which are our
lack of sources on Cynicism, as well as the tendency of Downing to
co-opt any text that mentions the Cynics with approval as a pristine
specimen of Cynicism (e.g. Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus).6 An even
larger problem, I would add, has to do with the sources on the
historical Jesus. Like Socrates, the philosophical sage par excellence,
Jesus did not write anything himself (as far as we know). Instead, our
knowledge of him is intimately bound to the ancient Christian writ-
ings and authors who tell his story, a story that is deeply shaped by the
authors’ own faith in him as the promised Messiah and ‘son of God’.
That does not necessarily mean that we cannot know anything about
the historical Jesus. There are indeed some criteria in use in New
Testament scholarship that may help us draw some plausible conclu-
sions about his actual words and way of life.7 Also, the question of
Jesus’ social context—and especially his relationship to neighbouring
philosophical schools—is highly germane to the present study. How-
ever, the difficulties involved in attempting to determine which say-
ings do or do not come from Jesus himself, and exactly how he lived,
are enormous.8 The collections of sayings that we find, for instance, in
the Synoptic Gospels, which are arguably the best sources available in
this respect, are not easily removed from their narrative context, which
in turn is determined by the text’s overall purpose and argumentative
structure. Hence, while certainly worth carrying out, undertakings

Biography (ed. B. McGing and J. Mossman; Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales,
2006), 89–116. Cf. also the independent but in many ways similar approach in Burton
L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1988).
6
Hans Dieter Betz, ‘Jesus and the Cynics: Survey and Analysis of a Hypothesis’, JR
74 (1994): 453–75.
7
See, e.g. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume 1:
The Roots of the Problem and the Person (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, 1991); Gerd
Theissen and Dagmar Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of
Criteria (trans. M. E. Boring; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002).
8
See, e.g. the critical discussion in Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The
Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (New
York: HarperOne, 1996).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Introduction: Purpose and Approach 5

such as Downing’s studies of Jesus and the Cynics remain rather
speculative in substance. A more methodologically sound and thus
more promising approach is to focus on the philosophical context of
the ‘literary’ or ‘narrative’ Jesus; that is, Jesus as portrayed by, in this
case, the Synoptic Gospels.
Luke Timothy Johnson has recently suggested four appropriate
ways to approach the topic of Jesus (of the canonical Gospels) and
philosophy, depending in part on the question of what is meant by
‘philosophy’ (what is meant by ‘philosophy’ in the present study is
discussed in Chapter 1).9 One approach is what he terms ‘the histor-
ical Jesus as sage’, which corresponds closely to the approach taken by
Downing and others, in which Jesus is considered as a historical
figure whose sayings in the Gospels are used as a basis for comparing
him with contemporary philosophical sages (Johnson himself is scep-
tical towards this approach, precisely for the methodological reasons
mentioned above). Another approach is to focus on how the Gospel
narratives render the character of Jesus, especially in relation to the
question of how he embodies his own teaching, and how he thus
becomes an example to the readers and hearers of the text. In this
way, the Gospel narratives are read as vehicles of ‘character ethics’,
comparable to the sort of ethics taught in the philosophical schools.
Johnson calls this approach ‘the narrative Jesus as moral exemplar’.
The third approach, ‘the narrative Jesus as revealing God’, concen-
trates less on Jesus’ humanity (as in the first two approaches) and
more on that aspect of his character that transcends ordinary
humanity—his ‘divinity’ or divine characteristics, according to the
Gospel narratives. This approach takes seriously the larger ‘mythic’
story of Jesus, whether explicit or implicit in the texts, and reads it in
the context of contemporary philosophy. In the fourth approach,
which is labelled ‘Jesus and narrative ontology’, the focus is aimed
at the nature of the Gospel narrative itself as narrative, and the
‘ontological implications of reading’, where ‘ontological’ refers to
the way in which the narrative composition and performance brings
into existence something that ‘previously did not exist’, and ‘the
peculiar sort of presence it thereby establishes in the world’ (Johnson

9
Luke Timothy Johnson, ‘The Jesus of the Gospels and Philosophy’, in Jesus and
Philosophy: New Essays (ed. P. K. Moser; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009), 63–83.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

6 Jesus as Philosopher
admits that he is ‘only at an early stage of thinking about this
perspective’).10
Johnson’s suggestions are very helpful in providing an overview of
some of the ways in which the topic in question can be approached.
Given my methodological preference to focus on the ‘narrative Jesus’
rather than on the ‘historical Jesus’, the present approach broadly
corresponds to Johnson’s second approach. Moreover, ancient Greek
philosophy was commonly divided into ethics, physics, and logic,
where ‘physics’ referred to the study of the nature of the world and
included subjects like theology, cosmology, and cosmogony. In sim-
plified terms, if the first two of Johnson’s approaches are taken
together, one could say that they correspond roughly to the field of
ethics, while the third approach, involving the ‘mythic’ dimension,
finds correspondence in physics (Johnson’s fourth approach need not
concern us here). The aim of the present study is to deal primarily
with the first field of philosophical inquiry, viz. ethics. But it should be
noted that the division between ethics and physics is not always that
clear-cut in Graeco-Roman philosophy. In Stoicism, for instance,
physics, including theology and cosmology, was typically considered
the very foundation of ethics, and the latter was in a constant dialogue
with the former. This means that the ethical aspect tends to hold
hands with the (meta)physical aspect. My intention is to concentrate
primarily on the former, although the latter may occasionally come
into view.
The aim, then, is not to engage in the search for the ‘historical
Jesus’, although the study may certainly have some implications for
that enterprise. Rather, it is the Jesus of the Gospels who is under
discussion, and particularly the question of how the Gospel authors
portray the person of Jesus in comparison to portrayals of leading or
ideal figures in the philosophical schools, whether historical (e.g.
Socrates or Diogenes) or not (e.g. the ideal Stoic sage). Stoic philosophy
appears to be of particular importance here, as ‘[t]he Stoic doctrine of
the wise man was famous—indeed notorious—throughout the Helle-
nistic period’.11 In fact, in a recent article Stanley K. Stowers suggests
that Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is a figure largely shaped by the Stoic

10
Johnson, ‘Jesus of the Gospels’, 79–80.
11
George B. Kerferd, ‘The Sage in Hellenistic Philosophical Literature (399 B.C.E.–
199 C.E.)’, in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (ed. J. G. Gammie and
L. G. Perdue; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 320.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Introduction: Purpose and Approach 7

idea of the sage.12 According to Stowers, Matthew drew upon Stoic
ethics because he ‘inherited’ a Jesus who was known as a teacher but did
not have any clear and elaborated ethical teachings that would make
him similar to—or rather, superior to—other prominent teachers of
Graeco-Roman culture. Stowers’s arguments and conclusions are of
great interest to the present study, and his approach is a good example,
albeit still quite a rare one, of the scholarship needed to fruitfully bring
(back) together the theological and the philosophical in New Testament
exegesis. Earlier research has certainly paid some attention, for instance,
to the parallels between the figure of Socrates and the figure of Jesus,13
but not from the perspective of bringing in philosophy in this way,
namely, as an inherent part of the process by which the writings of the
New Testament were formed.
Questions that will be raised in this study include the following:
How does the author in question speak of Jesus in relation to con-
temporary philosophy? Do we see Jesus take on a certain ‘philosoph-
ical’ role in the Gospels, through either his statements and reasoning
or his way of life? In other words, do we see him ‘philosophize’ in a
way similar to the philosophers? Were the Gospel authors inspired by
descriptions of ideal philosophers in their own descriptions of Jesus?
In what way is Jesus’ conduct analogous to that of leading philosoph-
ical figures in Graeco-Roman antiquity, according to these texts?
Conversely, in what way does his conduct differ from theirs? In
general, what is the significance of Graeco-Roman philosophy for
the early Christian understanding, narrative, and image of Jesus?
While a number of Graeco-Roman sources are presented and dis-
cussed in the study, the emphasis is on the interpretation of the
Gospel texts and their portrayals of the figure of Jesus.
It can and should be expected that different writings give rise
to different answers to these and other related questions. Careful
attention must therefore be paid to the peculiar features and setting
of each writing, including close awareness of the writing’s historical
context—if we can say anything reasonable about that—as well as

