Jimmy had not yet arrived with the meal. Still holding her hand, to deliver myself from the absurdity of gesticulating, I conducted her to a berth on the starboard side in the fore-part of the living room, opened the door, and sought, with a flourish of my fist, to make her understand that it was at her disposal.

“Yrá ó harâ muy bien”—It will do very well—said she.

I afterward understood this to be her remark; then it was darker than Hebrew. In fact, I thought she referred to the emptiness of the berth. The bunk was without bedding; and that bare bunk and a little naked, unequipped semicircle of wooden washstand, screwed into the bulkhead, formed all the visible furniture of the interior.

I knew a few words in French, and tried her with a “Parlez-vous Français, señorita?”

“Nó, caballero,” she answered.

I made a step into the berth, and motioned toward the bunk and the washstand, in the hope that she would be able to collect from my contortions that her comfort would be presently seen to. She inclined her head and slightly smiled, and the flash of her teeth was like sunshine betwixt her lips. Again I presented my hand, and she gave me hers; and I led her into the cabin where Jimmy was now busy. Galloon sat upon his chair, watching the lad lay the cloth. He pricked his ears and growled at the Spanish lady. I shook my fist at him, and his eyes languished, though his ears remained pricked. The lady exclaimed in Spanish, and fearlessly walked round to the dog and patted him. Galloon wagged his tail, but his ears remained elevated, as though one end of him was in doubt while the other end was satisfied. I again noticed the beauty of the lady’s hand, as she laid it on the dog, and the sparkling of the rings upon her fingers. Jimmy breathed fast and grinned much, and could scarcely proceed in his work for staring. I abused him for a lazy cub and bade him bear a hand.

The meal was spread. I motioned the lady into the chair occupied by Greaves, with further gesticulations desired her to help herself, and poured out a bumper of claret, of which wine Greaves had laid in a handsome stock, whether at Tulp’s cost or not I could not say. I was greatly impressed by the self-control and dignity of this lady Aurora, as I understood one of her names to be. Hungry I could not question she was. Tempted, I might also feel sure she would be, by the food before her after four days of such living as the island beach and the grove of trees provided. Yet she helped herself to but a little at a time, first crossing herself with great devotion before lifting her fork, then eating with the well-bred leisureliness you would have looked to see in her at her mother’s table. But the silence grew momentarily more oppressive.

“Jimmy,” said I, “go forward and bring that Spanish sailor, Antonio, aft with you, unless he’s still eating.”

At the expiration of five minutes Antonio followed Jimmy into the cabin.

“Have you had plenty to eat?” said I.

His earrings danced while he nodded—he wore earrings like those you see on a French fishwife—his blood-stained, dark eyes searched the cabin.

“A very good ship—very kind men,” said he. “When do you sail, señor?”

“I have not sent for you to question me,” said I. “I desire you to interpret my speech to this lady. Tell her——” and, in few, I bade him inform her that instructions would be given for her cabin to be comfortably equipped, and that whatever the brig could supply was at her service.

She smiled and bowed to me on this being interpreted, and then addressed Antonio, who, however, found himself at a loss, and was obliged to act to make me understand. He feigned to wash his face, and unnecessarily passed his fingers through the length of his hair, and then, finding words, made me understand that the lady was weary, that she had slept but little, and then on the hard ground, and that she would be thankful to lie down and sleep. Thereupon I told Jimmy to convey my bedding to her bunk, also to place one or two toilet conveniences of my own in her cabin; and, after waiting to see my instructions carried out, I bowed low and sprang on deck, with my mind full of the dollars ashore, wondering likewise what Greaves’ report would be, whether the dollars were still in the ship’s hold, and when he meant to go to work to discharge the vessel of her silver.

My first look was at the weather. It was boundless azure down to the lens-like brim of the sea—not a feather-sized wing of cloud—and a light air of wind with just enough of weight in it to hold the backed topsail steady to the mast. I looked at the island; the boat had entered the cave and was lost in the shadow. I picked up the glass, and leveled it; the dark lines of rigging and spar were faintly discernible, but the boat was deep in the dusk and not to be seen. It was the ugliest rock of island I had ever viewed, swart, sterile—save where the trees stood—gloomy, menacing with its suggestion of arrested fires. A few terrapin, or land tortoises, crawled upon the beach. Many birds, most of them white as shapes of marble, wheeled and hovered over the further extremity of the land with frequent stoopings and dartings, like our gulls over a herring shoal. I swept every foot of the visible surface of land with a telescope, but witnessed no signs of life of any sort. Nevertheless, the two long arms of the reef strangely civilized the beach and the face of cliff where the cave was, by their likeness to artificial piers. They formed a very perfect, spacious harbor in which, during a heedless moment or two, I caught myself looking for a cluster of rowboats, for some group of shipping, for cranes and capstans, for men walking, as though, forsooth, I gazed at the piers of a dock!

How it had come to pass that a big ship of seven or eight hundred tons should have backed and neatly threaded an eye of cave, and fixed herself within, Greaves had, doubtless, correctly explained. The commander of her had stumbled upon this island in thick weather; or he may have found the island aboard of him on a sudden in a black night. He had a reason for bringing up in the shelter of that harbor, and when his anchors were down it came on to blow dead in-shore. The ship dragged. Her stern made a straight course for the opening in the cave. Would they seek to give her a sheer to divert her from that entry? No. For there might be safety in that cave, but outside it was certain destruction. To touch was to go to pieces against such a steep-to front of cliff as that. But many are the conundrums submitted by the ocean, and victoriously insoluble are they for the most part. You may theorize as you will. Nothing is certain but this:

While I waited for the return of Greaves, I called to Bol to get a cast of the deep-sea lead. There was no bottom at eighty fathoms. I had expected from the appearance of the island to find a great depth of water to the very wash of the surf. No need, therefore, to bother with our ground tackle. And so much the better! Nothing like having your ship under control when the land is aboard. With an offing of a mile it would be easy to “ratch” clear any point of the island, even should it come on to blow with hurricane power; then it would be up-helm and a brief run for it, and a heave-to till the weather mended.

