It would be difficult to say what caused the flush of passion which overspread the leader’s face as he listened to this simple request, but it was full a minute before he replied, and then, having weighed the matter carefully in his mind, he said, in a precise and determined tone, in French,
“Monsieur le Docteur! the compacts that I have made with all those that have taken service with me have never been broken except by death. I can not, therefore, consider your request, and I shall expect you to sail with me in the schooner.”
Then he added, quickly, as he noticed a certain haughty expression in his subordinate’s face, “Pardon me, monsieur; we had better not discuss this question now. Suppose you see me on the morrow.”
“Willingly, señor, and you will find my resolution unchangeable.” Rising as he spoke, he bowed to his companions at table, and saying “Buenas noches! (good-night!)” he passed from the saloon to the piazza. There he paused a moment, as if communing with himself, and then approaching the grass hammock where the sick boy was sleeping, he gently took the little fellow up in his arms. The child murmured “Mamma, mamma!” and was borne away.
Captain Brand followed the doctor with his searching, sharklike eyes until he had left the apartment, and there was something that denoted danger in the look; but he uttered no sound, and, placing a finger on his lip, he nodded meaningly to the padre.
A moment after Babette brought in the steaming gumbo soup, and the pirate’s feast was nearly ended. Don Ignaçio waited until his companions had swallowed a goodly portion of the grateful mess, when he too refreshed himself. Then making his salutations in his usual observant manner, he departed. He declined, however, the offer of his host’s society to his boat, saying he had, he knew, half a dozen of the felucca’s crew outside the building to guard his footsteps, and he would not put the capitano to the trouble.
When the padre rose to give his benediction to his patron, the captain took him impressively by the rope which girded his cassock about the loins, and giving it a sharp jerk or two, he said,
“My holy father, I think we shall have a sad duty to perform to-morrow. Our old friend Gibbs has behaved badly, and I shall punish him. He is now in the Capella dungeon. After early mass go and console him.”
The padre returned a meaning smile, crossed himself, and slowly left the pirate alone in his saloon.
|
“God! ’tis a fearsome thing to see |
Day dawned in the east. The early spikes of morning shot up in rosy bands from behind the lofty hills of Cuba and announced the coming of the sun. The inlet and basin, framed in by their rocky walls, were still clothed in the gloom of night, and dimly reflecting the fading stars on the calm unruffled surface where the schooner and felucca were moored. Away off in the distance a dense white misty vapor hung flat and low over the lagoon and thickets of mangroves, with not a breath of air to disturb the noxious fog or quiver a leaf in the silent groves. The revels, too, of the drunken sailors had long since ceased; the sentinels, with their cutlasses in the sheaths, paced slowly to and fro before the doors of the sheds, and the look-outs at the signal-stations and battery peered through the early dawn to seaward; else not a sound or moving thing, save a teal or two fluttering with a sharp cry up and down the lagoon; the music of the tiny ripples lapping on the shelly beach; and the low roar, in a deep bass, breaking and moaning over the ledge beyond the island. Such was the appearance of things where our scene is laid in the Twelve League Group of Keys, on a Sunday morning, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and five.
Half a mile, perhaps, inland from the sheds where the sailors lived, and beneath the steep face of the ridge-like crag which split the island in two parts, stood a low chapel, built of loose stones nicely fitted together and roofed with tiles. A rough iron cross was fastened over the doorless entrance, and at the other end was a stone balustrade, with a rude painting of the Virgin over the altar, on which stood four or five tall brass candlesticks and a lighted taper. Outside the building was a narrow and secluded inclosure, surrounded by a low wall of coral rocks, with a few head-stones marked with black crosses––the graves of the pirates whose bones reposed beneath. At one end of this burial-place was still another subdivision, where stood ten upright 123 flat white stones, on whose faces were rudely carved initial letters, with the years in which the eternal sleepers had been laid beneath the sand. Far and near sprang up close and almost impenetrable thickets of cactus, whose sharp and pointed needle-shoots defied the passage of any thing more bulky than land-crabs and lizards. One or two narrow pathways had been cut out here and there, but they were overgrown again by the stubborn, hardy vegetation; and only with the risk of losing one’s trowsers, and having one’s legs cut in gashes, could a human being struggle through it.
Within the chapel kneeled a dozen or more of the “Centipede’s” crew, the coarse and sodden faces and uncombed locks, from their night’s debauch, in striking contrast to the place and the apparent devoutness of manner in which they crossed themselves while the rites of the Church were going on. Before the altar stood Padre Ricardo, with his breviary on the chancel beneath the taper, and chanting forth from his deep lungs the services of the mass. In a few minutes the unholy hands and lips which performed the solemn ceremony ceased word and gesture, and with a sonorous benediction at the elevation of the Host, and a tinkle of a bell, the sailors arose from their knees and again staggered back to the sheds, to slumber through the day. When all had gone, the padre clasped his missal, tucked it into his bosom, and making the sign of the cross with a genuflexion before the Virgin, the sacrilegious wretch turned and left the chapel.