12
Stanley K. Stowers, ‘Jesus the Teacher and Stoic Ethics in the Gospel of Matthew’, in
Stoicism in Early Christianity (ed. T. Rasimus, T. Engberg-Pedersen, and I. Dunderberg;
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 59–75.
13
Ernst Benz, ‘Christus und Sokrates in der alten Kirche’, ZNW 43 (1950–1):
195–224; Klaus Döring, Exemplum Socratis: Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der
kynisch-stoischen Popularphilosophie der frühen Kaiserzeit und im frühen Christentum
(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1979).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

8 Jesus as Philosopher
its argumentative structure, ethical teaching, and theology, especially
in relation to the figure of Jesus. In this study I have chosen to confine
my treatment of ancient portrayals of Jesus to the Synoptic Gospels
of the New Testament, Mark, Matthew, and Luke (including some
portions of Acts). The reason for not including the Gospel of John is
this: I think I will surprise no one by claiming that, of all the canonical
Gospels, the relationship between Jesus and ancient philosophy is
most lucid in the Gospel of John, which in turn explains why there
has indeed been some research on that Gospel in this respect, not least
in relation to its prologue.14 I, on the other hand, wish to deal with
early Christian narratives of Jesus whose philosophical context is less
apparent and has not received scholarly attention of any similar
scope. What has been undertaken in this respect for the Gospel of
John has been left undone for the Synoptic Gospels.
As the discussion above indicates, the present study is inspired by
narrative criticism of the Gospels. The study does certainly not claim
to be a ‘narrative-critical’ study. It merely seeks aid from this
approach when appropriate for present purposes, including the ana-
lysis of the characterization of Jesus and the emphasis on reading each
Gospel separately, in its own right. It should also be clear that I will
not address the so-called ‘Synoptic problem’15 in this study, but
whenever it comes to the question of the relationship between the
Synoptic Gospels I will join most scholars in assuming Matthew’s and

14
See, e.g. the references in Harold W. Attridge, ‘An “Emotional” Jesus and Stoic
Tradition’, in Stoicism in Early Christianity (ed. T. Rasimus, T. Engberg-Pedersen, and
I. Dunderberg; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 77; George van Kooten, ‘The
“True Light Which Enlightens Everyone” (John 1:9): John, Genesis, the Platonic
Notion of the “True, Noetic Light,” and the Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic’,
in The Creation of Heaven and Earth: Re-interpretations of Genesis 1 in the Context of
Judaism, Ancient Philosophy, Christianity, and Modern Physics (ed. G. van Kooten;
Themes in Biblical Narrative 8; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 149–94. For more recent litera-
ture, see Troels Engberg-Pedersen, John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth
Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); George van Kooten, ‘The Last Days
of Socrates and Christ: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo Read in Counterpoint
with John’s Gospel’, in Religio-Philosophical Discourses in the Mediterranean World:
From Plato, through Jesus, to Late Antiquity (ed. A. Klostergaard Petersen and G. van
Kooten; Ancient Philosophy & Religion 1; Leiden: Brill, 2017), 219–43.
15
On the ‘Synoptic problem’, see, in particular, the thorough studies of Delbert
Burkett, Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark (New York: T&T
Clark, 2004); Delbert Burkett, Rethinking the Gospel Sources, Volume 2: The Unity and
Plurality of Q (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009). A fine, briefer overview
can be found in Mark Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze
(The Biblical Seminar 80; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/3/2018, SPi

Introduction: Purpose and Approach 9

Luke’s dependency on Mark. Other source-critical questions, such as
that of the existence of ‘Q’, do not have direct bearing on the study:
the main attention is paid to the narrative form of each Gospel in its
own right; that is to say, the nature of each author’s portrayal of the
character of Jesus, most often irrespective of the source-critical con-
text, although, when appropriate, the relationship between Matthew
and Luke, on the one hand, and their source, Mark, on the other, are
touched on occasionally. Given the nature of the Synoptic Gospels as
‘synoptic’ (‘seen together’), some repetition is necessary. As a rule,
I do not discuss the relationship between the Gospels’ portrayals of
Jesus and the possible words and actions of the historical Jesus.
Inspired by the narrative approach, I treat the Gospels first and
foremost as literary works. Also, the choice of topics discussed is
based on my assessment of relevant passages in the three Gospels.
The choice of Graeco-Roman sources is important as well. Since we
are dealing with the characterization of a certain person in the (late)
first century CE, it seems most appropriate to consult Graeco-Roman
sources from roughly the same period in order to see how the
philosophical sage was perceived and characterized in that period.
This includes in particular the sources of late Stoicism—in this case,
Stoics in the first and early second century CE (often referred to as
Roman Stoicism). But other (roughly) contemporary Graeco-Roman
sources are consulted as well.
It should be noted at the outset that this study does not argue that
the Gospel authors necessarily knew the writings and/or teaching
lessons of the Graeco-Roman philosophers under discussion. The
possibility that this was the case is not excluded, but it is not argued
for or presumed. Rather, it is presumed that the Gospel authors were
in one way or another familiar with Graeco-Roman traditions, literary
or oral, in which they engaged on their own premises. Needless to say,
the Gospels and their authors were firmly rooted in Jewish teaching,
belief, and way of life. But they were also part of their Graeco-Roman
context, whether lingual, literary, ideological, or social. To begin with,
the authors all wrote in Greek, the international language of the time,
not in Aramaic. Obviously, their audience, whether Jews or Gentiles,
also spoke or knew Greek and were probably located in the diaspora,
i.e. in a Graeco-Roman environment, perhaps Rome or Antioch.16

16
See the discussions in Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia;
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 96–102; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary
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After lunch, when a land-breeze sprang up, which meant fair wind
and a quick run across Chiriqui Lagoon and along the length of it to
the Bull and the Calf, Francis, eager to bring to Henry the good word
that his ring adorned Leoncia’s finger, resolutely declined her
proffered hospitality to remain for the night and meet Enrico Solano
and his tall sons. Francis had a further reason for hasty departure.
He could not endure the presence of Leoncia—and this in no sense
uncomplimentary to her. She charmed him, drew him, to such extent
that he dared not endure her charm and draw if he were to remain
man-faithful to the man in the canvas pants even then digging holes
in the sands of the Bull.
So Francis departed, a letter to Henry from Leoncia in his pocket.
The last moment, ere he departed, was abrupt. With a sigh so
quickly suppressed that Leoncia wondered whether or not she had
imagined it, he tore himself away. She gazed after his retreating
form down the driveway until it was out of sight, then stared at the
ring on her finger with a vaguely troubled expression.
From the beach, Francis signaled the Angelique, riding at anchor, to
send a boat ashore for him. But before it had been swung into the
water, half a dozen horsemen, revolver-belted, rifles across their
pommels, rode down the beach upon him at a gallop. Two men led.
The following four were hang-dog half-castes. Of the two leaders,
Francis recognized Torres. Every rifle came to rest on Francis, and he
could not but obey the order snarled at him by the unknown leader
to throw up his hands. And Francis opined aloud:
“To think of it! Once, only the other day—or was it a million years
ago?—I thought auction bridge, at a dollar a point, was some
excitement. Now, sirs, you on your horses, with your weapons
threatening the violent introduction of foreign substances into my
poor body, tell me what is doing now. Don’t I ever get off this beach
without gunpowder complications? Is it my ears, or merely my
mustache, you want?”
“We want you,” answered the stranger leader, whose mustache
bristled as magnetically as his crooked black eyes.
“And in the name of original sin and of all lovely lizards, who might
you be?”
“He is the honorable Senor Mariano Vercara è Hijos, Jefe Politico of
San Antonio,” Torres replied.
“Good night,” Francis laughed, remembering the man’s description as
given to him by Henry. “I suppose you think I’ve broken some
harbor rule or sanitary regulation by anchoring here. But you must
settle such things with my captain, Captain Trefethen, a very
estimable gentleman. I am only the charterer of the schooner—just
a passenger. You will find Captain Trefethen right up in maritime law
and custom.”
“You are wanted for the murder of Alfaro Solano,” was Torres’
answer. “You didn’t fool me, Henry Morgan, with your talk up at the
hacienda that you were some one else. I know that some one else.
His name is Francis Morgan, and I do not hesitate to add that he is
not a murderer, but a gentleman.”
“Ye gods and little fishes!” Francis exclaimed. “And yet you shook
hands with me, Senor Torres.”
“I was fooled,” Torres admitted sadly. “But only for a moment. Will
you come peaceably?”
“As if——” Francis shrugged his shoulders eloquently at the six rifles.
“I suppose you’ll give me a pronto trial and hang me at daybreak.”
“Justice is swift in Panama,” the Jefe Politico replied, his English
queerly accented but understandable. “But not so quick as that. We
will not hang you at daybreak. Ten o’clock in the morning is more
comfortable all around, don’t you think?”
“Oh, by all means,” Francis retorted. “Make it eleven, or twelve noon
—I won’t mind.”
“You will kindly come with us, Senor,” Mariano Vercara è Hijos, said,
the suavity of his diction not masking the iron of its intention. “Juan!
Ignacio!” he ordered in Spanish. “Dismount! Take his weapons. No, it
will not be necessary to tie his hands. Put him on the horse behind
Gregorio.”

