“You remember, Don Ignaçio, how the ‘Juno’ frigate nearly ran us under, and yet never gained a fathom on us in nine hours?”
“Ay, amigo; but, had she not carried away her fore-top-mast, in another hour there would have been nothing left of you afloat but a––hencoop perhaps.”
“Quien sabe, compadre? If hads had been shads you would have had fish for your breakfast,” rejoined the narrator; and then throwing back the lappels of his green velvet coat with an air of gentlemanly satisfaction, he hooked his thumbs in the arm-holes of his fine waistcoat, and went on.
“Well, señores, the graceful girl beside me never spoke scarcely for half an hour. I divined, however, what her thoughts might have been in dwelling on the painful scenes she had recently witnessed, and I held my peace also; for, you see, I have had considerable experience with women, and I have ever found that a man loses more by talking than by remaining watchful and attentive.”
Captain Brand looked, as he gave utterance to this philosophical sentiment, as if he were a thirsty, cold-eyed tiger, lying in wait to spring upon an unwary passer-by.
“Yes, I waited, until at last she spoke.
“‘Capitano,’ she said, ‘what a beautiful vessel you command, and how fast she sails!’
“What I replied, my friends, is neither here nor there; but I sank down on the cushions beside the lovely girl, and poured out a torrent of passionate words––which I really felt, too, at the time––as I don’t think I ever uttered before or since. She was a little startled and nervous at first, but after a while I saw her stately head droop to one side till it rested on my shoulder; I stole my arm around her yielding waist and clasped her to my breast.”
Here Captain Brand looked as if the tiger had already sprung upon the passer-by, and was sucking the blood, with his claws buried deep into the carcass.
“‘Señor,’ she murmured, in the low, sweet, plaintive note of a nightingale, ‘I am a young and inexperienced girl, of an old and noble family; you have saved my life; my mother is gone, and I have no one to advise with, and, if my dear father smiles upon my choice, I will marry you; but do not, I implore you, deceive me!’”
“And you did not deceive her, I hope?” broke in the doctor, with a shiver of light from his determined eyes that was almost painful to see, so earnest and terrible it was, as he leaned forward with both of his clenched hands quivering nervously on the table.
Captain Brand looked at the doctor with rather a suspicious stare, and letting his thumbs drop from his armpits till they rested on the flaps of his waistcoat pockets, he replied, in a careless tone,
“Oh no, monsieur, I never deceived––a––that is to say, intentionally deceived a woman in all my life!”
“Let us hear more, my son,” said the priest, thickly, who had now woke up from a short nap.
“Bueno, caballeros!” continued the narrator, as he tossed off a thimbleful of maraschino from a wicker-bound square bottle after his coffee. “Well, gentlemen, the young Portuguese damsel, Señorita Lucia, and I sat there under the weather rail till the first faint streaks of early dawn in the tropics began to announce the coming of the gray morning. Then she arose, and, leaning with a soft pressure on my arm, I took her to her cabin, kissed her sweet hands, and bade her good-night.”
At this stage of the narrative Captain Brand threw himself triumphantly back in his large Manilla chair, and ran his white muscular hands through his dry light hair. Ay! the tiger had clutched his prey. An unprotected, young, and lovely girl had been won and lost, and her palpitating heart was soon to be torn from her tender body.
|
“With a pint and a quarter of holy water |
The captain got up from his chair, stepped to the settee, and, pulling the signal-cord on the wall, held a short dialogue with the man at the station; then, saying in a low, sharp whisper through the tube, “A bright look-out, Pedro!” he resumed his place at the table. The doctor had, in the mean while, got up and gone to the veranda, where, swinging in a Yucatan grass hammock, shielded from the night wind, lay his little patient sleeping soundly. Carefully closing the curtains again around him, he returned to his place. The padre was now all awake again, with his thick lips open, waiting for the captain to go on with his story. As for Don Ignaçio, he never stirred body or limb, but his eye traveled about perpetually, and he observed the movements of his companions all at the same time. Still the hoarse roar of the pirates in their carouse arose from the covered sheds in the calm night, and the two solitary lights from each mast-head of the felucca and schooner twinkled above the basin of the inlet.