Pursuing the winding path which led to his own habitation for a certain distance, he then turned to the left, and carefully picking his way through the sharp cactus and Spanish bayonets along the face of the crag, he stopped at a yawning fissure which gaped open in the rock. Here, too, the same wiry vegetation had crept, and it was with great difficulty, and many an “Ave!” and “Santa Maria!” that the padre succeeded in passing into the dark, rugged mouth of the cavern.
“By the ashes of San Lorenzo!” he muttered, “there are serpents and venomous insects in this pit of purgatory. Oh, misericordia! what has pierced my leg? Why should my son drag me through this hole? Ah! blessed Saint Barnabas! a slimy reptile has crossed my instep!”
Feeling with his outspread hands in his fright, as he gradually made his way into the dripping cavern, getting narrower and lower as he proceeded, he at last, after stumbling prayerfully along for about a hundred and fifty yards, came to a loose pile of stones. Here opened another low narrow fissure on the left, and, in some doubt, he was about to enter; but the noise he made by stepping on a stone was answered by the hissing warning of a serpent, and the scared padre fell back at his full length in a pool of stagnant slimy water.
“O Madre di Dios! I am stung by a cobra! Holy Virgin! my new cassock ruined too! Ave Maria! light me out of this abode of the devil!”
Slowly recovering, however, from his fright, he once more regained his feet, and, after a few steps, which he was obliged to accomplish by scraping his crown against the jagged rocks above, his outstretched hands touched an iron-bound door.
“Gracias à Dios! Thanks be to all the saints, I am here at last; but, alas! curses on me, I shall be obliged to return by the same path unless my son allows me to escape by the casa.”
Cautiously searching with his fingers as he muttered these words, he touched a bolt, and, grasping it with both hands, drew it partly out like the knob of a bell. Then, placing his ear to the door, he presently heard a rattling, creaking noise, as if a beam of timber, with pulley and chain, was being raised from behind the entrance. When the sound ceased the door yielded to the padre’s sturdy shoulder, and there was just room to admit his portly body. Here the passage was wider, the rock evidently chiseled away by the hands of man, and on one side was an artificial chamber, blasted out of the solid rock, with a narrow door with heavy iron bolts on the outside. At this opening the padre paused and listened. No sound caught his ear at first, but as he clutched the bolt and it grated back in its bands, he was saluted by such a volley of frightful curses as to make him start back and cross his ample breast. It was the voice of Master Gibbs, lying there on a low iron settle in the noisome dungeon, with not a ray of light to cheer him, and only a jug of water and some weevily biscuit to save him from starvation. All through the day and during the long, long hours of the awful night, in pain and suffering from his lopped-off limb and bruises, had he lain on his hard bed with clenched hands, blaspheming and impotently raging in his agony and despair. No prayer, however, dawned in his ruthless heart, or was breathed from his brutal lips; but curses upon curses came thick and fast, till his tongue refused to give them utterance, and he fell back in utter exhaustion. As the noise, however, of the bolt struck his ear, he clutched the stone water-jug from the floor, and hurled it, with a yell of execrations, toward the door, where the fragments fell with a clattering crash on the stone pavement.
Grinding his teeth in his frightful passion, he howled,
“Let me but once put these hands on your bloodstained carcass, and if the mother that bore ye will know her spawn again, my name’s not Bill Gibbs! Ha! you miserable swab, with your soft words and white hands! when I get out of this hole I’ll blow you and your infarnal hounds to –––! Give me fair play, and, even on one of my legs, I’ll cut the cowardly heart out of you, Captain Brand! Come in, will ye? ye son of the devil, and I’ll bite the tongue out of your mouth by the roots!”
SHRIVING A SINNER.
Here the hoarse and panting wretch again ceased his roarings, and the padre timidly opened the door.
“Ha! who’s that? Babette?”
“No, my son, it is your good Padre Ricardo, come to console you.”