Francis, in a venerably whitewashed adobe cell with walls five feet

thick, its earth floor carpeted with the forms of half a dozen sleeping
peon prisoners, listened to a dim hammering not very distant,
remembered the trial from which he had just emerged, and whistled
long and low. The hour was half-past eight in the evening. The trial
had begun at eight. The hammering was the hammering together of
the scaffold beams, from which place of eminence he was scheduled
at ten next morning to swing off into space supported from the
ground by a rope around his neck. The trial had lasted half an hour
by his watch. Twenty minutes would have covered it had Leoncia not
burst in and prolonged it by the ten minutes courteously accorded
her as the great lady of the Solano family.
“The Jefe was right,” Francis acknowledged to himself in a matter of
soliloquy. “Panama justice does move swiftly.”
The very possession of the letter given him by Leoncia and
addressed to Henry Morgan had damned him. The rest had been
easy. Half a dozen witnesses had testified to the murder and
identified him as the murderer. The Jefe Politico himself had so
testified. The one cheerful note had been the eruption on the scene
of Leoncia, chaperoned by a palsied old aunt of the Solano family.
That had been sweet—the fight the beautiful girl had put up for his
life, despite the fact that it was foredoomed to futility.
When she had made Francis roll up the sleeve and expose his left
forearm, he had seen the Jefe Politico shrug his shoulders
contemptuously. And he had seen Leoncia fling a passion of Spanish
words, too quick for him to follow, at Torres. And he had seen and
heard the gesticulation and the roar of the mob-filled courtroom as
Torres had taken the stand.
But what he had not seen was the whispered colloquy between
Torres and the Jefe, as the former was in the thick of forcing his way
through the press to the witness box. He no more saw this particular
side-play than did he know that Torres was in the pay of Regan to
keep him away from New York as long as possible, and as long as
ever if possible, nor than did he know that Torres himself, in love
with Leoncia, was consumed with a jealousy that knew no limit to its
ire.
All of which had blinded Francis to the play under the interrogation
of Torres by Leoncia, which had compelled Torres to acknowledge
that he had never seen a scar on Francis Morgan’s left forearm.
While Leoncia had looked at the little old judge in triumph, the Jefe
Politico had advanced and demanded of Torres in stentorian tones:
“Can you swear that you ever saw a scar on Henry Morgan’s arm?”
Torres had been baffled and embarrassed, had looked bewilderment
to the judge and pleadingness to Leoncia, and, in the end, without
speech, shaken his head that he could not so swear.
The roar of triumph had gone up from the crowd of ragamuffins.
The judge had pronounced sentence, the roar had doubled on itself,
and Francis had been hustled out and to his cell, not entirely
unresistingly, by the gendarmes and the Comisario, all apparently
solicitous of saving him from the mob that was unwilling to wait till
ten next morning for his death.
“That poor dub, Torres, who fell down on the scar on Henry!” Francis
was meditating sympathetically, when the bolts of his cell door shot
back and he arose to greet Leoncia.
But she declined to greet him for the moment, as she flared at the
Comisario in rapid-fire Spanish, with gestures of command to which
he yielded when he ordered the jailer to remove the peons to other
cells, and himself, with a nervous and apologetic bowing, went out
and closed the door.
And then Leoncia broke down, sobbing on his shoulder, in his arms:
“It is a cursed country, a cursed country. There is no fair play.”
And as Francis held her pliant form, meltingly exquisite in its
maddeningness of woman, he remembered Henry, in his canvas
pants, barefooted, under his floppy sombrero, digging holes in the
sand of the Bull.
He tried to draw away from the armful of deliciousness, and only
half succeeded. Still, at such slight removal of distance, he essayed
the intellectual part, rather than the emotional part he desired all too
strongly to act.
“And now I know at last what a frame-up is,” he assured her,
farthest from the promptings of his heart. “If these Latins of your
country thought more coolly instead of acting so passionately, they
might be building railroads and developing their country. That trial
was a straight passionate frame-up. They just knew I was guilty and
were so eager to punish me that they wouldn’t even bother for mere
evidence or establishment of identity. Why delay? They knew Henry
Morgan had knifed Alfaro. They knew I was Henry Morgan. When
one knows, why bother to find out?”
Deaf to his words, sobbing and struggling to cling closer while he
spoke, the moment he had finished she was deep again in his arms,
against him, to him, her lips raised to his; and, ere he was aware,
his own lips to hers.
“I love you, I love you,” she whispered brokenly.
“No, no,” he denied what he most desired. “Henry and I are too
alike. It is Henry you love, and I am not Henry.”
She tore herself away from her own clinging, drew Henry’s ring from
her finger, and threw it on the floor. Francis was so beyond himself
that he knew not what was going to happen the next moment, and
was only saved from whatever it might be by the entrance of the
Comisario, watch in hand, with averted face striving to see naught
else than the moments registered by the second-hand on the dial.
She stiffened herself proudly, and all but broke down again as
Francis slipped Henry’s ring back on her finger and kissed her hand
in farewell. Just ere she passed out the door she turned and with a
whispered movement of the lips that was devoid of sound told him:
“I love you.”

Promptly as the stroke of the clock, at ten o’clock Francis was led
out into the jail patio where stood the gallows. All San Antonio was
joyously and shoutingly present, including much of the neighboring
population and Leoncia, Enrico Solano, and his five tall sons. Enrico
and his sons fumed and strutted, but the Jefe Politico, backed by the
Comisario and his gendarmes, was adamant. In vain, as Francis was
forced to the foot of the scaffold, did Leoncia strive to get to him
and did her men strive to persuade her to leave the patio. In vain,
also, did her father and brothers protest that Francis was not the
man. The Jefe Politico smiled contemptuously and ordered the
execution to proceed.
On top the scaffold, standing on the trap, Francis declined the
ministrations of the priest, telling him in Spanish that no innocent
man being hanged needed intercessions with the next world, but
that the men who were doing the hanging were in need of just such
intercessions.
They had tied Francis’ legs, and were in the act of tying his arms,
with the men who held the noose and the black cap hovering near to
put them on him, when the voice of a singer was heard approaching
from without; and the song he sang was:
“Back to back against the mainmast,
Held at bay the entire crew....”