The two Spanish sailors sat, Lascar fashion, against the caboose. They sucked alternately at a short pipe which one of them had probably borrowed. When the lead-line was coiled away, Yan Bol rolled up to me and said in his voice of thunder, but very civilly:

“Dot vhas a scare.”

“What was a scare?” said I.

He leveled a massive forefinger at the two Spaniards. I nodded. “Der captain vhas some time gone,” said he. “I hope no man vhas before her.”

“And that’s my hope.”

“How many cases of dollars might der be, Mr. Fielding?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked as if he did not believe me, and said, “Vell, der more, der better for Mynheer Tulp und oders.” He paused upon this word, oders. I gazed at the island. “Der more der better, certainly,” continued he, “yet dey vhas not so plentiful but dot efery dollar might be shipped before dark. Tell me dey vhas plentiful some more dan dot, and, by Cott, Mr. Fielding, der crew’s share vhas as a flea upon der dog dot scratch her.”

“My name is Fielding, not Greaves, Yan Bol,” said I.

“Oh, yaw, dot vhas right. But I likes to tink aloud sometimes, Mr. Fielding.”

“Are not you satisfied?” cried I, suddenly rounding upon him and looking him full in the face.

“Perfectly satisfied, Mr. Fielding.”

“Then why, by that devil who always seems to be busy in ship’s forecastles, come you to me now with your growlings and your questions and your dots, and your Cotts and your dollars, Yan Bol.”

“Growlings—questions! I likes to know vhen we get der dollars on board und make sail, dot vhas all.”

“Strike a light with your eyes and keep a lookout for yourself, and hail the fore royal yard, will ye, and receive the man’s report.”

He went forward, and his roar swept straight aloft like a blast from the mouth of the cannon. There was nothing in sight at sea, the man called down. I looked toward the island and saw the boat at that moment stealing out of the cave. I mused on Bol while the boat swept across the satin calm surface of the natural harbor, the oars swinging like lines of flame in the men’s hands. Was Bol going to give trouble? It was late in the day to ask that question. It would be impossible to rid the ship of him on this side the Horn, and by the time it came to t’other side——

The boat arrived, and Greaves rose in the stern sheets; he rose, but he was supported too. A sailor grasped him by either arm, and he was helped with difficulty over the side of the brig. I was at the gangway to receive him, and assisted by seizing his hands as the men helped him to climb. He was pale as milk, and his mouth was drawn with pain.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“I have had a fall,” he said, speaking with a labored breath. “I tripped and drove my whole weight against the sharp edge of a case in the lazarette of the ship yonder. I wish I may not have broken a rib. Help me, Fielding.”

I took him by the arm, and Jimmy, who stood near, grasped him in obedience to my gesture by the other arm, and together we got him into the cabin and to his berth. He asked for brandy-and-water and drank a tumblerful, and then requested me to help him to strip, that he might see if he had broken any bones. He had hurt himself over the right hip, and the skin was somewhat darkened there, but the ribs were unbroken. He felt over himself anxiously, occasionally groaning, and said:

“No, my good angel be praised, the bones are sound. I am in torment from the pain of the blow. That must be it, and it will pass—it will pass.”

“I would recommend you to lie perfectly still.”

“No; I must be on deck. I can sit and keep watch and look about me while you go ashore.”

I helped him to dress, and he seemed unable to speak for pain while he put his arms and body in motion. He then asked for another glass of brandy-and-water and sat, saying he would rest and talk to me for ten minutes.

“Are you in pain when you are still?” said I.

“No. I was too eager, and consequently careless, pressed forward, tripped, and should have set fire to the ship had I swooned, for I was alone and the fall flung the lighted lantern from me, and the candle lay naked and burning among the cases.”

“Lord, how suddenly will a trifle become a frightful thing at sea!” said I.

“Where is the Spanish lady, Fielding?”

“In her berth, and perhaps asleep, sir.”

“Well,” said he, after a pause, “the dollars are there.”

“I am glad to hear it, sir,” said I, feeling the blood in my cheek, for I own that the news worked as a sort of transport in me.

“This cursed accident will hinder me from superintending the unlading of the vessel. You must undertake that job.”

“You can trust me, captain.”

“Up to the hilt I do. Open that drawer, and hand me the pocket-book you’ll see.” His extending his hand to receive the book made him wince. “There are a hundred and forty cases,” said he. “You will take slings and tackles to hoist the cases out and lower them over the side into the boat. Be careful not to overload your boat. The money may be safely transhipped in three journeys; so divide one hundred and forty by three and your quotient is your lading for each trip.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Be careful with your fire. I split open some of the boxes, as I told you, to make sure of their contents. Take tools and nails and battens with you for securing the riven cases. Be yourself in the lazarette while this is doing.”

“Right, sir. Where will you have the cases stowed aboard us?”

“Oh, in the lazarette. I was prevented by my fall,” he exclaimed, “from examining the rest of the cargo. Do you that when the money is transhipped. I will act on your report if the weather allows. But should there come a change when we have got the money, then damn your cocoa and tin—we’ll be off.”

“Shall I remain in the ship during the trips, or take charge of the boat?”

“Take charge of the boat, but see all your men in first.”

I faintly smiled, for here was a direction that was a little particular, methought.

“Help me on deck, now, Fielding, and then go to work.”

I thought to myself: “It is no time, this, to speak of Yan Bol. The matter must stand.”

He leaned upon me, and, with pain and difficulty, gained the deck. All the men but one had come out of the boat, and the ship’s company, saving that man and Jimmy and the fellows at the wheel and masthead, were assembled in the gangway. They hung together in a little crowd. Impatience burnt like fire in them—impatience and expectation and anxiety, now complicated by the injury their captain had met with. When we made our appearance they stared and shuffled, one and all, as though they were mutineers, scarce masking a madness of bloody intention, and about to make a rush aft to its execution. Is not the insanity that drink will run into the veins and brains a sweet little cherub compared with the demon that enters the soul of man out of the coin of gold or silver?