What the maimed villain replied to the priest, and what means the holy father took to allay the passion and assuage the sorrows of the man lying helpless in the dungeon, or whether successful in his mission, is not important to state in detail. An hour later, however, the priest seemed relieved in body and spirit as he retired from the loathsome hole, and shooting the bolt as he closed the door, cautiously felt his way along the dark and narrow passage. Presently, as he turned an angle, a ray of light from the loopholes of the great stone vault beneath the pirate’s dwelling lighted his pathway; and a moment after, with a hearty sigh of satisfaction, he seized a cord above his head and gave it a jerk. A bell sounded above, and then a large, square-hinged trap-hatch fell down, swinging gently to and fro from the beams above. At the same time the padre put his arms about a square wooden stanchion which supported the floor of the saloon, and then painfully sticking his toes in some deep-cut notches at the sides, he slowly began to mount upward. When, however, his oily shaved crown appeared nearly at the level of the floor, a vigorous grasp was laid on his shoulders, and he was pulled up like a flapping lobster and rolled into the apartment. It was Captain Brand who kindly assisted the holy father, and it was the captain’s hollow laugh which saluted him in his torn and soiled raiment, as, with difficulty, he regained his perpendicular.
“Laugh not, hijo mio, at my sorrowful plight,” said the bruised Ricardo, with some asperity; “I have met with dangers of venomous serpents, and been stabbed cruelly by those villainous cactus.”
“But I raised the beam, my padre, the moment you made the signal.”
“You did, my son; but what I suffered in the cavern was as nothing to what I endured when I entered the dungeon of the English Gibbs. Jesus Maria, what an infidel he is!”
“You did not find his spirit subdued, then, by bread and water?”
“Far from it, my friend. He rages like a wild beast. He consigns your body and soul to everlasting torments! But, what is more impious still,” went on the padre, as he crossed himself, “he damned your holy father, and hoped I would roast in hell!”
“But he confessed, Ricardo, and you gave him absolution?”
“If calling me thief and assassin, and hurling his stone water-jug at my head, be confession and forgiveness of sins, the ceremony has been performed. Ah! my son, he needs no more mercy in this world!”
“Of course not, my padre; and we will give him a short shrift and a long rope.”
“Babette!” continued Captain Brand. “Ah! my Baba, you have not forgotten to feed our jolly Gibbs there below? No? I thought not. Well, then, it is Sunday, you know; give him a pint of pure rum for his morning’s draught. And, Baba, my beauty, slip a pair of iron ruffles over his wrists, and then pass a cloth over those bloodshot eyes of his, and lug him here beneath this hatch. Go down by your own ladder, and be quick, my Baba, as I wish my breakfast presently!”
All this was said in a cool and rather an affectionate tone, as Captain Brand sipped a spoonful or two of chocolate from a cup of Dresden china. Then turning to the padre, he said,
“You would perhaps like a cordial, my father, to take the chill off your stomach? Yes. You will find some capital Curaçoa in that stand of bottles there.”
The padre, forgetful of the dignity of his calling, shuffled with indecent haste to the spot indicated, and, without going through the form of filling one of the diminutive thimble-shaped glasses in the stand, he boldly raised the silver-netted flask to his lips, and sucked away until it was nearly empty. Then seating himself on the settee, he lugged out his illuminated missal and pored over its contents. Captain Brand occupied himself with opening the loop of the silk rope which fell from the ceiling, and securing the end firmly on the stout cleat at the wall.
So passed the time until a noise beneath the room of a voice in anger, and a body bumped and dragged along, once more attracted the attention of those in the saloon.
“Oh ho! is that you, Master Gibbs?” exclaimed Captain Brand, in a cheerful voice. “You have risen early; but stop that profane language, my friend, or you will never see daylight again!”
The maimed ruffian only muttered, “Your friend, eh? blindfolded and manacled!” And then, apparently abashed by the cool, commanding tone of his superior, he held his peace.
“Well, you are quiet, my lad. Now we’ll see if we can’t hoist you up here in the saloon.”
“Thank ye, sir!” said Gibbs, aloud; and then he muttered to himself, “Let me jest get one grip of ye, and I’ll show ye how quiet I’ll be.”
“Do you think we shall need assistance, my son?” whispered the padre into the ear of his patron.
“Diavolo! No. I never wanted help in these little affairs, except in the case of that violent Yankee whaler, who gave us much trouble, you know, and we were obliged to call Pedillo,” replied the captain, in the same low tone. Then, raising his voice, he said,
“Hark ye, Master Gibbs! Babette will lift you off the stones, and the padre and I will raise you up to the room here. You don’t weigh so much as you did before you had your leg hacked off with a hand-saw––ho! and I dare say you are as light now as a dried stockfish! Up with him, Baba! There––steady! all right––here you are!”
Saying this, Captain Brand, with the assistance of the stout negress and the padre, raised the once burly ruffian, with a vigorous hoist that made him groan, to the floor of the saloon, where they laid him out at full length on his back.
“Wait a moment, my hearty, till the hatch is raised, and then we will raise you. Unpleasant position, no doubt,” continued Captain Brand, as the trap came up and was secured by a spring; “but then, you know, you would have that pin of yours cut off, and somehow you have been so careless as to dispose of the nice leg you had the other day, made out of the spruce fore-top-mast of the ‘Centipede’––a very tough bit of a spar it was.”