Leoncia, almost fainting, recovered at the sound of the voice, and

cried out with sharp delight as she descried Henry Morgan entering,
thrusting aside the guards at the gate who tried to bar his way.
At sight of him the only one present who suffered chagrin was
Torres, which passed unnoticed in the excitement. The populace was
in accord with the Jefe, who shrugged his shoulders and announced
that one man was as good as another so long as the hanging went
on. And here arose hot contention from the Solano men that Henry
was likewise innocent of the murder of Alfaro. But it was Francis,
from the scaffold, while his arms and legs were being untied, who
shouted through the tumult:
“You tried me! You have not tried him! You cannot hang a man
without trial! He must have his trial!”
And when Francis had descended from the scaffold and was shaking
Henry’s hand in both his own, the Comisario, with the Jefe at his
back, duly arrested Henry Morgan for the murder of Alfaro Solano.
 CHAPTER IV

“We must work quickly—that is the one thing sure,” Francis said to
the little conclave of Solanos on the piazza of the Solano hacienda.
“One thing sure!” Leoncia cried out scornfully ceasing from her
anguished pacing up and down. “The one thing sure is that we must
save him.”
As she spoke, she shook a passionate finger under Francis’ nose to
emphasize her point. Not content, she shook her finger with equal
emphasis under the noses of all and sundry of her father and
brothers.
“Quick!” she flamed on. “Of course we must be quick. It is that,
or....” Her voice trailed off into the unvoiceable horror of what would
happen to Henry if they were not quick.
“All Gringos look alike to the Jefe,” Francis nodded sympathetically.
She was splendidly beautiful and wonderful, he thought. “He
certainly runs all San Antonio, and short shrift is his motto. He’ll give
Henry no more time than he gave us. We must get him out to-
night.”
“Now listen,” Leoncia began again. “We Solanos cannot permit this
... this execution. Our pride ... our honor. We cannot permit it.
Speak! any of you. Father—you. Suggest something....”
And while the discussion went on, Francis, for the time being silent,
wrestled deep in the throes of sadness. Leoncia’s fervor was
magnificent, but it was for another man and it did not precisely
exhilarate him. Strong upon him was the memory of the jail patio
after he had been released and Henry had been arrested. He could
still see, with the same stab at the heart, Leoncia in Henry’s arms,
Henry seeking her hand to ascertain if his ring was on it, and the
long kiss of the embrace that followed.
Ah, well, he sighed to himself, he had done his best. After Henry had
been led away, had he not told Leoncia, quite deliberately and coldly,
that Henry was her man and lover, and the wisest of choices for the
daughter of the Solanos?
But the memory of it did not make him a bit happy. Nor did the
rightness of it. Right it was. That he never questioned, and it
strengthened him into hardening his heart against her. Yet the right,
he found in his case, to be the sorriest of consolation.
And yet what else could he expect? It was his misfortune to have
arrived too late in Central America, that was all, and to find this
flower of woman already annexed by a previous comer—a man as
good as himself, and, his heart of fairness prompted, even better.
And his heart of fairness compelled loyalty to Henry from him—to
Henry Morgan, of the breed and blood; to Henry Morgan, the wild-
fire descendant of a wild-fire ancestor, in canvas pants, and floppy
sombrero, with a penchant for the ears of strange young men, living
on sea biscuit and turtle eggs and digging up the Bull and the Calf
for old Sir Henry’s treasure.