“And now, amigos,” began again Captain Brand, after he had assured himself that all was going on as he could wish without, “I shall inform you of the sequel of my adventure with the Señorita Lucia. The evening after the night on which I had declared my passion, we were seated at dinner in the after cabin. Such a choice little dinner, too, as only our late friend, Lascar Joe, could prepare! Poor fellow, he’ll never make another of those famous curries, though, no doubt, he’ll find fire and pepper enough where he is, if the devil chooses to employ him. What a neat hand he was, too, with that spiral-bladed Malay creese of his! Ah! well––we were sitting over the dessert, 104 and I was relating to my pretty passenger some account of my early days, and of my lady mother and my old squire of a father, omitting, perhaps, some few uninteresting details––”
Here the old commander of the felucca cackled, and his black, beady eye glittered as the thought flashed through his head as to what details his villainous compeer had omitted. How he forged his old father’s name, which brought down his gray hairs in sorrow and disgrace to the grave; and how his poor mother, too, died of grief, together with other bitter memories, all of which Captain Brand, the pirate, omitted to mention.
“Yes, I related likewise some of my early privateering adventures, when all the broad Atlantic was alive with the fleets of France, England, and Spain; how I was captured by a Spanish brigantine”––omitting again to state that he got up a mutiny with the crew of that brigantine, poniarded the captain and mate in their sleep, and, assuming command of the vessel, changed her colors for a black flag, and began his career as a pirate in the Caribbean Sea––“and how I escaped. To all this she listened with great interest, her large eyes dilating, and her bosom swelling with sympathy as I proceeded, when suddenly the cabin door opened, and my ugly friend Pedillo put his head in, and gave me a warning nod.
“‘What is it?’ I said, rather sharply, to Pedillo; ‘and how dare you intrude inside my cabin?’ I fear, too, that I came very near doing a mischief to my boatswain; for I am rather impulsive at times, and by the merest accident I happened to have a small pistol in my pocket.”
Don Ignaçio twitched his sleeve, and looked as if he believed such accidents as pistols being found in the narrator’s pockets happened quite often.
“‘Señor,’ said Pedillo, ‘there are two sail standing out from the lee of Culebra Island, and one of them appears to be a large––’
“I stopped any farther particulars from the lips of my subordinate by a motion of my finger, and then, kissing the hands of the girl, who was somewhat surprised at what had transpired, I left the cabin and jumped on deck.
“The schooner was now running down through the Virgin’s Passage between St. Thomas and Porto Rico, with a fine breeze on the quarter, and the sun was just sinking behind the last-named island. I snatched a spy-glass from the rail, and looked ahead. There, sure enough, was a sixteen-gun brig on the starboard tack heading across our track, and a large frigate under single-reefed top-sails stretching away over to the opposite shores of Culebra, while they were telegraphing bunting one with another as fast as the bright-colored flags could talk. And, as luck would have it, as I swept the glass round, what should I see but a long rakish corvette in company with a huge 105 whale of a line-of-battle ship, with her double tier of ports glimmering away in the slanting rays of the sun, both on the wind, and coming out from under the lee of Culebra Point, just a mile or two astern of us. By the blood of Barabbas, caballeros, we were in a trap for wolves, and the hounds were in full cry! I immediately, however, luffed the schooner up, and steered boldly for the frigate; and, as a puff of smoke spouted out from the lee bow of the admiral to windward, and before the boom of the gun’s report reached us, I hoisted American colors. Seeing this, the brig hove in stays, and, perhaps being ordered to board me, came staggering along on the other tack across our forefoot, while the frigate went round too, and held her wind toward her consorts to windward. Now this was just the disposition which I wanted of the vessels, and it could not have been done better for my plans had I been the admiral of the squadron. In less than a quarter of an hour, the brig––and no great things she was, with a contemptible battery, as I could see, of short carronades––hove aback a little on the bow of the schooner, and gave us a warning of a twenty-four pound shot across our forefoot, to heave to also, at the same time hoisting the English ensign.
“So ho!” ejaculated Captain Brand, as he twisted the point of his nose, accompanied by a malevolent scowl, “señores, I at once hauled flat aft the fore-sail, dropped the main peak, and put the helm up, as if to round to under the brig’s stern; whereupon my man-of-war friend dropped a cutter into the water, and she had just shoved off in readiness to board me, when, before you could light a paper cigar, I ran up the main peak, got a pull of the sheets, and the ‘Centipede’ was off again like a shark with his fin above water, heading for the narrow passage between Culebra and Crab Islands. It was at least five minutes before that stupid brig could believe his eyes, and ten more before he got hold of the boat again, when she filled away and began to pop gun after gun at me as fast as he could bring his battery to bear! There was only one shot that skipped on board us, and that only smashed both legs of a negro, and then hopped off through the fore-sail to windward.