Here Master Gibbs grated his teeth and grinned hideously.
The captain smiled like a demon, and, approaching the prostrate cripple, said cheerfully––ay, in a frank and hearty tone––
“Now, my padre, place a comfortable chair for Master Gibbs, and we will help him to a seat.”
The considerate Ricardo placed a large, roomy Manilla chair on the fatal trap, and then aided his chief in lifting their victim to the position assigned him. As they performed this operation, the captain, with the gentleness of a tiger before he strikes his prey, and with a wink to the padre, lightly passed the noose of the silk rope over the ruffian’s hairy throat, where it lay like a snake with its slack coil squirming at the back of the chair.
“Now, Master Gibbs, I am about to remove this bandage from your beautiful red eyes,” said Captain Brand, in his cold, chilling, deliberate manner, “and if you so much as move when daylight shines before you, I’ll blow your brains out.”
Here the pirate leisurely cocked a pistol close to his subordinate’s ear, removed the bandage, and laid the weapon on the table within reach.
“No noise either, Master Gibbs!” continued Captain Brand, as he stirred up the remains of his chocolate and gulped it down; “for it is Sunday morning, and we must respect the feelings of our padre. You were unkind to him, he tells me, just now, and even said some disrespectful things of me. What have I done to vex you?”
The manacled wretch tried to raise his horny hands to his face when the cloth was removed from his eyes, and rub those organs, while he glared suspiciously around; but the captain pointed with his white finger in a threatening way to the cocked pistol, and Master Gibbs let his hands fall again.
“Well, Captain Brand, I s’pose now you’re going to treat me as a faithful man who has sarved under you ought to be treated; and I’m willin’ to forgive what has passed.”
There was no look of forgiveness, however, in those brutal bloodshot eyes, nor much signs of repentance in those grinding teeth and compressed lips.
“Why, no, my Gibbs, I am not going to treat you as a faithful man, but I tell you what I will do”––here the captain moved his chair nearer till his straw slipper touched the spring of the trap––“I will drink a glass of grog with you in forgetfulness of the past and forgiveness for the future.”
“Thank ye, Captain Brand; I do feel dry. That stuff Babette gave me a while ago didn’t touch the right spot, and I’ll be glad to jine you.”
“Ah! bueno, my old friend; you shall drink something that will touch the right spot! What shall it be? you have only to name it.”
“I’ll take a toss of that old brandy you gave me the other day, if it’s the same to you, sir.”
“Oh, Master Gibbs, it’s all the same to me. Delighted I am to oblige you! Padre mio! a glass of old Cognac for our friend––a tumblerful; a wine-glass will do for me.”
The padre poured out the brandy as he was desired, handed the lesser glass to the captain, and the tumbler he placed in the locked hands of the victim. Slowly and painfully the subdued ruffian raised the glass to his mouth, careful not to spill a drop; then, before draining it, he cleared his throat, while at the same time the captain rose to his feet, his right foot resting a little on the heel, and held the wine-glass before him.
“Now, then, Master Gibbs, for a toss that will touch the right spot.”
“Ay, ay, captain!” said Gibbs; “and here’s forgiveness for the future.”
Scarcely had the words been uttered, and the liquor began to gurgle down the hairy throat of the manacled wretch, than the pirate before him pressed his foot with a quick, nervous action on the spring.
Like a flash the trap fell, carrying chair and man with it. The hinges of the hatch creaked, the wicker-work chair fell with a bound on the stone floor below, the heavy beam overhead gave a jarring quiver as the strong silk rope brought up with a shuddering surge on the cleat where it was belayed at the wall, and with a gasping, choking cry of pain mingled with the ring of the shattered tumbler on the pavement, the ruffian of a hundred crimes fell full three feet, and hung struggling in the death agony. With almost superhuman force he raised his clenched hands and struck his forehead till the 131 manacles were twisted like wire by the effort, spinning around too by the lopsided weight of his body, while the beam above yielded slightly to the strain, and the deadly cord, no longer squirming, but taut as a bar of iron, held the wretch in its knotted embrace, clasped tight around the throat. In a minute or two the hands ceased beating the inflamed face and head, and fell with a clank before the body; the legs gave a few convulsive twitches, a last and violent spasm shook the frame, and there Master Gibbs hung, a warm dead lump of clay.
While this murderous business was going on, and the poor crippled wretch was struggling in the jaws of death, the padre was chanting with his profane tongue from his open breviary the Salve Domine, and his patron coolly took down a telescope and swept it over the blue water to seaward. When, however, after a quarter of an hour had elapsed, and the body of their victim gave no more signs of life, the captain laid down the telescope as the padre closed his missal, and remarked quietly, while glancing critically down at the suspended body,
“He did not go off so easy as I had anticipated; his bull-neck is not broken, though the knot was perfectly well placed. However, he is stone dead, and we will lower him down. You, my padre, will bury him!”