And while Enrico Solano and his sons talked plans and projects on
their broad piazza, to which Francis lent only half an ear, a house
servant came, whispered in Leoncia’s ear, and led her away around
the ell of the piazza, where occurred a scene that would have
excited Francis’ risibilities and wrath.
Around the ell, Alvarez Torres, in all the medieval Spanish splendor
of dress of a great haciendado-owner, such as still obtains in Latin
America, greeted her, bowed low with doffed sombrero in hand, and
seated her in a rattan settee. Her own greeting was sad, but shot
through with curiousness, as if she hoped he brought some word of
hope.
“The trial is over, Leoncia,” he said softly, tenderly, as one speaks of
the dead. “He is sentenced. To-morrow at ten o’clock is the time. It
is all very sad, most very sad. But....” He shrugged his shoulders.
“No, I shall not speak harshly of him. He was an honorable man. His
one fault was his temper. It was too quick, too fiery. It led him into a
mischance of honor. Never, in a cool moment of reasonableness,
would he have stabbed Alfaro——”
“He never killed my uncle!” Leoncia cried, raising her averted face.
“And it is regrettable,” Torres proceeded gently and sadly, avoiding
any disagreement. “The judge, the people, the Jefe Politico,
unfortunately, are all united in believing that he did. Which is most
regrettable. But which is not what I came to see you about. I came
to offer my service in any and all ways you may command. My life,
my honor, are at your disposal. Speak. I am your slave.”
Dropping suddenly and gracefully on one knee before her, he caught
her hand from her lap, and would have instantly flooded on with his
speech, had not his eyes lighted on the diamond ring on her
engagement finger. He frowned, but concealed the frown with bent
face until he could drive it from his features and begin to speak.
“I knew you when you were small, Leoncia, so very, very charmingly
small, and I loved you always.—No, listen! Please. My heart must
speak. Hear me out. I loved you always. But when you returned
from your convent, from schooling abroad, a woman, a grand and
noble lady fit to rule in the house of the Solanos, I was burnt by
your beauty. I have been patient. I refrained from speaking. But you
may have guessed. You surely must have guessed. I have been on
fire for you ever since. I have been consumed by the flame of your
beauty, by the flame of you that is deeper than your beauty.”
He was not to be stopped, as she well knew, and she listened
patiently, gazing down on his bent head and wondering idly why his
hair was so unbecomingly cut, and whether it had been last cut in
New York or San Antonio.
“Do you know what you have been to me ever since your return?”
She did not reply, nor did she endeavour to withdraw her hand,
although his was crushing and bruising her flesh against Henry
Morgan’s ring. She forgot to listen, led away by a chain of thought
that linked far. Not in such rhodomontade of speech had Henry
Morgan loved and won her, was the beginning of the chain. Why did
those of Spanish blood always voice their emotions so
exaggeratedly? Henry had been so different. Scarcely had he spoken
a word. He had acted. Under her glamor, himself glamoring her,
without warning, so certain was he not to surprise and frighten her,
he had put his arms around her and pressed his lips to hers. And
hers had been neither too startled nor altogether unresponsive. Not
until after that first kiss, arms still around her, had Henry begun to
speak at all.
And what plan was being broached around the corner of the ell by
her men and Francis Morgan? Her mind strayed on, deaf to the
suitor at her feet. Francis! Ah—she almost sighed, and marveled,
what of her self-known love for Henry, why this stranger Gringo so
enamored her heart. Was she a wanton? Was it one man? Or
another man? Or any man? No! No! She was not fickle nor
unfaithful. And yet?... Perhaps it was because Francis and Henry
were so much alike, and her poor stupid loving woman’s heart failed
properly to distinguish between them. And yet—while it had seemed
she would have followed Henry anywhere over the world, in any luck
or fortune, it seemed to her now that she would follow Francis even
farther. She did love Henry, her heart solemnly proclaimed. But also
did she love Francis, and almost did she divine that Francis loved her
—the fervor of his lips on hers in his prison cell was inerasable; and
there was a difference in her love for the two men that confuted her
powers of reason and almost drove her to the shameful conclusion
that she, the latest and only woman of the house of Solano, was a
wanton.
A severe pinch of her flesh against Henry’s ring, caused by the
impassioned grasp of Torres, brought her back to him, so that she
could hear the spate of his speech pouring on:
“You have been the delicious thorn in my side, the spiked rowel of
the spur forever prodding the sweetest and most poignant pangs of
love into my breast. I have dreamed of you ... and for you. And I
have my own name for you. Ever the one name I have had for you:
the Queen of my Dreams. And you will marry me, my Leoncia. We
will forget this mad Gringo who is as already dead. I shall be gentle,
kind. I shall love you always. And never shall any vision of him arise
between us. For myself, I shall not permit it. For you ... I shall love
you so that it will be impossible for the memory of him to arise
between us and give you one moment’s heart-hurt.”
Leoncia debated in a long pause that added fuel to Torres’ hopes.
She felt the need to temporise. If Henry were to be saved ... and
had not Torres offered his services? Not lightly could she turn him
away when a man’s life might depend upon him.
“Speak!—I am consuming!” Torres urged in a choking voice.
“Hush! Hush!” she said softly. “How can I listen to love from a live
man, when the man I loved is yet alive?”
Loved! The past tense of it startled her. Likewise it startled Torres,
fanning his hopes to fairer flames. Almost was she his. She had said
loved. She no longer bore love for Henry. She had loved him, but no
longer. And she, a maid and woman of delicacy and sensibility, could
not, of course, give name to her love for him while the other man
still lived. It was subtle of her. He prided himself on his own subtlety,
and he flattered himself that he had interpreted her veiled thought
aright. And ... well, he resolved, he would see to it that the man who
was to die at ten next morning should have neither reprieve nor
rescue. The one thing clear, if he were to win Leoncia quickly, was
that Henry Morgan should die quickly.
“We will speak of it no more ... now,” he said with chivalric
gentleness, as he gently pressed her hand, rose to his feet, and
gazed down on her.
She returned a soft pressure of thanks with her own hand ere she
released it and stood up.
“Come,” she said. “We will join the others. They are planning now, or
trying to find some plan, to save Henry Morgan.”
The conversation of the group ebbed away as they joined it, as if out
of half-suspicion of Torres.
“Have you hit upon anything yet?” Leoncia asked.
Old Enrico, straight and slender and graceful as any of his sons
despite his age, shook his head.
“I have a plan, if you will pardon me,” Torres began, but ceased at a
warning glance from Alesandro, the eldest son.
On the walk, below the piazza, had appeared two scarecrows of
beggar boys. Not more than ten years of age, by their size, they
seemed much older when judged by the shrewdness of their eyes
and faces. Each wore a single marvelous garment, so that between
them it could be said they shared a shirt and pants. But such a shirt!
And such pants! The latter, man-size, of ancient duck, were buttoned
around the lad’s neck, the waistband reefed with knotted twine so as
not to slip down over his shoulders. His arms were thrust through
the holes where the side-pockets had been. The legs of the pants
had been hacked off with a knife to suit his own diminutive length of
limb. The tails of the man’s shirt on the other boy dragged on the
ground.
“Vamos!” Alesandro shouted fiercely at them to be gone.
But the boy in the pants gravely removed a stone which he had been
carrying on top of his bare head, exposing a letter which had been
thus carried. Alesandro leaned over, took the letter, and with a
glance at the inscription passed it to Leoncia, while the boys began
whining for money. Francis, smiling despite himself at the spectacle
of them, tossed them a few pieces of small silver, whereupon the
shirt and the pants toddled away down the path.
The letter was from Henry, and Leoncia scanned it hurriedly. It was
not precisely in farewell, for he wrote in the tenour of a man who
never expected to die save by some inconceivable accident.
Nevertheless, on the chance of such inconceivable thing becoming
possible, Henry did manage to say good-bye and to include a
facetious recommendation to Leoncia not to forget Francis, who was
well worth remembering because he was so much like himself,
Henry.
Leoncia’s first impulse was to show the letter to the others, but the
portion about Francis with-strained her.
“It’s from Henry,” she said, tucking the note into her bosom. “There
is nothing of importance. He seems to have not the slightest doubt
that he will escape somehow.”
“We shall see that he does,” Francis declared positively.
With a grateful smile to him, and with one of interrogation to Torres,
Leoncia said:
“You were speaking of a plan, Senor Torres?”
Torres smiled, twisted his mustache, and struck an attitude of
importance.
“There is one way, the Gringo, Anglo-Saxon way, and it is simple,
straight to the point. That is just what it is, straight to the point. We
will go and take Henry out of jail in forthright, brutal and direct
Gringo fashion. It is the one thing they will not expect. Therefore, it
will succeed. There are enough unhung rascals on the beach with
which to storm the jail. Hire them, pay them well, but only partly in
advance, and the thing is accomplished.”
Leoncia nodded eager agreement. Old Enrico’s eyes flashed and his
nostrils distended as if already sniffing gunpowder. The young men
were taking fire from his example. And all looked to Francis for his
opinion or agreement. He shook his head slowly, and Leoncia uttered
a sharp cry of disappointment in him.
“That way is hopeless,” he said. “Why should all of you risk your
necks in a madcap attempt like that, doomed to failure from the
start?” As he talked, he strode across from Leoncia’s side to the
railing in such way as to be for a moment between Torres and the
other men, and at the same time managed a warning look to Enrico
and his sons. “As for Henry, it looks as if it were all up with him——”
“You mean you doubt me?” Torres bristled.
“Heavens, man,” Francis protested.
But Torres dashed on: “You mean that I am forbidden by you, a man
I have scarcely met, from the councils of the Solanos who are my
oldest and most honored friends.”
Old Enrico, who had not missed the rising wrath against Francis in
Leoncia’s face, succeeded in conveying a warning to her, ere, with a
courteous gesture, he hushed Torres and began to speak.
“There are no councils of the Solanos from which you are barred,
Senor Torres. You are indeed an old friend of the family. Your late
father and I were comrades, almost brothers. But that—and you will
pardon an old man’s judgment—does not prevent Senor Morgan
from being right when he says your plan is hopeless. To storm the
jail is truly madness. Look at the thickness of the walls. They could
stand a siege of weeks. And yet, and I confess it, almost was I
tempted when you first broached the idea. Now when I was a young
man, fighting the Indians in the high Cordilleras, there was a very
case in point. Come, let us all be seated and comfortable, and I will
tell you the tale....”
But Torres, busy with many things, declined to wait, and with
soothed amicable feelings shook hands all around, briefly apologized
to Francis, and departed astride his silver-saddled and silver-bridled
horse for San Antonio. One of the things that busied him was the
cable correspondence maintained between him and Thomas Regan’s
Wall Street office. Having secret access to the Panamanian
government wireless station at San Antonio, he was thus able to
relay messages to the cable station at Vera Cruz. Not alone was his
relationship with Regan proving lucrative, but it was jibing in with his
own personal plans concerning Leoncia and the Morgans.
“What have you against Senor Torres, that you should reject his plan
and anger him?” Leoncia demanded of Francis.
“Nothing,” was the answer, “except that we do not need him, and
that I’m not exactly infatuated with him. He is a fool and would spoil
any plan. Look at the way he fell down on testifying at my trial.
Maybe he can’t be trusted. I don’t know. Anyway, what’s the good of
trusting him when we don’t need him? Now his plan is all right. We’ll
go straight to the jail and take Henry out, if all you are game for it.
And we don’t need to trust to a mob of unhung rascals and beach-
sweepings. If the six men of us can’t do it, we might as well quit.”
“There must be at least a dozen guards always hanging out at the
jail,” Ricardo, Leoncia’s youngest brother, a lad of eighteen, objected.
Leoncia, her eagerness alive again, frowned at him; but Francis took
his part.
“Well taken,” he agreed. “But we will eliminate the guards.”
“The five-foot walls,” said Martinez Solano, twin brother to Alvarado.
“Go through them,” Francis answered.
“But how?” Leoncia cried.
“That’s what I am arriving at. You, Senor Solano, have plenty of
saddle horses? Good. And you, Alesandro, does it chance you could
procure me a couple of sticks of dynamite from around the
plantation? Good, and better than good. And you, Leoncia, as the
lady of the hacienda, should know whether you have in your store-
room a plentiful supply of that three-star rye whiskey?”
“Ah, the plot thickens,” he laughed, on receiving her assurance.
“We’ve all the properties for a Rider Haggard or Rex Beach
adventure tale. Now listen. But wait. I want to talk to you, Leoncia,
about private theatricals....”
 CHAPTER V.