“Had I not had a good dinner that day and pleasant society on board”––how peculiarly the speaker smiled––“I should perhaps have taught that brig such a lesson that he would not have cared to report it to his admiral. But as I knew I had the heels of him, and as the rest of the squadron were now crowding all sail and keeping off in chase of me, I ordered Pedillo, just by way of touching my hat and saying ‘Adios,’ to clear away the long gun and return the brig’s salute. The shot struck him just forward the night-heads by the bowsprit, and by the way the splinters flew and his jib and head-sails came down, I knew I had crippled him for an hour at least. At the same time, to prevent any mistakes as to our quality, and to satisfy 106 the admiral’s curiosity, we hauled down the Yankee colors and set our swallow-tailed flag!”
“Rather dark bunting! no?” edged in Don Ignaçio.
“Ay, amigo! as black as that eye of thine, though not half so murderous,” retorted the pirate as he continued his narrative.
“Bueno, there came the whole of the squadron down after us, spitting out from their bridle ports mouthfuls of cold iron, which all went to the bottom of the Virgin’s Passage, for not one came within a mile of the schooner; and then I led them such a dance through that intricate cluster of reefs and islets, that soon after dark they gave up the game, and I said ‘Buenos noches’ to them all!”
Here Captain Brand paused, made a careful selection of a beautifully turned trabuco cigar from the box, shouted to Babette to produce some old Santa Cruz rum, sugar, lemons, and hot water––screeching hot, he said––at which the padre crossed himself; and then throwing his fine legs, incased in the lustrous silk stockings, on a chair beside him, and while his eyes gazed fondly on the brilliants sparkling in the buckles of his shoes, he resumed his tale.
“When I went below again, after every thing had become quiet on deck, I found my stag-eyed sweetheart waiting to receive me! How superbly she looked as she made a movement from the cushions where she had been reclining, and exclaimed,
“‘Oh, señor, what has happened, and what was the cause of all that noise of guns, and those cries of agony I heard above?’
“‘Querida Lucia, dearest,’ I replied, ‘we have been where there are––a––pirates, but fortunately have escaped, and the cries you heard were from one of my poor crew who got slightly wounded by a shot!’
“‘Ah, malditos piratos! cursed pirates!’ exclaimed the charming beauty, as she put both her hands in mine, ‘and how thankful am I that you are not hurt! But, querido mio! dear one!’ she went on, ‘when shall we get to Porto Rico and our dear father? We must be near, for I heard one of your sailors shout to you the name of the island!’
“In reply, I told her that we had been near Porto Rico, but that––a––circumstances were such, on account of the dangerous pirates who infested those seas, that I felt obliged, for her safety––you understand––to run along by way of Hispaniola––she not having a very clear idea of the position and geography of those parts––and that our cruise might probably be prolonged for a few days more.”
“And into h––, perhaps,” said the doctor, with a hollow voice and a calm cold eye.
“Oh no, my friends, certainly nothing so bad as that. Possibly to heaven! but, quien sabe? no one can tell!
“However,” pursued the captain, “I soon succeeded in allaying 107 her apprehensions, and then I threw myself at her feet, and implored her to risk her father’s displeasure and to marry me at once; that she knew her father was cold, stern, and obdurate, and should he frown upon my suit I should die of despair!”
“Cierto!” murmured Ignaçio, with the grin of a skeleton.
“I used these passionate appeals and many more, until at last the fond girl yielded her consent to my entreaties.
“‘But the priest, querido mio!’ she exclaimed, as she rose and disengaged herself from my arms. I told her that I chanced to have one on board as a passenger, who would perform the ceremony.
“And so I had,” added Captain Brand, “or at least a very near approach to one, for my ugly boatswain, Pedillo, had been bred up––as an acolyte––you comprehend––in the house of a rich old prelate of San Paulo Cathedral in Trinidad, to whom Pedillo, one fine morning, gave about eight inches of his cuchillo!”
“Jesus Maria!” exclaimed Padre Ricardo, starting back with horror, and telling his beads.
“Ay, mi padre! Pedillo assassinated the holy father, and plundered his cash-box besides; and so you see Pedillo was just the man I wanted.”
Don Ignaçio nodded his wicked old head through a cloud of cigar smoke as a sign of approval.
“Accordingly, señores, the next day I made the trusty Pedillo cut off all the bushy beard about his ugly face, and had the crown of his head shaved besides––quite like that round, oily spot there on the top of good Ricardo’s poll––and then he rigged himself out in a clerical gown, to which the trunks of my bride’s old mother contributed, and, take my word for it, he was as proper and rascally a looking priest as could be found on the island of Cuba. He performed the ceremony, too, by way of practice, on Lascar Joe and the second cook beforehand, with as much decorum and solemnity, and gave as pious a benediction, as his old Trinidad uncle, the prelate, ever did. Well, that evening we were married.”