“Hijo mio! son of mine! spare me that troublesome duty. Would you have me drag such a carcass through the cavern and consign him to consecrated earth, when he refused the last holy offers of salvation?”
“Bueno, my padre, I respect your feelings! You need not put him under the sand; take him merely to his late dungeon, and lay him decently on his bed.”
“Thank you, my son; your orders shall be obeyed!”
Glad, apparently, to be relieved from farther exertion, though with manifest symptoms of disgust, the priest, more infamous even than the scoundrel he had assisted in hanging, clumsily descended the hatchway by the way he came up, and awaited the movements of his chief. The captain stepped to the wall, and, casting off the turns from the cleat, he slowly lowered the body down till it rested on the pavement.
“Unbend the rope from his neck, my padre, and hitch it on to that Manilla chair. There––all right! you may return this way and breakfast with me.”
Saying this, Captain Brand rounded up the chair, detached the silk rope, hung the loop in its accustomed place, and then waited the reappearance of his confederate. Not many minutes elapsed before the padre, having performed the last rites, again ascended the stanchion, and was assisted above the floor by his chief. Then both together 132 got hold of a ring-bolt in the trap, drew it up and secured the spring, placing square bits of mahogany over the countersunk apertures, so as to prevent accidental falls or hangings of themselves. Even while performing these mechanical operations, the priest puffed out an account of his proceedings below: how he had dragged the body to the dungeon; how, when there, he had inadvertently stumbled and fallen on the top of it; and that his lips––maldito!––came in contact with the open mouth of the late Master Gibbs; but when he had recovered from the horror of this frightful caress, he had said a short prayer and bolted the door.
“You have done well, my padre; and now let us break our fast. Babette, a couple of broiled snappers and a cold duck! Be lively, old lady, for I have business to attend to after breakfast. Hola, mi padre, will you wash your hands in water before sitting down? No! bueno! I will myself take a dip all over.”
No, the oily Ricardo never washed his hands, save wetting the tips of his fingers in holy water in the chapel; and, indeed, he rarely touched water in any quantity either outside or in; and it was with a look of surprise, not unmingled with contempt, that he beheld his patron retire for a bath.
|
“He had rolled in money like pigs in mud, |
The business which Captain Brand alluded to when he was about to partake of breakfast with his friend the padre was, in the first instance, to arrange some matters in the way of payment of debts to his compadre, Don Ignaçio Sanchez, commander of the Colonial Guarda Costa felucca “Panchita.”
Accordingly, when he rose from table, and after a whispered dialogue and reports as to the state of affairs in and around the den and island from the men at the signal-stations, he summoned Pedillo. When that worthy appeared below the veranda––for be it remembered that Captain Brand never permitted the inferior officials of his band to pollute his apartments, unless, perhaps, as in the case of his deceased subordinate, Master Gibbs, it was on urgent business––Captain Brand ordered his gig manned.
Pedillo threw up his hand in token of assent, and walked down to the brink of the basin to execute the command. Then, after a few minutes, Captain Brand lit a cigar, dismissed the padre, put on his fine white Panama straw hat, unlocked a strong cabinet with a secret drawer, glanced over a paper before him, and, making a rapid calculation, he caught up a heavy bag of doubloons, and left the house in charge of Babette. The captain always told his guests that his fellows had such love and respect for him that he rarely locked up his property, and never placed a guard at his door. The truth was, that his fellows––scoundrels, miscreants, and villains as they were––stood in such fear and dread of their leader, that they were glad to keep out of his way. Moreover, he never boasted or made any display before them, living on shipboard, as on shore, by himself, but always ready and terrible when the moment came for action; treating his crew, too, with the most rigid impartiality, adhering strictly to his promises and compacts with them, and never overlooking an offense.
So Captain Brand left his dwelling in charge of his dumb housekeeper 134 Babette, and tripping down the rope ladder from the piazza in a clean suit of brown linen and straw slippers, his beardless face shaded by his broad-brimmed hat from the sun, and the bag of gold on his arm, he jauntily walked toward the cove.
“Ah! good morning, my doctor! Glad to meet you! How are the sick? Doing well, I hope!”
“Quite well, sir; but I was about to call upon you in relation to the conversation we had last evening, and––”
“Pardon me, Monsieur le Docteur, but I have been very busy this morning, and am now going to see Don Ignaçio on matters of importance”––here the elegant pirate took the cigar from his thin lips and held it daintily between his thumb and fore finger in the air––“and really, monsieur, I am very sorry to miss your visit. But,” he added, with one of his usual smiles, “I shall be at leisure this afternoon, and in the cool of the evening we can take a stroll. What say you?”