It was in the mid-afternoon, and Henry, at his barred cell-window,

stared out into the street and wondered if any sort of breeze would
ever begin to blow from off Chiriqui Lagoon and cool the stagnant
air. The street was dusty and filthy—filthy, because the only
scavengers it had ever known since the town was founded centuries
before were the carrion dogs and obscene buzzards even then
prowling and hopping about in the debris. Low, whitewashed
buildings of stone and adobe made the street a furnace.
The white of it all, and the dust, was almost achingly intolerable to
the eyes, and Henry would have withdrawn his gaze, had not the
several ragged mosos, dozing in a doorway opposite, suddenly
aroused and looked interestedly up the street. Henry could not see,
but he could hear the rattling spokes of some vehicle coming at
speed. Next, it surged into view, a rattletrap light wagon drawn by a
runaway horse. In the seat a gray-headed, gray-bearded ancient
strove vainly to check the animal.
Henry smiled and marveled that the rickety wagon could hold
together, so prodigious were the bumps imparted to it by the deep
ruts. Every wheel, half-dished and threatening to dish, wobbled and
revolved out of line with every other wheel. And if the wagon held
intact, Henry judged, it was a miracle that the crazy harness did not
fly to pieces. When directly opposite the window, the old man made
a last effort, half-standing up from the seat as he pulled on the
reins. One was rotten, and broke. As the driver fell backward into
the seat, his weight on the remaining rein caused the horse to
swerve sharply to the right. What happened then—whether a wheel
dished, or whether a wheel had come off first and dished afterward
—Henry could not determine. The one incontestable thing was that
the wagon was a wreck. The old man, dragging in the dust and
stubbornly hanging on to the remaining rein, swung the horse in a
circle until it stopped, facing him and snorting at him.
By the time he gained his feet a crowd of mosos was forming about
him. These were roughly shouldered right and left by the gendarmes
who erupted from the jail. Henry remained at the window and, for a
man with but a few hours to live, was an amused spectator and
listener to what followed.
Giving his horse to a gendarme to hold, not stopping to brush the
filth from his person, the old man limped hurriedly to the wagon and
began an examination of the several packing cases, large and small,
which composed its load. Of one case he was especially solicitous,
even trying to lift it and seeming to listen as he lifted.
He straightened up, on being addressed by one of the gendarmes,
and made voluble reply.
“Me? Alas senors, I am an old man, and far from home. I am
Leopoldo Narvaez. It is true, my mother was German, may the
Saints preserve her rest; but my father was Baltazar de Jesus y
Cervallos é Narvaez, son of General Narvaez of martial memory, who
fought under the great Bolivar himself. And now I am half ruined
and far from home.”
Prompted by other questions, interlarded with the courteous
expressions of sympathy with which even the humblest moso is over
generously supplied, he managed to be polite-fully grateful and to
run on with his tale.
“I have driven from Bocas del Toro. It has taken me five days, and
business has been poor. My home is in Colon, and I wish I were
safely there. But even a noble Narvaez may be a peddler, and even a
peddler must live, eh, senors, is it not so? But tell me, is there not a
Tomas Romero who dwells in this pleasant city of San Antonio?”
“There are any God’s number of Tomas Romeros who dwell
everywhere in Panama,” laughed Pedro Zurita, the assistant jailer.
“One would need fuller description.”
“He is the cousin of my second wife,” the ancient answered
hopefully, and seemed bewildered by the roar of laughter from the
crowd.
“And a dozen Tomas Romeros live in and about San Antonio,” the
assistant jailer went on, “any one of which may be your second
wife’s cousin, Senor. There is Tomas Romero, the drunkard. There is
Tomas Romero, the thief. There is Tomas Romero—but no, he was
hanged a month back for murder and robbery. There is the rich
Tomas Romero who owns many cattle on the hills. There is....”
To each suggested one, Leopoldo Narvaez had shaken his head
dolefully, until the cattle-owner was mentioned. At this he had
become hopeful and broke in:
“Pardon me, senor, it must be he, or some such a one as he. I shall
find him. If my precious stock-in-trade can be safely stored, I shall
seek him now. It is well my misfortune came upon me where it did. I
shall be able to trust it with you, who are, one can see with half an
eye, an honest and an honorable man.” As he talked, he fumbled
forth from his pocket two silver pesos and handed them to the jailer.
“There, I wish you and your men to have some pleasure of assisting
me.”
Henry grinned to himself as he noted the access of interest in the
old man and of consideration for him, on the part of Pedro Zurita
and the gendarmes, caused by the present of the coins. They
shoved the more curious of the crowd roughly back from the
wrecked wagon and began to carry the boxes into the jail.
“Careful, senors, careful,” the old one pleaded, greatly anxious, as
they took hold of the big box. “Handle it gently. It is of value, and it
is fragile, most fragile.”
While the contents of the wagon were being carried into the jail, the
old man removed and deposited in the wagon all harness from the
horse save the bridle.
Pedro Zurita ordered the harness taken in as well, explaining, with a
glare at the miserable crowd: “Not a strap or buckle would remain
the second after our backs were turned.”
Using what was left of the wagon for a stepping block, and ably
assisted by the jailer and his crew, the peddler managed to get
astride his animal.
“It is well,” he said, and added gratefully: “A thousand thanks,
senors. It has been my good fortune to meet with honest men with
whom my goods will be safe—only poor goods, peddler’s goods, you
understand; but to me, everything, my way upon the road. The
pleasure has been mine to meet you. To-morrow I shall return with
my kinsman, whom I certainly shall find, and relieve from you the
burden of safeguarding my inconsiderable property.” He doffed his
hat. “Adios, senors, adios!”
He rode away at a careful walk, timid of the animal he bestrode
which had caused his catastrophe. He halted and turned his head at
a call from Pedro Zurita.
“Search the graveyard, Senor Narvaez,” the jailer advised. “Full a
hundred Tomas Romeros lie there.”
“And be vigilant, I beg of you, senor, of the heavy box,” the peddler
called back.
Henry watched the street grow deserted as the gendarmes and the
populace fled from the scorch of the sun. Small wonder, he thought
to himself, that the old peddler’s voice had sounded vaguely familiar.
It had been because he had possessed only half a Spanish tongue to
twist around the language—the other half being the German tongue
of the mother. Even so, he talked like a native, and he would be
robbed like a native if there was anything of value in the heavy box
deposited with the jailers, Henry concluded, ere dismissing the
incident from his mind.
In the guardroom, a scant fifty feet away from Henry’s cell, Leopoldo
Narvaez was being robbed. It had begun by Pedro Zurita making a
profound and wistful survey of the large box. He lifted one end of it
to sample its weight, and sniffed like a hound at the crack of it as if
his nose might give him some message of its contents.
“Leave it alone, Pedro,” one of the gendarmes laughed at him. “You
have been paid two pesos to be honest.”
The assistant jailer sighed, walked away and sat down, looked back
at the box, and sighed again. Conversation languished. Continually
the eyes of the men roved to the box. A greasy pack of cards could
not divert them. The game languished. The gendarme who had
twitted Pedro himself went to the box and sniffed.
“I smell nothing,” he announced. “Absolutely in the box there is
nothing to smell. Now what can it be? The caballero said that it was
of value!”
“Caballero!” sniffed another of the gendarmes. “The old man’s father
was more like to have been peddler of rotten fish on the streets of
Colon and his father before him. Every lying beggar claims descent
from the conquistadores.”
“And why not, Rafael?” Pedro Zurita retorted. “Are we not all so
descended?”
“Without doubt,” Rafael readily agreed. “The conquistadores slew
many——”
“And were the ancestors of those that survived,” Pedro completed for
him and aroused a general laugh. “Just the same, almost would I
give one of these pesos to know what is in that box.”
“There is Ignacio,” Rafael greeted the entrance of a turnkey whose
heavy eyes tokened he was just out of his siesta. “He was not paid
to be honest. Come, Ignacio, relieve our curiosity by letting us know
what is in the box.”
“How should I know?” Ignacio demanded, blinking at the object of
interest. “Only now have I awakened.”
“You have not been paid to be honest, then?” Rafael asked.
“Merciful Mother of God, who is the man who would pay me to be
honest?” the turnkey demanded.
“Then take the hatchet there and open the box,” Rafael drove his
point home. “We may not, for as surely as Pedro is to share the two
pesos with us, that surely have we been paid to be honest. Open the
box, Ignacio, or we shall perish of our curiosity.”
“We will look, we will only look,” Pedro muttered nervously, as the
turnkey prized off a board with the blade of the hatchet. “Then we
will close the box again and——Put your hand in, Ignacio. What is it
you find?... eh? what does it feel like? Ah!”
After pulling and tugging, Ignacio’s hand had reappeared, clutching
a cardboard carton.
“Remove it carefully, for it must be replaced,” the jailer cautioned.
And when the wrappings of paper and tissue paper were removed,
all eyes focused on a quart bottle of rye whiskey.
“How excellently is it composed,” Pedro murmured in tones of awe.
“It must be very good that such care be taken of it.”
“It is Americano whiskey,” sighed a gendarme. “Once, only, have I
drunk Americano whiskey. It was wonderful. Such was the courage
of it, that I leaped into the bull-ring at Santos and faced a wild bull
with my hands. It is true, the bull rolled me, but did I not leap into
the ring?”
Pedro took the bottle and prepared to knock its neck off.
“Hold!” cried Rafael. “You were paid to be honest.”
“By a man who was not himself honest,” came the retort. “The stuff
is contraband. It has never paid duty. The old man was in possession
of smuggled goods. Let us now gratefully and with clear conscience
invest ourselves in its possession. We will confiscate it. We will
destroy it.”
Not waiting for the bottle to pass, Ignacio and Rafael unwrapped
fresh ones and broke off the necks.
“Three stars—most excellent,” Pedro Zurita orated in a pause,
pointing to the trade mark. “You see, all Gringo whiskey is good.
One star shows that it is very good; two stars that it is excellent;
three stars that it is superb, the best, and better than beyond that.
Ah, I know. The Gringos are strong on strong drink. No pulque for
them.”
“And four stars?” queried Ignacio, his voice husky from the liquor,
the moisture glistening in his eyes.
“Four stars? Friend Ignacio, four stars would be either sudden death
or translation into paradise.”
In not many minutes, Rafael, his arm around another gendarme,
was calling him brother and proclaiming that it took little to make
men happy here below.
“The old man was a fool, three times a fool, and thrice that,”
volunteered Augustino, a sullen-faced gendarme, who for the first
time gave tongue to speech.
“Viva Augustino!” cheered Rafael. “The three stars have worked a
miracle. Behold! Have they not unlocked Augustino’s mouth?”
“And thrice times thrice again was the old man a fool!” Augustino
bellowed fiercely. “The very drink of the gods was his, all his, and he
has been five days alone with it on the road from Bocas del Toro,
and never taken one little sip. Such fools as he should be stretched
out naked on an ant-heap, say I.”
“The old man was a rogue,” quoth Pedro. “And when he comes back
to-morrow for his three stars I shall arrest him for a smuggler. It will
be a feather in all our caps.”
“If we destroy the evidence—thus?” queried Augustino, knocking off
another neck.
“We will save the evidence—thus!” Pedro replied, smashing an
empty bottle on the stone flags. “Listen, comrades. The box was
very heavy—we are all agreed. It fell. The bottles broke. The liquor
ran out, and so were we made aware of the contraband. The box
and the broken bottles will be evidence sufficient.”
The uproar grew as the liquor diminished. One gendarme quarreled
with Ignacio over a forgotten debt of ten centavos. Two others sat
upon the floor, arms around each other’s necks, and wept over the
miseries of their married lot. Augustino, like a very spendthrift of
speech, explained his philosophy that silence was golden. And Pedro
Zurita became sentimental on brotherhood.
“Even my prisoners,” he maundered. “I love them as brothers. Life is
sad.” A gush of tears in his eyes made him desist while he took
another drink. “My prisoners are my very children. My heart bleeds
for them. Behold! I weep. Let us share with them. Let them have a
moment’s happiness. Ignacio, dearest brother of my heart. Do me a
favor. See, I weep on your hand. Carry a bottle of this elixir to the
Gringo Morgan. Tell him my sorrow that he must hang to-morrow.
Give him my love and bid him drink and be happy to-day.”
And as Ignacio passed out on the errand, the gendarme who had
once leapt into the bull-ring at Santos, began roaring:
“I want a bull! I want a bull!”
“He wants it, dear soul, that he may put his arms around it and love
it,” Pedro Zurita explained, with a fresh access of weeping. “I, too,
love bulls. I love all things. I love even mosquitoes. All the world is
love. That is the secret of the world. I should like to have a lion to
play with....”