“How many times has the capitano been married?” grunted out Don Ignaçio.
“Why, let me reflect,” as he threw his cold, icy look at the frame of miniatures on the opposite wall. “You mean, compadre, how often the ceremony has been performed. Ah! I think on eleven occasions. No, it was only ten. Madame Mathilde had two husbands living when I made love to her, and declined to take a third. But then, you know, I have an affectionate disposition, and I can not set my heart against the fascinations of the sex.”
He gave vent to these moral sentiments as if he really meant them to be believed and generally adopted by his audience.
“Well, that same evening I was married to the beautiful Señorita 108 Lucia Lavarona, though I am sorry to say that Pedillo did not perform his part of the business as well as I had expected of him, from his practice in the morning. He stammered a good deal, and when he raised the crucifix to the lips of the young girl, her innocent looks and maidenly majesty of deportment so struck my coadjutor with confusion that he let the crucifix fall to the deck at her dainty feet. This little incident caused me some displeasure; but, reflecting that the poet tells us
|
‘A tiger, ’tis said, will turn and flee |
I said nothing to the abashed Pedillo as I gave him back the emblem; but I favored him with a look, with my right hand in my pocket––this fashion.”
Here the cold-blooded scoundrel dipped his thumb and fore finger into the flap of his waistcoat, while the commander of the “Guarda Costa” waved his brown digit before him, as if he knew what was there all the time.
“Ah! that restored my new-made priest to his senses, and he then got through the ceremony entirely to my satisfaction.
“However,” said Captain Brand, turning with lazy indifference toward Padre Ricardo, “ever after this I resolved not to take the risk of such another chance of failure, and this is the reason why I first sought your services.”
“Gracias à Dios! Thanks be to heaven, my son, that you found me!” said the sacrilegious wretch, as he bowed to his superior and sipped a glass of rum punch. “Vamonos! let us hear more.”
“At the conclusion of our nuptials, while I held my sweet Lucia to my heart, and kissed her pale brow, and while tears of crystal drops, half in rapture and half in sorrow, dimmed her large, sparkling black eyes, she withdrew this royal sapphire from her slender finger, and gently placing the gem on mine––where you see it, amigos––she said,
“‘My dear and only love, this is the talisman of my race. It has been for ages in my family, and it has been the guardian of our hope and honor. Receive it, friend of my heart, and be the protector of the young girl who yielded up to you her very soul!’”
The doctor started as if he had been stung by a scorpion; but Captain Brand, heedless or inattentive to the movement, went on:
“Yes, caballeros, those were her very words; murmured, too, in her low contralto tones with a pure, lisping Castilian accent, as she laid her stately head on my shoulder.
“Ay, those were rapturous moments; and it was in some degree––yes, I may say in truth––entirely her own fault that they did not last.
“Well, for some days––eight or ten, perhaps––with light baffling 109 winds, we crept stealthily along the south side of St. Domingo; but the weather was delightful, and the time passed on the wings of a zephyr. In the warm, soft evenings, with the moon or stars shedding their pearly gleams over the sea, she sat beside me on the deck of the schooner, watching with girlish interest the white sails above her head, or singing to me the sweet little sequidillas of her native land. And again, starting up from my arms, she would peep over the counter, trace the foam as it flashed and bubbled in our wake, or point to the track of a dolphin as he leaped above the luminous waves and went like a bullet to windward.
“I flatter myself, caballeros, that there have been periods in my career on the high seas, or on land, and may be again, for aught I know,” continued the elegant pirate, as he crossed his legs and threw back the lappels of his velvet coat, so as to expose the magnificence of his waistcoat, and the frills on his broad, muscular chest, “when men of high birth and breeding, and lovely women too of noble lineage, have not thought it beneath them to dine with or to receive the homage of––a––Captain Brand.
“And, por Dios!”––the narrator did not consider it unbecoming his cloth and profession to swear in a foreign language––“por Dios! señores, I have known the time, too, when I have played whist with a French prince of the blood and two knights of the Golden Fleece.”
“And you fleeced them? No?” muttered Don Ignaçio, with an envious glimmer from his greedy eye, as if no one had a right to rob the community but himself.
“And not only that,” continued the captain, rapidly, “but the daughter of an English peer of the realm once proposed to run away with me. Ho! ho! yes, she actually proposed to elope with me; but as she was verging on fifty years, and only weighed fifty pounds, with never a pound in her pocket, I sighed my regrets. Ay, great compliment it was, but I declined the honor. You yourself, compadre, must remember how I was received by the people on the Buena Vista villa at Principe; how the obispo blessed me, the old general embraced me, and the beautiful marquesa, with the hour-glass waist, smiled on me.”