The doctor nodded.
“Apropos, docteur, suppose we have a little game of monté afterward at your quarters. I never permit gaming in mine, you know. The padre will not object; and I am confident our compadre, the Tuerto, will be delighted.”
“As you please, captain,” replied the medico, with a cold, indifferent air and averted face. “I will join you in the promenade, and I shall be ready to receive you in the evening.”
“Hasta huego, amigo!” said Captain Brand, as he again stuck his cigar between his teeth, waved his hand in adieu, and walked to his boat.
“You don’t love me, doctor,” thought the pirate. “I don’t fear you, captain,” thought the doctor.
It was a touch of high art the way this notorious pirate pitched the bag of gold toward his coxswain, crying, “Catch that, Pedillo!” and then the almost girlish manner in which he pattered about the beach and held up his trowsers, so that he might not even get his slippers damp. Had that salt water been red blood, he would not have cared if his feet had been soaked in it. And then, too, the little exclamation of joy when he finally stepped into the stern-sheets, and sat down beneath the awning, while he stretched his smooth brown linen legs out on the cushions. Oh, it was certainly a touch of high piratical art!
“The old ‘Centipede’ is looking a little rusty after her late cruise, Pedillo!” throwing his head back to evade a curl of smoke, and casting his cold eyes like a rattle of icy hail at the coxswain. “But I am glad Pedro took your place”––puff, puff––“that knife-stab prevented you, of course”––puff––“and we shall have her all tight and trig again in a day or two.”
“Si, señor!” said Pedillo, respectfully; “and how goes Señor Gibbs, capitano?”
The capitano rolled his icy eyes again at the coxswain, and replied, carelessly, “Why, Pedillo, our friend Gibbs came to see me when the ‘Centipede’ anchored, but almost before”––puff––“he had given me an account of his unfortunate cruise he fell down in a fit. The fact is, however”––puff, puff––“that, what with hard drinking and inflammation which set in on the stump of his lost leg, he has been in a very bad way”––puff––“quite in a dangerous condition indeed, requiring all my old Babette’s care and attention”––puff––“but this morning the good padre went to see him, and he told me a while ago that he left him without fever, and altogether tranquil.”
Pedillo’s wiry mustaches twirled of themselves.
Meanwhile the boat skimmed lightly over the basin, and as the captain ceased speaking she ran alongside of the felucca. Don Ignaçio, with his bright single eye in full burning power, and a cigarette between his wrinkled lips, was on the deck of the vessel to receive his visitor; and as he saw the coxswain follow his superior with a weighty bag under his arm, his glimmering orb became brighter, if possible––as if it was piercing through the thick canvas of the bag, and counting, ounce by ounce, the contents––and putting out his fore finger, it was grasped cordially by the white hand of Captain Brand.
“Como se va? How goes it with my compadre? Stomach and head all clear after our long dinner of yesterday?”
The compadre said that his head was particularly clear that morning, and as for his stomach he had not yet inquired; but if the capitano had any doubts as to the former proposition, he had better step below and decide for himself.
In accordance with this ambiguous invitation, the visitor and commander disappeared down the small cuddy in the afterpart of the felucca, where was a low, stifling hole of a cabin, dank with stale tobacco-smoke, and smelling awfully of rats and roaches. There was a little round table in the middle, and on one side was a single berth, with some dirty bedding, which had not been cleaned, apparently, since the vessel was built. Light was shed from a skylight above.
Captain Brand gave a sniff of disgust as he entered this floating sanctum of Don Ignaçio, but, without remark, seated himself on a canvas stool, and waved a perfumed cambric kerchief before his nose.
Commander Sanchez, catching the inspiration, merely observed that it was a little close certainly, and not so spacious as the superb cabin of the schooner, and that sometimes, when lying in a calm off the lee side of Cuba, it was hot enough to melt the tail off a brass monkey; but yet it was his duty, and he did not particularly mind it.
Hereupon Captain Brand requested Don Ignaçio to produce his papers, and they were presently laid upon the table. For a few minutes the pirate was absorbed in running his cold eyes over the accounts––making pencil-notes on the margins, and comparing them with a memorandum he took from his pocket; but at last he threw himself back and exclaimed,
“Compadre, the account of old Moreno, at the Havana, is correct to a real––three hundred and twelve doubloons and eight hard dollars. Yours, however, has some few inaccuracies––double commissions charged here and there; all losses and sales charged to me, and all profits credited to you.”
Don Ignaçio spread out the palms of both his hands toward his companion, as if to exorcise such unjust charges from the brain of his confederate.