The unmistakable air of “Back to Back Against the Mainmast” being

whistled openly in the street, caught Henry’s attention, and he was
crossing his big cell to the window when the grating of a key in the
door made him lie down quickly on the floor and feign sleep. Ignacio
staggered drunkenly in, bottle in hand, which he gravely presented
to Henry.
“With the high compliments of our good jailer, Pedro Zurita,” he
mumbled. “He says to drink and forget that he must stretch your
neck to-morrow.”
“My high compliments to Senor Pedro Zurita, and tell him from me
to go to hell along with his whiskey,” Henry replied.
The turnkey straightened up and ceased swaying, as if suddenly
become sober.
“Very well, senor,” he said, then passed out and locked the door.
In a rush Henry was at the window just in time to encounter Francis
face to face and thrusting a revolver to him through the bars.
“Greetings, camarada,” Francis said. “We’ll have you out of here in a
jiffy.” He held up two sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps
complete. “I have brought this pretty crowbar to pry you out. Stand
well back in your cell, because real pronto there’s going to be a hole
in this wall that we could sail the Angelique through. And the
Angelique is right off the beach waiting for you.—Now, stand back.
I’m going to touch her off. It’s a short fuse.”
Hardly had Henry backed into a rear corner of his cell, when the
door was clumsily unlocked and opened to a babel of cries and
imprecations, chiefest among which he could hear the ancient and
invariable war-cry of Latin-America, “Kill the Gringo!”
Also, he could hear Rafael and Pedro, as they entered, babbling, the
one: “He is the enemy of brotherly love”; and the other, “He said I
was to go to hell—is not that what he said, Ignacio?”
In their hands they carried rifles, and behind them urged the
drunken rabble, variously armed, from cutlasses and horse-pistols to
hatchets and bottles. At sight of Henry’s revolver, they halted, and
Pedro, fingering his rifle unsteadily, maundered solemnly:
“Senor Morgan, you are about to take up your rightful abode in hell.”
But Ignacio did not wait. He fired wildly and widely from his hip,
missing Henry by half the width of the cell and going down the next
moment under the impact of Henry’s bullet. The rest retreated
precipitately into the jail corridor, where, themselves unseen, they
began discharging their weapons into the room.
Thanking his fortunate stars for the thickness of the walls, and
hoping no ricochet would get him, Henry sheltered in a protecting
angle and waited for the explosion.
It came. The window and the wall beneath it became all one
aperture. Struck on the head by a flying fragment, Henry sank down
dizzily, and, as the dust of the mortar and the powder cleared, with
wavering eyes he saw Francis apparently swim through the hole. By
the time he had been dragged out through the hole, Henry was
himself again. He could see Enrico Solano and Ricardo, his youngest
born, rifles in hand, holding back the crowd forming up the street,
while the twins, Alvarado and Martinez, similarly held back the crowd
forming down the street.
But the populace was merely curious, having its lives to lose and
nothing to gain if it attempted to block the way of such masterful
men as these who blew up walls and stormed jails in open day. And
it gave back respectfully before the compact group as it marched
down the street.
“The horses are waiting up the next alley,” Francis told Henry, as
they gripped hands. “And Leoncia is waiting with them. Fifteen
minutes’ gallop will take us to the beach, where the boat is waiting.”
“Say, that was some song I taught you,” Henry grinned. “It sounded
like the very best little bit of all right when I heard you whistling it.
The dogs were so previous they couldn’t wait till to-morrow to hang
me. They got full of whiskey and decided to finish me off right away.
Funny thing that whiskey. An old caballero turned peddler wrecked a
wagon-load of it right in front of the jail——”
“For even a noble Narvaez, son of Baltazar de Jesus y Cervallos è
Narvaez, son of General Narvaez of martial memory, may be a
peddler, and even a peddler must live, eh, senors, is it not so?”
Francis mimicked.
Henry looked his gleeful recognition, and added soberly:
“Francis, I’m glad for one thing, most damn glad....”
“Which is?” Francis queried in the pause, just as they swung around
the corner to the horses.
“That I didn’t cut off your ears that day on the Calf when I had you
down and you insisted.”
 CHAPTER VI