“Cierto!” That astute old Spaniard never forgot any thing, particularly a debt due to him; and he remembered, moreover, to have heard that when the noble Mi Lord Inglez left the villa one dark night, a good deal of plate, jewels, doubloons, and other valuable property disappeared with him. Ay, the sly old fellow had a faint recollection as well of seeing a heavily-armed schooner running the gauntlet through the forts before daylight, and that she left a certain bag of gold ounces for him––Don Ignaçio Sanchez––somewhere in a secret hole beneath a well-known rock inside the harbor. Oh, a wonderful 110 memory for matters of this nature had our rapacious one-eyed acquaintance!
“Yes,” went on his partner in many a scene of pillage and crime, “I have every reason to know that I won the hearts, and purses too, sometimes, of some of the fine people I met in refined society. But yet there have been occasions when the game has gone against me––”
Don Ignaçio’s tenacious memory came again into play, and he looked back to the time when he himself had cleaned his profuse friend out of all his gains at the card-table, even to the buttons off his coat; but he gave no sign of remembrance of those days, and only blew a dense cloud of smoke from his thin yellow nostrils as the captain spoke.
“––Though those occasions have not been of frequent recurrence.”
The good Padre Ricardo at this juncture hoped that, by Saint Barnabas, luck might, in all time to come, befriend his son and patron; croaking, too, with a goblet of punch to his unctuous lips, “Vamonos! Tell us more of the adorable Doña Lucia!”
Captain Brand rapped his snuff-box, opened the diamond-crusted lid, took a dainty pinch, laid his cambric handkerchief over his kerseymere breeches, and resumed his narrative.
“So passed the days, caballeros; and when, one morning, the high mountains back of Port Guantamano were reported to me, I felt a presentiment that my dream of bliss was drawing to a close. Indeed, I might probably have remained at sea a week or two longer, but the men were getting a little impatient, and I thought it better to sacrifice my own pleasure to theirs. That day we caught a cracking breeze out of the Windward Passage, and toward midnight we came up with this little sandy island here.
“The preparations for going into port excited the curiosity of my bride; for, poor thing! she believed we were bound into Porto Rico, and I had some trouble in inducing her to go below before we crossed the reef. Bueno! the coast was clear, the signals were all right, and an hour later the schooner had her anchor down and sails furled pretty much in the spot where she now lies moored.
“While, however, we were sweeping up the inlet, I sent a boat ahead, with directions for my tidy old housekeeper, Babette, to have every thing prepared to receive her new mistress. Just then one of those terrible thunder-storms came up; heavy masses of clouds obscured the sky, followed by such double-barrel shocks and intensely vivid lightning as is only beheld in the tropics preceding the equinox. The rain, too, came along in horizontal sheets, driven by a squall which burst in fury over the island, and it seemed to me that all the devils from hell were howling and shrieking in the air.
“Shielded from the storm by a large boat-cloak, I carried my beautiful 111 bride, with her face nestling on my breast, to the cove, and then I bore her into this fine saloon.
“I shall never forget the sweet words she whispered, and the loving caresses she gave me on that little journey, even while the tempest almost dashed me to the ground, and the sharp flashes of lightning nearly blinded me. They were the last she ever lavished upon me.”
No sigh escaped the lips of this cold-blooded monster as he uttered these words; no sign of feeling for the ruin of a gentle girl whom he had betrayed to his piratical den of infamy and crime––whose dream of life was destroyed like a crushed rose-leaf, and all her hope gone from that moment.
|
“I went into the storm, |
“Thus it ever is, caballeros, and ever will be,” went on Captain Brand, in rather a reflecting strain. “There is a point to begin and stop, and an end to joy as well as grief. We should, however, take the world as it comes and as it goes. I do, and so do you, compadre!”––pitching a cigar spear fashion at Don Ignaçio to attract his attention––“and, therefore, we should never look too far ahead, and live only for the present.
“Indulging then in this train of thought, as I set down my lovely burden here, and the cloak fell from her shoulders, I was prepared for any thing which might happen. I wore a slightly different costume at the time than that she had been accustomed to see me in, as I always do when I think there might be a chance of a surprise or trap laid for us in entering the inlet. So, instead of fine linen and velvet, I had on a red flannel shirt, canvas trowsers, with a cutlass slung to my side, and a pair of pistols in my belt. I don’t think I appear handsome in that rig, but the fellows at my back somehow think it is becoming to me, especially when we are engaged in a hand-to-hand fight! What say you, compadre?”