“Captain,” cried Yan Bol, “I shpeaks for all handts. You vhas not hurt much, all handts hope?”

“Not much, my lads—not much, I thank you,” answered Greaves, whom I had helped to seat in the chair Jimmy had placed for him, and who, while he remained motionless, seemed free from pain.

“Captain,” again cried Yan Bol, in tones like to the noise of breakers heard in the hollow of cliffs, “again I shpeaks for all handts. Vhas der dollars safe?”

“Yes,” answered Greaves.

The men roared out a cheer—a roaring cheer it was. It seemed to be repeated on the island a mile off, as though there was a crew ashore there.

I now began to sing out the instructions which Greaves had given me. Pieces of planking for nailing over the cases were flung into the boat; lines for slings, tackles, tools, lanterns, and the like were handed down. The crew took their seats, and we shoved off, followed by a cheer from the fellows who remained behind. There went with me six men—two Dutch, the others my countrymen. The drift of the brig, though very inconsiderable, owing to the lightness of the breeze and the apparent absolute tidelessness of the sea, had veered the island a trifle southerly, and the brig lay on a line with the edge of the cliff where the cave was. The cave was, therefore, hidden from me. I stared with great curiosity at the island as we neared it, making for the head of the westerly reef to round into the lake-like expanse within. A more hideous heap of rock shows not its head above the water. The cliffs of it, where they run to any noticeable altitude, come down to the sea in twisted masses. You would have thought the process of this island’s formation had been arrested at some instant when the red-hot mass of it was writhing and pouring into the ocean over the edges of its own heaped-up stuff. No iceberg ever submitted a more fanciful sky-line; but its toad-like hue, its several hideous complexions, made it a loathly sight. The spirit shrinks from this bit of creation as from some disgusting creature.

The cave was situated in the highest front of this island. The height of this front was above two hundred feet; how much above that elevation I know not. It was smooth and sheer, pumice-hued like the beach that swept from it into the northeast; so smooth and sheer was it that you would have said it had been split in twain from a like mass that had fallen and vanished. Assuredly some enormous convulsion had gone to the manufacture of that prodigious fissure or cave.

We pulled through the opening of the reefs, and I headed straight for the cave. So strong was my excitement that it felt like a sort of illness. I breathed with labor; the sweat lay like oil in the palms of my hands, though my hands were cold. It was not now the thoughts of the money. My excitement was no dollar madness then. I was oppressed, to a degree I find incommunicable, by the marvelous picture, as I was now beholding it for the first time, of the big ship clothed in the dusk of the mighty tomb into which she had backed and where she had brought up. I had had no leisure for the sight during my first excursion; had but glanced at it, my head being then full of the shipwrecked people we were bringing off, and of fancies of what might be lurking on shore. But now, our approach being leisurely, the expanse of water to be measured considerable, I could gaze, wonder, realize, until emotion grew overwhelming and became a sensation of sickness in me.

Were you to split a big stone open and find a live toad in it you would marvel. Hundreds would assemble to view the wonder, and a poor man might get money by exhibiting it; but how many much stranger things than a live toad imprisoned in a stone would I, as a sailor, exact the relation and sight of, ere admitting that half the sum of that marvel of a great ship at rest in a huge cave was approached?

At first sight the fabric looked like a piece of nature’s handiwork as it lay in the gloom of the interior it had miraculously penetrated. It looked, I say, as though the volcanic spasm, which had shorn the lofty cliff into its bald front and wrought the prodigious fissure, had contrived the hundred fragments and ruins of rocks, the splinters, the serpentine lengths, the massive bulks, the pillar-shaped fragments into the aspect of a ship, building the wonder in a sudden roar of earthquake, and leaving it a faultless similitude.

“Oars!” cried I.

We floated forward with the arrested blades poised over the water. It was burning hot; the sun stood nearly overhead, and the surface of this strange natural harbor shone like new tin, tingling in fibers and needles of white fire back again into the light that it reflected. We were within a musket-shot of the entrance of the cave.

“On which side did you board, men?”

“To starboard, sir.”

“Give way gently, and, bow there, stand by with your boathook.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

WE TRANSHIP THE DOLLARS.

The water brimmed blue to the mouth of the cave, and then, at a few boats’ lengths, slept black and thick as ink, wholly motionless this day; though I might suppose that when a large swell ran outside the breakwaters, the smaller swell of the harbor put a pulse into the black tide of the cave, though without weight enough to stir the stern-stranded ship. Yet you saw much of her when you were still on the threshold of the cavern. Her huge bows sprawling with head-boards loomed out of the darkness, advancing the yellow bowsprit till the cap of it was almost flush with the sides of the opening. Had the jib booms stood, they would have forked far into daylight and, perhaps, long ago have challenged the attention of a passing ship, and brought her people to explore the Spaniard and enrich themselves. Her lower masts were yellow, and they showed ghastly in the gloom. She had immense round tops, black and heavy, and shrouds of an almost hawser-like thickness, with a wide spread of channels and massive chain plates. Most of the yards were across, and squared as though the machinery of the braces had worked to the music of the boatswain’s pipe. Her sides were tall; she carried some swivels on her poop rail, and a few pieces calked with tompions crouched through a half dozen of ports, like motionless beasts of a strange shape about to spring.

To look up! To behold that lofty fabric and complication of mast and spar and rigging soaring to the dark roof, against which the topgallant masts had been ground away to the topmast heads!

Be seated in a small boat alongside a ship of six hundred or seven hundred tons, with such a height of side as this Spaniard had, lifting her platform of deck a full eighteen feet above the water for the eye to follow the ascent of the lower masts from; I say from the low level of a small boat, look up to the altitude of the starry trucks of such a ship as this Perfecta Casada; if you be no sailor, your eye will swim as you trace the mastheads to their airy points. To an immeasurable height will those spars seem to soar above you, yea, though they rise no higher than the cross-trees. But here was a vast cave in which a great ship—and a ship of seven hundred tons was a great ship in my time—could lie; and in this cave a lofty ship was lying, partly afloat, partly stranded; the darkness in which she slumbered magnified her proportions; she loomed upon the sight as tall again as she was, and half the wonder of this wonderful show lay in the height of the black ceiling against which her topmast heads were pressed, jamming her into the position she had taken up, as though a shipwright and his men had dealt with her.