“O si, si, compadre! it is as I state, and you know it is true; but, nevertheless, a few dozens of ounces more or less makes no difference; and, to make short work, I am ready to pay. But,” said Captain Brand, laying a hand on the heavy bag of money beside him, “though I am quite ready to cancel my debts in hard cash here on the spot, yet, as I am bound on a long cruise––Heaven only knows where––I would prefer to keep the gold and pay you in something else.”
Don Ignaçio threw his head back and fixed his eye like a parrot on the captain, waiting to hear farther.
“What have I on hand besides gold? Well, there are a few bales of Mexican cochineal, and English broadcloths, and some cases of French silks, which you can have at a fair market value; then there is all that collection of silver table-service, which you can take by weight; and, besides, lots of rare furniture, which you may set your own price upon––altogether much more than enough to pay Moreno and you both. What say you, compadre? is it a bargain? or shall I carry the stuff with me, and run the chance of disposing of it on the Spanish Main?”
It was a long time before the crafty old Spaniard could make up his mind whether to receive his pay in a simple portable currency, or take more bulky matter, with the hope of making double the money by the operation. Finally, however, his greed overcame his prudence, and he accepted the last proposition, with the understanding that the articles should be transferred to the felucca the next night.
“Ah!” said Captain Brand, with another sniff of disgust, as he spat on the dirty floor of the cabin, “I am glad the affair is settled, for I wouldn’t remain another hour in this filthy hole for all the money you have cheated me out of, you old rascal.”
He said the last portion of this sentence to himself as he emerged from the cuddy.
“But listen, amigo!” he continued, as they both reached the deck. “You will give me duplicate receipts on the part of Señor Moreno, so that I can forward one to him from the next port I visit. And, by the way, suppose you come on shore this afternoon for a stroll, and in the evening we will have a little game of monté––eh?”
“Cierto! (certainly!)” returned the commander of the felucca; when Captain Brand, with his bag of gold intact under his arm, got into his boat and was pulled to the shore.
|
“Gold! gold! gold! gold! |
It was long past noon when the pirate returned to his island home, and the day was hot, for the sea-breeze had not made, and the tropical sun was pouring down its burning rays until the sand was roasting as in a furnace; the very rocks throwing off a trembling mirage of heated air, and the lagoon almost boiling under the fiery influence. The sailors, with aching heads and parched mouths, were swinging in their grass hammocks beneath the sheds; and, save the watchful vigilance of the men at the look-outs and battery, the little island was wrapped in repose.
Captain Brand, however, was as cool as a cucumber; and regardless of the heat, and indifferent about siesta, he drew the curtains of the saloon, and took some active exercise. First, however, he desired his faithful Babette to get out some camphor trunks and pack the contents of his splendid wardrobe. This operation was performed under the critical eye of Captain Brand himself, to which he personally lent his aid by stowing away, here and there, his caskets, trinkets, and treasures––those which had been presented to him by the unfortunate people who had the ill luck to make his acquaintance on the high seas, or in midnight forays on shore. Then the captain opened and rummaged cabinets, bureaus, and bookcases, making liberal presents to his trusty housekeeper; and, turning from that occupation, he had all his table furniture spread before him, when he made careful estimates of the value of the silver, china, and glass. This concluded, Captain Brand ordered Babette to furnish him a slight repast; and while it was preparing––the captain taking the precaution to bolt his handmaiden in her kitchen––he went quietly into his bedroom, and when he came out he bore heavy burdens in his muscular arms, all of which he laid conveniently near the trap in the floor. Then letting the hatch swing softly down, he lowered the heavy articles 141 by the silk rope, as he had Master Gibbs, though not so suddenly, going down himself as nimbly as a rat after them. In the vault beneath, Captain Brand struck a light and set fire to a torch, which blazed out luridly, and illumined the dark excavation and passages like day. Going slowly on, with his burden in his arms, by the path by which we traced the padre, he came to the outer door, which opened into the fissure in the crag; and, after a vigorous effort, the beam was raised, and he passed out. Once outside, he felt his way cautiously, stepping clear of the stagnant pools beneath, and guarding his head from the jagged rocks above; and then, lighting his way over the stones which had upset the equilibrium of Don Ricardo, he crept slowly into an aperture on the right.
“HE CREPT FORWARD ON HANDS AND KNEES, THE BLAZING TORCH LIGHTING UP THE DAMP AND DRIPPING ROCKS.”