The Don said nothing, and merely waved his fore finger, as if dress was not a matter to which he devoted much attention. He thought, however, that sleeves should be cut loose for knives when the pockets were not too small for pistols; but he uttered no word.
“Bueno! There I stood”––pointing to the corner of the room as he spoke––“drenched with rain, and there stood my tall and lovely wife!
“The saloon was brilliantly lighted; a profusion of plants and flowers were clustered here, there, and every where, on cabinets and tables, in striking contrast to the display exhibited yonder in that 113 armory, where pikes, muskets, and knives were gleaming through the open door.
“Quick as the lightning which was piercing deep into the inmost crevices of the rocks and lighting up the crag without, Lucia’s dark eyes flashed around the apartment from floor to ceiling, from flower to blade, resting an instant on the frame of miniatures there––hers was not among the collection then; it is the one in the middle, doctor––”
There were no knives on the table, or else, from the deadly look the doctor gave, he might have perhaps sprinkled the narrator’s heart’s blood on the floor.
“––Until at last her gaze of terror rested on me! No one, I fancy, can tell the power of Spanish girls, who has never seen them when the whole passion of their souls, either in love or hate, comes pouring in a black blaze of jet from their gleaming eyes.
“Advancing a step toward me, with her white hands clasped together, she said, in a hurried, beseeching voice––and low as was the sound, I heard it distinctly during the crashing thunder which shook the rocks of the crag to their foundations––
“‘Señor! where am I? My father! Who––who––in the name of the Blessed Virgin, art thou?’
“Again giving a look of the utmost horror around the room, she pressed her hands to her eyes, and said, in the same low, distinct tone,
“‘Speak, señor! For the love of our holy Savior, speak!’
“I felt that the girl had saved me, by her own instinctive perception, a world of painful explanations, and I replied,
“‘Lucia! I divine that all farther concealments are useless; you are in the haunt of the most noted pirate of these seas, and that man stands before you.’
“Caballeros!” continued Captain Brand, “had my pretty prize swooned away, or fallen down in a fit, or gone into hysterics and torn her hair out by the roots, I should not have been greatly surprised; but she did none of those things. On the contrary, she became as calm as marble––frightfully so, in fact––and pushing back the bands of her magnificent tresses from her pale forehead, she raised her round white arm aloft, with her slender fore finger quivering like the tongue of a viper in mid air, and then poured forth such a torrent of awfully impressive words that I quailed before her.
“Yes, señores, I am no coward, take me when you will; but on this occasion I must honestly admit that I stood powerless before the gaze and gesture of that slight, delicately-formed woman.
“‘Pirate––wretch––monster! may the curses of hell be heaped upon thee! Murderer––betrayer! may thy heart be burned, and thy soul blasted forever!’
“I need not pain you, señores, by reciting the cruel words that 114 came hissing through her closed teeth, nor yet farther describe the terrible concentrated gaze of hate and fury which streamed from those gleaming eyes. Suffice it to say, that though often afterward I was treated in the same manner, yet, on the occasion alluded to, I cut short the interview by summoning Babette to see her mistress to her chamber, and then, glad to escape, I went out of the house and attended to the duties which required my presence.”
The padre, with his flat lips half open, eagerly drinking in––with his Santa Cruz punch––the words of his patron; the doctor, calm, unmoved now, and thoughtful; the one-eyed old rascal, still puffing his cigarettes and allowing no rest to his uneasy, suspicious optic, all sat listening, with each an interest peculiarly his own, to the fate of Doña Lucia. The narrator leisurely arose and held his hourly confab with the man at the signal-station, and then returning to his place, proceeded with his discourse:
“I shall pass rapidly over, my friends, many little incidents of a rather unpleasant nature which occurred here, in this my rocky retreat, for some months after the interview which I have described. I tried every argument and persuasion I was master of to bring my proud bride to reason, but to all my entreaties she turned a cold and chilling stare of obdurate hate. Day by day the intensity of her detestation grew stronger and stronger, and seemed to have become a part of her nature. Yes; the gentle, yielding girl I had won on board the ‘Centipede’ had now become as stern and unbending as a rock, and my controlling power over her mind and love was gone. I left her entirely to herself for some weeks, until one day I thought her passion might have subsided, and once more, attired in a rich and splendid suit, I came in here, as she sat like a marble statue at table. She never looked up at my entrance, but her eyes shone like stars as she mechanically went through the forms of the dinner laid before her.
“‘Lucia!’ I said, gayly. No answer by word or look. ‘Lucia! querida mia!’ I repeated, and, sinking on one knee beside her, attempted to take her hand.