The atmosphere struck cold as snow after the outer heat. A hush fell upon us as we floated in, with the bowman erect ready to hook on, and the silence was horrible, and the more horrible for the sound thrice heard in the hush that fell upon us, of a greasy gurgle of water, like a low, villainous, chuckling laugh.

But all this is description, and it takes me long to submit to you what I beheld in a few breathless moments of wonder, and awe, and admiration. We were here to load dollars, not to muse and marvel.

“Sort o’ ole penguin smell knocking round, aint there?” said one of the crew.

“Only a Dago could have managed this job,” said another. “Why don’t Dagoes stay ashore? Blast me if even a Dutchman would have made such a muck of it.”

“Hold your jaw!” I roared, in a rage; and my cry went in an echo through the cave, rebounding as a billiard ball from its cushion.

What is more diabolically and instantaneously fatal to sentiment than the vulgar talk of a vulgar Englishman? A Spaniard, an Italian, a Portuguese, a Greek—blasphemes in your presence, and his coarseness adds to the romantic colors of the idealism you are musing on; but let an Englishman come alongside of you, and drop an h, and emotion is shivered as by a thunderbolt.

The remarks of the sailor woke me up. We were alongside the ship, and the fellow in the bow had hooked on to one of the huge main-chain plates. I crawled into the channel, and over the rail, and dropped upon the deck. It was like entering a vault, and there was an odd, damp, earthy flavor in the air. I wonder, thought I, if there are two dead men in the forecastle, locked in each other’s arms? But why locked in each other’s arms? Ah, why? Fancy will give body to wild conceits at such a time and on such an occasion as this.

I stood a moment at the rail; the water flowed black as ink into the blackness over the stern. In the mysterious twilight that shrouded the ship, her decks and masts looked unearthly; it was hard to conceive that human hands had fashioned her, that the echoes of the mortal calker had resounded through her. I thought of the ship in Lycidas

Sternward the craft died out in gloom. The roundhouse, or some such contrivance of deck structure, hung in a swollen shadow with the yellow shaft of the mizzen mast shooting straight up out of it. I seemed to catch a faint gleam of glass, a dim and ghostly outline of doorway, of skylight, of crane-like davits. The deck of a ship viewed at midnight, by the light of froth breaking round about, would shadowily and glimmeringly show as this Spaniard did from the gangway to the taffrail. But forward there was light; the radiance of the day hung, like a sheet of blue silver, in front of the opening of the cave, and against that brilliance—compact and undiffused, like the light upon the object glass of a telescope—the bows of the ship stood out in indigo, the tracery of the rigging exquisitely marked till it vanished in the gloom overhead.

I bade one man remain in the boat, and the rest to come on board and bring the lanterns, tackles, slings, and materials for securing the damaged chests of dollars. I then lighted one of the lanterns and walked aft, looking with the utmost curiosity around me, as though this ship, forsooth, instead of being a vessel of my own time, was coeval with this cave, and but a little younger than Noah.

The dollars were, I knew, stowed away down in the lazarette. This queer name is given to a part of a ship’s after-hold. It is a compartment or division, and commonly used for the stowage of stores and provisions. The hatch that conducted to this place was in the cabin. I entered the cabin—a sort of deckhouse—and paused, holding my lantern high, and gazing about me. I observed a row of cushioned seats or lockers, three or four round scuttles on either hand, with dim oil paintings let into or framed to the panels between; lamps which, when lighted, might shine like the starry crescents of the poet, and two square tables, one at each end. The hatch was open. I descended and passed through a ’tweendecks, black as ink. The lantern light gleamed along a corridor, and revealed a short row of berths to starboard and larboard. And now, passing through the hatch in this deck, I stood in the lazarette. The floor was shallow; there were numerous stanchions, and the white cases, which contained the dollars, were stowed between those uprights. I approached a range of cases and found the top one split open. I squeezed my hand through and felt the dollars, packed in large rolls. They were as rough to the touch of the finger, with their milled edges, as any big surface of file, and cold as frost. There looked to be a great number of cases. I do not suppose that Greaves had attempted to count them. He abided by the declaration of the manifest, and since it was certain the cases had not been meddled with, no doubt the number and value were as the manifest set forth.

I halted inactively here for, perhaps, a minute, while, with lantern upheld, I ran my eye over the cases. The silence was horrible—no dimmest sob of water penetrated, no distant squeak of rat afforded relief to the ear. But here were the dollars! They were now to be secured, got into the boat, and conveyed to the brig. I called to the men, and they came below with the battens and hammer and nails. We had four lanterns burning, and there was plenty of light. In a few minutes this dead vault of hold was ringing to the blows of the hammers. I overhauled the cases and saw that every split lid was carefully repaired before ever I dreamt of suffering a box of the metal to be lifted. The men spoke not one word, unless it were an “ay, ay, sir,” in response to a call from me. They chewed and spat with excitement, hammered and toiled with eagerness, and often did they roll their eyes over the cases, but they held their tongues. When the last of the boxes was repaired, slings were procured, a tackle rigged, and I, standing in the lazarette, tallied a quantity of the cases on deck, some of them large, and holding, as I should have reckoned by the weight, not less than three thousand to five thousand dollars apiece. I then followed the men, the gangway was cleared, and the chests lowered by tackles into the boat, where they were received and trimmed by three of the crew.

We pulled out of the harbor, deep, but not perilously deep, with silver, and when we rounded the reef I spied the brig at a distance of about a quarter of a mile away from the spot where we had left her. They had wore her and got her head round on the other tack, and clapped her aback afresh. There was a fellow stationed on the fore royal yard; I see him in my mind’s eye, as mere a pigmy as ever Gulliver handled, as he sat jockeying the yard in the slings, one hand on the tie, his legs dangling, and the loose white trousers trembling, and a hand to his brow as he sent his gaze into the remote ocean distance. The sun made a blaze of the white canvas, and their reflection trembled in sheets of quicksilver, deep in the clear cerulean beneath the shadow of the vessel’s side.