Mariano Vercara e Hijos, Jefe Politico of San Antonio, leaned back in

his chair in the courtroom and with a quiet smile of satisfaction
proceeded to roll a cigarette. The case had gone through as
prearranged. He had kept the little old judge away from his mescal
all day, and had been rewarded by having the judge try the case and
give judgment according to program. He had not made a slip. The
six peons, fined heavily, were ordered back to the plantation at
Santos. The working out of the fines was added to the time of their
contract slavery. And the Jefe was two hundred dollars good
American gold richer for the transaction. Those Gringos at Santos,
he smiled to himself, were men to tie to. True, they were developing
the country with their henequen plantation. But, better than that,
they possessed money in untold quantity and paid well for such little
services as he might be able to render.
His smile was even broader as he greeted Alvarez Torres.
“Listen,” said the latter, whispering low in his ear. “We can get both
these devils of Morgans. The Henry pig hangs to-morrow. There is
no reason that the Francis pig should not go out to-day.”
The Jefe remained silent, questioning with a lift of his eyebrows.
“I have advised him to storm the jail. The Solanos have listened to
his lies and are with him. They will surely attempt to do it this
evening. They could not do it sooner. It is for you to be ready for the
event, and to see to it that Francis Morgan is especially shot and
killed in the fight.”
“For what and for why?” the Jefe temporised. “It is Henry I want to
see out of the way. Let the Francis one go back to his beloved New
York.”
“He must go out to-day, and for reasons you will appreciate. As you
know, from reading my telegrams through the government wireless
——”
“Which was our agreement for my getting you your permission to
use the government station,” the Jefe reminded.
“And of which I do not complain,” Torres assured him. “But as I was
saying, you know my relations with the New York Regan are
confidential and important.” He touched his hand to his breast
pocket. “I have just received another wire. It is imperative that the
Francis pig be kept away from New York for a month—if forever, and
I do not misunderstand Senor Regan, so much the better. In so far
as I succeed in this, will you fare well.”
“But you have not told me how much you have received, nor how
much you will receive,” the Jefe probed.
“It is a private agreement, and it is not so much as you may fancy.
He is a hard man, this Senor Regan, a hard man. Yet will I divide
fairly with you out of the success of our venture.”
The Jefe nodded acquiescence, then said:
“Will it be as much as a thousand gold you will get?”
“I think so. Surely the pig of an Irish stock-gambler could pay me no
less a sum, and five hundred is yours if pig Francis leaves his bones
in San Antonio.”
“Will it be as much as a hundred thousand gold?” was the Jefe’s next
query.
Torres laughed as if at a joke.
“It must be more than a thousand,” the other persisted.
“And he may be generous,” Torres responded. “He may even give
me five hundred over the thousand, half of which, naturally, as I
have said, will be yours as well.”
“I shall go from here immediately to the jail,” the Jefe announced.
“You may trust me, Senor Torres, as I trust you. Come. We will go at
once, now, you and I, and you may see for yourself the preparation
I shall make for this Francis Morgan’s reception. I have not yet lost
my cunning with a rifle. And, as well, I shall tell off three of the
gendarmes to fire only at him. So this Gringo dog would storm our
jail, eh? Come. We will depart at once.”
He stood up, tossing his cigarette away with a show of determined
energy. But, half way across the room, a ragged boy, panting and
sweating, plucked his sleeve and whined:
“I have information. You will pay me for it, most high Senor? I have
run all the way.”
“I’ll have you sent to San Juan for the buzzards to peck your carcass
for the worthless carrion that you are,” was the reply.
The boy quailed at the threat, then summoned courage from his
emptiness of belly and meagerness of living and from his desire for
the price of a ticket to the next bull-fight.
“You will remember I brought you the information, Senor. I ran all
the way until I am almost dead, as you can behold, Senor. I will tell
you, but you will remember it was I who ran all the way and told you
first.”
“Yes, yes, animal, I will remember. But woe to you if I remember too
well. What is the trifling information? It may not be worth a centavo.
And if it isn’t I’ll make you sorry the sun ever shone on you. And
buzzard-picking of you at San Juan will be paradise compared with
what I shall visit on you.”
“The jail,” the boy quavered. “The strange Gringo, the one who was
to be hanged yesterday, has blown down the side of the jail. Merciful
Saints! The hole is as big as the steeple of the cathedral! And the
other Gringo, the one who looks like him, the one who was to hang
to-morrow, has escaped with him out of the hole. He dragged him
out of the hole himself. This I saw, myself, with my two eyes, and
then I ran here to you all the way, and you will remember....”
But the Jefe Politico had already turned on Torres witheringly.
“And if this Senor Regan be princely generous, he may give you and
me the munificent sum that was mentioned, eh? Five times the sum,
or ten times, with this Gringo tiger blowing down law and order and
our good jail-walls, would be nearer the mark.”
“At any rate, the thing must be a false alarm, merely the straw that
shows which way blows the wind of this Francis Morgan’s intention,”
Torres murmured with a sickly smile. “Remember, the suggestion
was mine to him to storm the jail.”
“In which case you and Senor Regan will pay for the good jail wall?”
the Jefe demanded, then, with a pause, added: “Not that I believe it
has been accomplished. It is not possible. Even a fool Gringo would
not dare.”
Rafael, the gendarme, rifle in hand, the blood still oozing down his
face from a scalp-wound, came through the courtroom door and
shouldered aside the curious ones who had begun to cluster around
Torres and the Jefe.
“We are devastated,” were Rafael’s first words. “The jail is ‘most
destroyed. Dynamite! A hundred pounds of it! A thousand! We came
bravely to save the jail. But it exploded—the thousand pounds of
dynamite. I fell unconscious, rifle in hand. When sense came back to
me, I looked about. All others, the brave Pedro, the brave Ignacio,
the brave Augustino—all, all, lay around me dead!” Almost could he
have added, “drunk”; but, his Latin-American nature so
compounded, he sincerely stated the catastrophe as it most valiantly
and tragically presented itself to his imagination. “They lay dead.
They may not be dead, but merely stunned. I crawled. The cell of
the Gringo Morgan was empty. There was a huge and monstrous
hole in the wall. I crawled through the hole into the street. There
was a great crowd. But the Gringo Morgan was gone. I talked with a
moso who had seen and who knew. They had horses waiting. They
rode toward the beach. There is a schooner that is not anchored. It
sails back and forth waiting for them. The Francis Morgan rides with
a sack of gold on his saddle. The moso saw it. It is a large sack.”
“And the hole?” the Jefe demanded. “The hole in the wall?”
“Is larger than the sack, much larger,” was Rafael’s reply. “But the
sack is large. So the moso said. And he rides with it on his saddle.”
“My jail!” the Jefe cried. He slipped a dagger from inside his coat
under the left arm-pit and held it aloft by the blade so that the hilt
showed as a true cross on which a finely modeled Christ hung
crucified. “I swear by all the Saints the vengeance I shall have. My
jail! Our justice! Our law!——Horses! Horses! Gendarme, horses!” He
whirled about upon Torres as if the latter had spoken, shouting: “To
hell with Senor Regan! I am after my own! I have been defied! My
jail is desolated! My law—our law, good friends—has been mocked.
Horses! Horses! Commandeer them on the streets. Haste! Haste!”

Captain Trefethen, owner of the Angelique, son of a Maya Indian

mother and a Jamaica negro father, paced the narrow after-deck of
his schooner, stared shoreward toward San Antonio, where he could
make out his crowded long-boat returning, and meditated flight from
his mad American charterer. At the same time he meditated
remaining in order to break his charter and give a new one at three
times the price; for he was strangely torn by his conflicting bloods.
The negro portion counseled prudence and observance of
Panamanian law. The Indian portion was urgent to unlawfulness and
the promise of conflict.
It was the Indian mother who decided the issue and made him draw
his jib, ease his mainsheet, and begin to reach in-shore the quicker
to pick up the oncoming boat. When he made out the rifles carried
by the Solanos and the Morgans, almost he put up his helm to run
for it and leave them. When he made out a woman in the boat’s
sternsheets, romance and thrift whispered in him to hang on and
take the boat on board. For he knew wherever women entered into
the transactions of men that peril and pelf as well entered hand in
hand.
And aboard came the woman, the peril and the pelf—Leoncia, the
rifles, and a sack of money—all in a scramble; for, the wind being
light, the captain had not bothered to stop way on the schooner.
“Glad to welcome you on board, sir,” Captain Trefethen greeted
Francis with a white slash of teeth between his smiling lips. “But who
is this man?” He nodded his head to indicate Henry.
“A friend, captain, a guest of mine, in fact, a kinsman.”
“And who, sir, may I make bold to ask, are those gentlemen riding
along the beach in fashion so lively?”
Henry looked quickly at the group of horsemen galloping along the
sand, unceremoniously took the binoculars from the skipper’s hand,
and gazed through them.
“It’s the Jefe himself in the lead,” he reported to Leoncia and her
menfolk, “with a bunch of gendarmes.” He uttered a sharp
exclamation, stared through the glasses intently, then shook his
head. “Almost I thought I made out our friend Torres.”
“With our enemies!” Leoncia cried incredulously, remembering
Torres’ proposal of marriage and proffer of service and honor that
very day on the hacienda piazza.
“I must have been mistaken,” Francis acknowledged. “They are
riding so bunched together. But it’s the Jefe all right, two jumps
ahead of the outfit.”
“Who is this Torres duck?” Henry asked harshly. “I’ve never liked his
looks from the first, yet he seems always welcome under your roof,
Leoncia.”
“I beg your parson, sir, most gratifiedly, and with my humilius
respects,” Captain Trefethen interrupted suavely. “But I must call
your attention to the previous question, sir, which is: who and what
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