“By all the saints, señores, that came near––very near––being the last time that I ever should kneel to a woman; for with a movement so sudden that I had barely time to leap aside, she snatched a long pointed carving-knife from the table and lunged full at my throat! The blade just grazed my jugular artery, inflicting a slight wound. But she never turned round to see the extent of her effort, and again sat calm and rigid at the table.
“This was my last visit save one. I had long before abandoned these comfortable quarters entirely, and occupied the rooms you do, mi padre, out there among the men. In fact, my stern young bride was in entire command of the island; and even my good Babette 115 here stood in such awe of her that she always crossed herself when called to approach her mistress.
“Month by month matters went on in this way, until the rainy season had gone, and I was preparing for another cruise in the schooner; but hour by hour the consuming passion which flamed in the veins of Lucia was doing its work. I sometimes beheld her standing out on the veranda, tall and stately as ever; and when the moon was at the full, it threw its light upon her wan and sunken cheeks, and thin, wasted frame. Ay, there she stood, like an almost transparent statue of alabaster, with her dark eyes shining with an unearthly light, turned in one long tearless gaze upon the ledge and combing breakers to seaward. It was singular, too, the effect she produced even upon the horde of these brave fellows of mine, for no persuasion could induce a man of them to come within pistol-shot of that part of the house while she was thus keeping her nightly vigils. And as for Pedillo, he acquired such a superstitious dread of the girl he had married, and lived in such a state of abject terror, that I had serious thoughts of shooting him through the head to avoid the contaminating influence he exercised over his comrades.
“Well, caballeros, late one Saturday night, while the men were carousing and drinking success to the coming cruise––we were to sail on the following Monday––and while I was returning from my usual stroll to the Tiger’s Trap to see the battery in order and the look-outs wide awake, I met Babette toddling along, nearly out of breath.
“‘What is it, old lady?’ You know, amigos, that Babette never spoke a word in her life, but she made signs to let me know that I was wanted at the crag, and that there was no time to be lost. I quickened my pace, and, preceded by Babette, I once more darkened my own threshold. The curtains and hangings were all closely drawn in the saloon here, and it was dark as a tomb; but there was a light burning yonder in the passage leading to the chamber, and I made my way to the door.
“I shall never forget what I saw, though I should like to, as it comes to me sometimes in the night, or when I am left much alone by myself.”
The pirate passed his hands over his eyes as if he saw something while he spoke, and then, letting his voice drop to an almost sepulchral pitch, he went on hurriedly:
“I stood at the door, caballeros, and looked in. On the bed, which was drawn to the middle of the chamber to get the air through the narrow loopholed windows, with the gauze curtains falling square on all sides, lay Lucia. Her attenuated frame scarcely presented an uneven surface beneath the snowy sheet which covered it. Her superb hair was spread in great black masses on the pillow, and her 116 pale marble face reposed there like an ivory picture in an ebony setting. Her eyes were wide open, large and luminous, and her thin delicate hands were clasped around a silver and pearl crucifix, which rested on her hollow breast. A single taper in a silver lamp threw a lurid, flickering ray about the room, and beside it was Babette on her knees quivering with terror, while from one of the loopholed windows a broad white band of moonlight streamed directly across the pillow and face of the dying girl.”
Captain Brand’s face assumed a deathly pallor, and, with his icy blue eyes fixed on vacancy, and his voice sunk to a hoarse whisper, he went on:
“As I appeared in the portals of the door, Lucia slowly raised her fore finger, and beckoned me to approach. I could no more have resisted the summons than if a chain cable to a frigate’s anchor had caught me in its iron coils, and was dragging me to the bottom of the sea. I moved to the foot of the bed.
“‘Pirato!’ came from her slightly-parted lips, in her old low and distinct tones. ‘Pirato, behold your cruel work! Destroyer of mother and child––of soul and body––may the curses of a dying woman and her unborn child haunt you by day and by night!’ I was dumb, and my pulse stopped beating.
“‘Ave Maria purissima!’ were the last words that came in a sweet, pure whisper from her parted lips; she clasped the crucifix tighter, and the spirit departed. I tore aside the gauze net to lay my hand on her heart, when, on my soul! her right hand slowly relaxed its death-grasp on the crucifix, and, rising to a vertical line, with the fore finger pointing upward, quivered in the light of the waning moon, like, as it was, a supernatural warning! Yes, that finger––”
“A SUPERNATURAL WARNING! YES, THAT FINGER––”
“Mamma! mamma!” came in a weak, plaintive voice from the piazza, while the villain, with his hands before him as if to shut out a frightful vision, and eyeballs starting from their sockets, was hoarsely whispering to his horror-stricken audience the last warning of the dead Lucia.