The Black Watch looked but a little ship after the lumping fabric in the cave. Yes, she looked but a little ship for the hundreds of leagues of ocean she had measured, since the hour when I was lifted over her rail nearly dead of Channel water. But small as she was, she sat in beauty upon the sea; the long passage had not roughened her, her sides showed like the hide of some freshly curried mare of Arabia. She rolled lightly, sparkles leapt from her, the colors about her deepened, paled and deepened again, and fingers of shadow swept through the blaze of her canvas.

As we approached I saw Greaves sitting in the chair in which I had left him; he sat under a short awning. There was a tray upon the skylight, and bottles and glasses, and I guessed he was eating his dinner. I looked for the lady, but saw nothing of her. Galloon watched our approach, seated like a monkey upon the rail with half a fathom of red tongue out. Bol and the others and the two Spaniards were congregated in the gangway. The big Dutchman waited until the boat drew close, he then roared in a voice that could have been heard on the other side of the island, “Hurrah, my ladts! Tree sheers for Capt’n Greaves.” And when the men had cheered, he roared out again, “Und three sheers more for der dollars!”

By the time this unwarrantable uproar—but it was scarce worth correcting, seeing the occasion of it—had ceased we were alongside, and I sprang on deck. “How have you got on, Mr. Fielding?” called Greaves from his chair, without attempting to rise.

“Very well, sir.”

“How many cases?”

I gave him the number.

“Get them aboard at once,” he exclaimed, “and leave them on the quarter-deck till all are shipped. See those cases aboard, and then step aft.”

The men speedily hoisted the cases out of the boat. Yan Bol was conspicuously forward and energetic in the hand he gave. I stood near, and heard him say, “I vhas pleased mit der Spaniards for leaving dis money. Dere vhas house, vife, beer, bipes, mit songs und dances in dese cases. Cott, vhat a veight! I likes to find more ships in a hole. Vhat drinks, vhat larks in von case only.”

The sailors rumbled with laughter at the fellow, and some of the Englishmen eyed me askant to guess my mind. I was willing, however, that Bol should run on. Greaves was near, and able to hear and judge for himself. When the last case was out of the boat I walked aft.

Greaves said, “Send your boat’s crew to dinner, and let others take their place for the next boat.”

“With your leave, sir, I’ll keep the men I have just returned with. They know the ropes and have nothing to learn.”

“Be it so. Send the crew to dinner, but let them bear a hand; and you can make a meal off this tray here.”

There was food in plenty, and wine. Having told the boat’s crew to go to their dinner, I sat down with Greaves, and ate and drank. The weather continued extraordinarily beautiful, but the wind was failing, long glassy lines of calm were already snaking along the surface of the sea, and it was fiercely hot. The horizon swam in a film; you could have seen ten miles in the morning, and not five miles now from the deck. No sights had been taken; no sights were needed when there was an island, whose situation had been accurately observed, close alongside.

“We shall have the dollars aboard by four?” said Greaves.

“Easily, sir.”

“Do you believe in the dollars now, Fielding?” said he, with a smile.

I answered, “Yes,” coloring, and asked him how he felt.

“Easier,” said he; “there is no pain when I sit. A severe bruise—no more.”

“Yan Bol is a bit forward and outspoken for a foremast hand, don’t you think, captain?”

“He is a Dutchman, and all Dutchmen are cheeky. The word cheek originates with the Dutch. Look at their sterns and look at their faces, if you want the etymology of the word cheek.”

“I hope he’ll remain cheeky only. For my part, I don’t feel sure of the man.”

“Too late—too late,” said Greaves irritably and impatiently.

“I do not like that he should ask me the value of the treasure that is to come aboard, and I do not like that he should say that as the size of a flea is to the size of the dog that scratches it, is the proportion of the forecastle share to the whole of the money.”

“If he gives me trouble,” said Greaves, “I will shoot him. I will show you the rising moon through a slug-hole in the devil’s skull. But do not accept Yan Bol too literally. Dutchmen will say without significance that which, in the mouth of an Englishman, might sound brutally malevolent and sinister.”

“That may be, sir. I don’t know the Dutch.”

“I have made up my mind not to meddle with the cargo. Do not trouble to examine it. The money will be risk enough. Shrewd as old Tulp believes himself to be, and really is, the anxiety of running a quantity of tin won’t be worth the purchase. If the cocoa is sweet, bring some of it off for the ship’s use, and if you can meet with the four casks of tortoise shell, we’ll find room for the stuff. Four casks are easy of transhipment, but the rest we’ll let be.”

This was good sense. It must have taken us some time to break out and tranship the tin and the wool and the hides in hair. The smuggling of such stuff, on our arrival home, would have taxed even the many-sided, hard-salted cunning of a Dealman; and, smuggling apart, without papers, how were these commodities to have been passed?

I allowed the boat’s crew a quarter of an hour for their dinner, then summoned them; and, not to repeat the story of our first visit, by something after three o’clock that afternoon, the weather still holding marvelously radiant and all the wind gone, I had tallied the last of the cases of dollars over the side of the Black Watch, along with some crates of cocoa; but the four casks of tortoise shell I had been unable to meet with. Whether they had been omitted, or stowed in some secret place, I know not. Then, for an hour, I was busy in superintending the stowage of the cases of dollars in the brig’s lazarette. While I was thus occupied, Yan Bol, with a few seamen, was sent by the captain in the longboat to procure fresh water and fill up with terrapin and all else catchable that was good for the saucepan. The Dutch boatswain made two journeys before I was done, and was gone ashore again for more water and turtle when I arrived on deck after a wash and a clean-up. I reported the dollars stowed to the captain.