No serpents or venomous reptiles disturbed the pirate’s progress; for, though there were plenty of them coiled or crawling near, yet their instinct probably taught them that he was a monster with a more deadly poison than themselves, and whose fangs were sharper, though his tongue did not hiss a note of warning. Captain Brand put down his burden and crept forward on hands and knees, the blazing torch lighting up the damp and dripping rocks, all green and slimy from the tracks of the snake and lizard. Where the narrow fissure seemed to end by a wall of natural rock, the pirate rolled aside a large stone at the base, and scratching away the sand, a large copper lock was displayed, in which, after pushing aside the hasp, Captain Brand touched a spring, and it opened. Then, exerting all the force of his powerful frame, a rough slab of unhewn rock yielded to the effort, and rose like a vertical door slung by a massive hinge at the top. Placing the large stone at the opening, so as to prevent the slab falling to its place, the captain stood the torch within the opening, and went back for his burden; then he returned, and squeezed himself with it into a small excavated, uneven chamber, where he sat down.
“Nasty work,” communed the pirate with himself, “but a safe place to lay up a penny for a rainy day! Let me see. These two bags of doubloons, and the small one my Gibbs brought me, with those three, there, of guineas, and those sacks of dollars, will make about ten thousand pounds. That will make me a nest-egg when I retire from the profession and return to Scotland. They will have forgotten all my boyish follies by that time.”
Captain Brand alluded to forging his father’s name, and other little peccadilloes of a similar nature.
“And I may be elected to Parliament––who knows? It is something of a risk, perhaps, to leave all this pretty coin here, but then it’s a greater risk to carry it in the schooner”––he argued both ways––“and then, again, damp does not decay pure metal. But,” thought Captain Brand, “suppose somebody should discover this little casket 142 in the rock. Ah! that’s not probable, for no soul besides myself knows of it, and even the very man who made the door did not know for what it was intended; besides, he died long ago.”
Captain Brand had forgotten, in this connection, that the man who cut out the stone chamber and door, and fashioned the hinge and lock, took too much sugar in his coffee the morning the job was finished, and died in horrible convulsions before night. Oh yes, that incident had entirely escaped his memory!
Captain Brand, having now thoroughly reasoned the matter out, gave each of the bags lying on the sand a gentle kick to get a responsive echo from the coin; and then creeping out of the treasure-chamber, he withdrew the torch, removed the stone, and the heavy slab fell again into its place. Then clasping the lock, covering it over with sand, and rolling back the stone, he seized the torch and quickly returned to the vault beneath his saloon. There, putting out the torch by rubbing it against the stone pavement until not a spark was left, by the sunlight, streaming through the loopholes around, he passed to one side and began removing the cases of cochineal, silks, and what not, near to the strongly-barred portcullis door, which opened toward the basin fronting his dwelling. It was hard work, but Captain Brand seemed to enjoy it; and even after he had arranged the packages intended for shipment in his compadre’s felucca, he began again. Going to the farther corner of the vault, he stopped before a strong mahogany door, and taking a key from his pocket, unlocked and threw it wide open. It was as black as night inside, floored and lined with wood, and emitting a choking atmosphere of charcoal and sulphur. Piled around the walls were some fifty or a hundred small barrels with copper hoops, and branded on the heads with the word “powder.” Unmindful of the odor and the rather combustible material around him, Captain Brand again resumed his work, and rolled a large number of the little barrels toward the doorway, near the merchandise already there, saying to himself the while,
“I think that will about fill the ‘Centipede’s’ magazine, and we must make a proper disposition of the remainder.”
Hereupon Captain Brand, actively bent upon the work of disposing of his treasures, rolled out a dozen or two more of the little barrels. Strange to say, among the very few articles that were never presented to him, but actually bought of Señor Moreno, was this highly useful and indispensable material of powder, and he therefore set much store by it. And it was with a sigh of regret that the pirate stood the little barrels on their ends in a line across the great vault of the building, beneath kitchen, bedrooms, and saloon, and especially beside the square upright stanchions on which the interior of the building rested. Not content with this, he took a copper hammer and knocked in all the heads of the little barrels, and then, with 143 a scoop of the same metal, he dipped out large quantities of the black material, and poured thick trains of it from barrel to barrel, sometimes capsizing one, but always particularly cautious not to rasp a grain of it beneath his grass slippers and the pavement. Then he took a piece of match-rope, and sticking one end deep into a barrel, he just poked the other end out of a loophole, to be in readiness whenever Captain Brand should deem proper to touch his lighted cigar to it.
“There,” said Captain Brand, “that piece of tow will burn about thirty or forty minutes, and then––stand from under!”
Ascending the hatchway again with the agility of a cat, he drew up and secured the trap, and in ten minutes afterward he was freshly attired in a nice pair of India panjammers, a grass cloth jacket and vest––with, of course, the usual knickknacks in his pockets––and seated at table, where his busy housekeeper had placed a broiled chicken and a bottle of old Bordeaux before him.