As the low moaning cry in the stillness which reigned around the saloon struck his ear, he sprang with a bound to his feet, and, quick as thought, with a pistol in each hand, he shouted, “Who’s there?”
“It is the little sick boy, señor. Do him no harm at your peril!” and the doctor stood towering before the pirate’s leveled weapons.
“Maldito on the brat! Pshaw!” said Captain Brand, quieting down, and returning the pistols to his pockets. “How nervous I am! Excuse me, caballeros. I was thinking of something else.”
|
“There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, |
In the pause which followed the dreadful episode just recounted by Captain Brand, the padre was occupied in pattering a prayer, counting his beads, and elevating his crucifix as if he was mumbling high mass at the altar. Don Ignaçio slowly waved his brown fore finger, and his single spark of glowing eye glared fiercely and fixedly at his host. A clammy sweat burst out on the pallid brow of the doctor, and his hands were clutched before him on the table like the jaws of a steel vice. And still the drunken shrieks and cheers of the piratical crew at the sheds arose wild and shrill in the calm night, making a gloomy echo for the banquet. The doctor was the first to break the awkward silence which pervaded the saloon.
“Capitano!” said he, in his habitual calm, deep voice, “with respect to what you said in the early part of the evening, of breaking up this establishment, what, may I ask, are your plans for the future?”
“Gracias! amigo doctor! Thank you, my friend, for changing the conversation. My plans! eh! ah! Well, they are these––”
Here Captain Brand’s face assumed its usual expression; and entirely himself again, he went on to state, in a precise, business-like way, the views he had resolved upon for future action.
“––To-morrow, gentlemen, is Sunday. Those boisterous fellows out there, after mass, will need rest all the day. On Monday, however, I shall begin to change the rig of the schooner, fill up with provisions for a long cruise, take on board all the loose odds and ends we have stowed here, of course,” he added, as he remarked an inquiring and a rather alarmed mercenary look from the Tuerto’s glim––“of course, after having squared up all claims of our compadre there!”
“Hum!” croaked that sharp rascal, with a nod of satisfaction quite like an old raven.
“Then, señores, I shall burn or destroy the old sheds, and bury the 120 cannon and heavy articles we can not find room for in the ‘Centipede;’ when, if nothing happens, we shall trip anchor and spread our sails for sea!
“Babette! Babette! Really I believe that dear old negress has fallen asleep. Babette! ah! there you are, my beauty! See if you can’t give us a bowl of okra gumbo before we break up here!”
Babette had not been asleep. Oh no! She had her ear to the door of the saloon, and was listening to the sad history of Doña Lucia, and when her master came to the final scene the old woman fell on her knees and shivered all over, where she remained until the sound of the captain’s voice again called her to her duties.
“And when we have left these quiet waters, my son!” broke in the padre, “what then?”
The fact was, that the carnivorous and vinous Father Ricardo knew that his stomach was not suited for high winds and rough oceans, and was hoping that some scheme might be devised to allow him to remain tranquilly on the island.
“Why, holy padre, I propose to steer clear of the West Indies by some unfrequented track, and, striking the broad Atlantic, stretch down the coast of Brazil. Perhaps we may double Cape Horn, and see what those miserable patriots are fighting for in Chili and Peru; then maybe across the Pacific, to the lovely islands and maidens of Polynesia; so on to the China Seas, where we may fall in with an outward-bound Canton trader, or a galleon with a ton or two of silver on board––who knows?––there is plenty of blue water and fine ships every where; so we must be content.”
Padre Ricardo made the sign of the cross, kissed his thumb and fore finger, and, reaching his dirty paw over to the captain, shook hands with him.
“Ay, amigos!” continued the leader, without minding the friendly interruption; “yes, my friends, we shall, I trust, give the hounds in search of us the slip; and even should they scent out this retired little spot, they will have their trouble for their chase, and find nothing but a few stones and heaps of rubbish above ground.”
“They may find some little matters below, though,” chimed in the commander of the felucca.
“If they do,” retorted the pirate, with a meaning scowl, “I’ll put the spy who betrays it to such a torture as that he’ll wish himself below ground when I come back here.”
“Cierto, amigo! no fear of that!” muttered the Tuerto, with some little trepidation of manner. “My papers are white.”
“Captain Brand,” said the doctor, “my contract with you is nearly up, and since I only agreed––as you know––to enlist my professional services here on shore, I presume you will have no objections to permit me to depart with Don Ignaçio in the felucca.”