“Ninety-eight thousand pounds,” said he. “It is worth the venture, I think.”

“I can scarcely credit the reality now it has happened and all’s well,” said I.

“There are many men,” said he, “who would be willing to be pressed, run-down, half-drowned, and picked up for six thousand pounds.”

“Ay, indeed,” said I; “and when I take up that money, Galloon, how much of it is to be your share, dear doggie?”

“The Spanish lady sleeps well.”

“After four days of that island!” said I.

“What is to be done with her? I certainly cannot land her in a Spanish port. It will end, I believe, in our carrying her to England. I intend to court no unnecessary risks, and I should be courting a very unnecessary risk by looking close enough into a port to land her. No; she will sail with us to England. I hope she is amiable. I scarcely noticed that she was good-looking. I am no ladies’ man—I do not care for women; and the deuce of it is, neither you nor I speak Spanish.”

“She is a woman of degree,” said I; “has fine manners, fine rings, and beautiful hands.”

“You may have found a wife as well as a fortune in these seas, Fielding.”

“Marry a Spanish woman for money!” said I. “Who’d lick honey off a thorn?”

“And why would not you marry a Spanish woman, money or no money?” said he. “Do not you know that the best and oldest blood in the world runs in Spanish veins? You seem to sneer at the mention of old blood.”

“Not at all.”

“Give me old blood in a woman. With old blood you associate all the elegances, all the graces and aromas in the bearing and conduct of human nature. Vulgarity makes a toad of beauty itself. Think of Venus saying ‘’Ave done,’ and bragging of her jewelry.”

“What is a lady?”

“I expected that question. Cannot you define what any chambermaid or boots can distinguish; what any shopman, waiter, poor sailor man like you or me, can instantly recognize? Marry, come up. What is more teasing than the question, ‘What is a gentleman?’ Cocky Mr. Macaroni, with his hat over his eye and his hair dressed in imitation of his betters, says, ‘Vat’s a gentleman?’ and the beast knows the thing every time he sees it.”

“How is the pain in your side?”

“Well, it makes me wince when I move as I did then. How strange,” said he, sinking his voice and looking at the island, “that I, who have been dreaming of galleons all my life, should, of the scores whose keels have cut these waters, be the one chosen to light upon yonder ship of dollars.”

“Shall you fire her before sailing?”

“No. We will leave her for the next man who may come along—for some poor devil to whom a few serons of cocoa and a thousand quintals of tin may be what the Cockney calls an ‘object.’”

The sun was now low, and the west was on fire. The sea came like blood from the rim of the western line to midway the ocean plain, where the fierce light drained into thin blue that went darkening into melting violet eastward. The brig had drifted very nearly due south of the island, opening the reefs, and baring the harbor to our sight, and disclosing the verdure that clothed a portion of the northern rocks. The longboat lay alongside the beach, and the figures of her people came and went. I thought to myself, a pity if Yan Bol and his sweet and manly fellows don’t take a fancy to the derelict, agree among themselves to attempt to warp her afloat, and consent to remain on the island if Greaves will give them the boat; food enough they will find in the ship and on the beach.

Though the island stood steeped in the red light of sunset, it reflected nothing of the western splendor. Grimy, melancholy, livid—an ocean cinder heap did it look in that fair evening radiance, a spadeful out of Neptune’s dust bin. I picked up the telescope to view the ship in the cave before the shadows closed the wondrous object out, and with the tracery of the spars and rigging, dim in the lens, I conceived myself on board. I imagined the hour of midnight, I heard in fancy the distant groan of surf, I heard the sobs of the black water within the cave, a faint creak from the heart of the sepulchered vessel; and I figured fear growing in me even unto the beholding of apparitions, until a shiver ran through me as chill as though it had come out of the cold hold of the ship herself.

I put down the glass, meaning to laugh away my fancies to Greaves, and beheld the lady Aurora de la Cueva in the act of rising through the companion way.

Though Greaves and I had only just now been talking about her, I stared as though I had not known she was aboard. It was indeed strange, after all the months of Greaves and Yan Bol and the Dutch and English beauties forward, to find a woman in the brig; to see a fine, handsome, sparkling-eyed girl stepping out of the cabin as though she had been there from the hour of leaving the Downs, but secret. She bowed, I lifted my cap, Greaves struggled to his feet with his face full of pain. I begged him to sit, and ran below for a chair, which I placed near his for the lady Aurora. She had found out that he was in pain, that he had met with an accident, and was addressing him as I put her chair down, her large, Spanish, glowing eyes very wistfully fastened upon his face. He understood her, for, as I have told you, Greaves read Spanish indifferently well, and faintly understood it when spoken, but he wanted words and could not utter the few he possessed. He smiled and touched his hat, and then pointed to the island.

It was not for me to linger near them. I went to the rail and watched the boat and the movements of the fellows upon the beach, but I also found several opportunities in this while for observing the lady Aurora. She had slept and was refreshed. The fine, delicate, transparent olive of her complexion—I may say it was a very pale olive, well within the compass of the admiration of those whose love is for the white and yellow part of the sex—was touched slightly with bloom as from recent slumber. Her eyes were large and splendid with light, remarkable for their long lashes, and of a shade that made you think of the sea at night, black and luminous, their depths filled with wandering fires as she struggled with the oppression of silence or gazed at you as though she would speak. Her nose was slightly Jewish, rather small than big for her face, the nostrils the daintiest piece of graving I ever saw in that way. Her teeth were very good, strong and white, a little large. The quality of her clothes might have been very grand; one would judge of that perhaps by the rings, for this sort of thing goes on all fours as a rule; but the fit or fashion was monstrously vile to my taste. You guessed that underlying all that spread and sprawl of skirt and bodice there sat, or stood, or reposed the figure of a Hebe. Hints of secret perfections there were in plenty; but all grace of shape was overwhelmed by the cut of her gown; it stood upon her like a candle extinguisher, and in shape was not even fit for a nun.

“I am unable to understand the lady, Fielding,” exclaimed Greaves. “Is Antonio forward?”

I spied the Spaniard leaning over the bows looking toward the island. He had gone away in the boat on the first journey to show the men where the water was. On her return with her freight of fresh water, he had crept over the side and sneaked forward to loaf and lounge and smoke in Jack Spaniard fashion. How did I know this? Because I knew that Antonio had been sent in the boat to point out the spring, and his lounging in the bows with a pipe betwixt his lips now, while the boat was ashore and the men busy, told me the little yarn of loafing from start to finish.

I called, and he put his pipe in his pocket and came aft.

“Interpret what this lady says,” exclaimed Greaves.

She poured forth some sentences of Spanish. I could trace no fatigue, no reactionary debility, such as might attend the strain and passion of deliverance from peril tremendous above all words to her as a woman.

“The señorita,” translated Antonio in effect—but, as I have before said, I will not attempt a written description of his articulation or phrases; I write that he may be intelligible—“wishes to know how long you intend to remain in this situation, and to what part of the world you are proceeding when you sail?”

“To England!” cried the lady, when Antonio had made answer out of the mouth of Greaves. “Santa Maria purissima! How shall I find my mother? If she has been rescued she will have been conveyed to some port on the South American coast, whence she will return to Acapulco, and there await news of me. To England! Ave Maria! The world will then divide me from my mother. Blessed Virgin! I did think this ship was proceeding to a South American port. To England! I shall never see my mother again.”

She exclaimed awhile in this sort of language, but untheatrically. Nay, there was a dignity in her astonishment and concern; very little tossing of hands and uprolling of eyes. The main article in the outward expression of her grief and alarm lay in the piteous look she fastened on me, as though she would rather appeal to me than to the captain; as though, indeed, she considered that since I was the first to take her by the hand on the island, and to bring her off from a situation of horror, she was entitled to look to me for all further kindnesses.

“The señorita’s mother,” said Greaves, “was, of course, rescued, and is, no doubt, safe and well?” Antonio turned his back upon the lady that she might not see him squint, and he shrugged his shoulders. “But we have no right to suppose,” continued Greaves, looking sternly at the Spaniard, “that the ship which rescued the señora conveyed her to a port whence she could easily reach Acapulco. On the contrary, in all probability the ship was bound round the Horn, in which case the lady may be now on her way to Europe.”

Antonio translated; the lady Aurora gazed at him somewhat passionately, and beat the air with a gesture of irritation, clearly unable to collect the captain’s meaning from the fellow’s interpretation of it. Antonio talked much and gesticulated with singular energy. The lady then appeared to comprehend.

“She says that her mother is rich,” said Antonio, “and is well known as the widow of Don Alonzo de Cueva, the merchant of Lima. She will pay liberally to be conveyed to Acapulco, where she has a brother who is a priest. She will return to Acapulco because she is sure to believe that the señora, her mother, will seek her there.”

“Tell the lady,” said Greaves, “that I am truly sorry not to be able to put her ashore at any port where she would be within easy reach of Acapulco. When I have filled my water casks I am proceeding to England as straight as the rudder can steer the ship, touching nowhere, and giving everything that passes plenty of room. Yet this tell her, likewise, that on our way to England we may chance to fall in with a vessel bound to a port on this side the South American coast. Should we fall in with such a vessel, I will transfer the lady to her.”

He spoke slowly, with the deliberateness of a man who is in pain while he discourses. Antonio made shift to render the captain’s words intelligible to the lady. She asked, through the Spanish seaman, what Captain Greaves would charge to put her ashore at Lima or Valparaiso.

“It is not to be done,” said Greaves; “beg her not to repeat that request.”

She seemed to gather the matter of his speech by his manner. Her eyes came to mine, earnest, pleading, with a deeper shadow in their dark depths as though tears were not far off. It was a look that made me curse my ignorance of the Spanish tongue. Much could I have said to comfort and hearten her; but though I had been able to talk as fluently as she, it was not for me to intrude then. I was mate, and Greaves was captain; and I stood at the rail seeming to watch the island as it blackened to the fading crimson light, and to be keeping a lookout for the return of the longboat.

“Was not the lady’s mother proceeding to Madrid?” said Greaves.

“Yes, capitan,” answered Antonio.

“If the vessel which may have picked her up is going that way, why should she desire to return to Acapulco?”

“You have heard, my capitan, that the señorita believes her mother will return to Acapulco and wait for her there.”

“How is the mother to know that the daughter is alive?”

Again Antonio squinted fiercely and shrugged.

“Is there reason to suppose that, the widow imagines her daughter is saved? Is there reason to believe that the widow herself is saved? Supposing her to have been picked up by a ship bound south, why should not she proceed in the direction that, if pursued, must ultimately land her at Cadiz, or put her in the way of very easily reaching Madrid, for which city, as I understand, she and her daughter embarked at Acapulco? Interpret all this, will you?”

Antonio began to translate.

“Fielding!” exclaimed Greaves.

“Sir.”

“Call Jimmy aft.”

The boy arrived.

“I am going below, Fielding,” said Greaves. “My ribs ache consumedly. I may get some ease by lying flat. Is the longboat coming off?”

The tall bulwarks prevented him from seeing the lower ranges of the island. I looked a moment; then, to make sure, leveled the glass, and said:

“They are at this instant shoving off, sir.”

“Get in the water and then hoist your boat in,” said he. “You can fill on the brig and stand north for an offing of about three miles; then heave-to afresh, and carefully observe the bearings of the island, lest it should roll down black or thick. If heavy weather happens in the night we will proceed, for we have fresh water enough aboard to carry us along. Otherwise, we will complete our watering in the morning, for I want to make a steady run of it to the Channel without need of a halt on any account whatever.”

While Greaves was giving me his instructions, Antonio was interpreting to the lady Aurora, who frequently broke into short exclamations of “Qué!” “Es esto!” “Será posible?” and, while she thus exclaimed, she would look with an expression of dismay and reproach at the captain.

“If I rest my bones through the night,” said Greaves, “I shall be easier or well again in the morning. Look in upon me with a report from time to time, Fielding, and tell Bol to visit me during his watch.”

He rose from his chair with a face of pain, put his arm upon Jimmy’s shoulder, and went below. I stepped to the gangway, calling to the fellows who were hanging about in the head to lay aft and stand by to discharge the boat and get her aboard. She came alongside deep, and it was dark before we had hooked the tackles into her. When she was stowed, the topsail was swung and the brig headed about north. There was a light wind out of the southwest. It set the water tinkling alongside with the noise as of the bells of a sleigh heard afar. The young moon lay in a red curl in the west, as though, up there, she was still colored by the flush of the sunset that had blackened out to our sight. There was not a cloud. The stars were plentiful and bright, and the dusky ocean, flat and firm, showed as wide as the sky.

All this while the lady had remained on deck. It was about eight o’clock, and very dark. My watch had come round, and the brig would be in my charge till midnight; but, watch or no watch, I should have kept a lookout until I had secured the three-mile offing. The island was on the starboard quarter, scarcely distinguishable now—a dim smudge, like smoke.

Happening to look through the skylight, I saw the cloth laid for supper. Indeed, supper was ready. Salt beef and ham were on the table, together with biscuits, pickles, and a pot or two of preserves, a small decanter of rum for my use, and a bottle of Greaves’ red wine for the lady. She had tasted nothing, as I presumed, since her arrival on board in the morning. She stood at the rail, looking out to sea, a pathetic figure of loneliness, indeed, when you thought of what she had suffered, what she was freshly delivered from; when you thought again of her solitude of dumbness, as you might well term her tongue’s incapacity aboard this brig of English and Dutch. Most heartily did I yearn to speak soothingly and hopefully, to bid her be of good cheer when she thought of her mother, to beg her persuade herself that her mother was rescued and sailing to Europe, even as she, the señorita, was thither bound.

“Weel, weel, there’s Ane abune a’!” says the gypsy in the Scotch novel, and that was the substance of what I wanted to tell the lady Aurora.

And what did I say? Why, I just coughed to let her know that I was at her elbow. I had no other language than a cough.

She quietly looked round and began “Yo no lo——” then broke off, arrested by remembering that I knew not one syllable of her tongue.

I motioned to the skylight and pointed down, and made signs for her to go below and sup. She signed to me to accompany her. I shook my head, pointing to the sails and to the sea, and cursing my ignorance that obliged me to make a baboon of myself with my limbs and head.

She bowed and went to the companion hatch, and on looking down a few minutes later I saw her seated at the table. She had removed her hat; her brow showed white in the lamplight under the magnificent masses of her dead black hair. The jewels upon her fingers sparkled as, with a leisureliness that had something of stateliness in it, she helped herself to the food before her. Once again I admired the beauty of her hands, and then I turned my back upon the novel and beautiful picture of this fine Spanish woman to look to the brig.

CHAPTER XIX.

OFF THE ISLAND.

I entered the cabin. The lady Aurora was still at table, but had long since ceased to eat. She lay back in her chair, her head drooped, her hands folded in the posture of one waiting. When I entered she lifted her head and smiled, her eyes brightened, her lips moved in the first framing of a sentence; no word escaped her; she pointed to a seat, and half rose from her own chair as though in doubt where I was used to sit. I shook my head, nodded toward the door of the captain’s berth, then at the clock under the skylight, holding up my fingers that she might guess I would join her in ten minutes; and so I passed on, hot in the face, and wondering whether it would be possible for me to communicate with her without making a fool of myself—for a fool I felt every time I gesticulated, which now I think must have been owing to my hatred of the French.

Greaves lay in his bunk motionless, on his back, but he was free from pain. Galloon sat on a chest near his head. I reported the affairs of the brig, the distance and bearings of the island, and the like. He asked how the weather looked.

“It is a heavenly night,” said I.

“It is hot in this hole,” said he. “Plague seize the awkwardness that tripped me and has floored me thus! One knows not what to do for a bruise of this sort. But patience—that’s the physic for every sort of bruise, whether of the bones or of the soul. Jim tells me the lady has supped.”

“She has, sir.”

“I am sorry for the poor thing; but where is the woman that does not always want something more than she has? This time yesterday she would have given her hair—angels alive! what would she not have given? to be as she now is, safe aboard such a vessel as this; and now that she is safe aboard—rescued from raw terrapin and the risks of the society of two Spanish sailors (and I must like their looks better before I give them a handsomer name than that)—she craves to be with her mother—very natural, of course—who is, probably, at the bottom of the ocean, and she wants to be put ashore at Lima.”

I delivered the request of the men, as expressed by Yan Bol.

“Oh, yes. Let grog be served out to all hands; and the men may sing, certainly. Disturb me? Not down here. And I like my people to be merry. Fortune has fiddled to-day; let the beggars dance.”

Jimmy was in the cabin. I bade him carry a can of rum to the men, and went on deck, receiving, without knowing how to answer, a look of inquiry from the lady Aurora as I passed her.

“The men may make merry,” said I to Bol. “There is grog gone forward. Tell them that the captain is free from pain; and will you keep a lookout in the waist—or in the head if you like, ’tis all one—while I get a bite in the cabin?”

“Yaw, dot vill I. By der vay, Mr. Fielding, vhas dere von hoondred und dirty, or vhas dere von hoondred und twenty, cases prought on boardt? Vertz swears to von hoondred und dirty; Friendt, von hoondred und twenty. I myself gounts von hoondred und dirty-two. Dere vhas a leedle vager in dis—shoost von day of a man’s grog, dot vhas all.”

“I made one hundred and forty cases,” said I. “But are they all dollars?”

And bursting into a laugh, I left him to chew upon that thought, and returned to the cabin.

I bowed to the lady, and took the chair I usually occupied at the table. She rose, came to my side with a bottle of claret, poured some into a glass, and made as if she would wait upon me. I was not a little confounded. Her handsome presence, her fine person embarrassed me. My career had but poorly qualified me for an easy address in conversing with ladies. Much of my life had been spent upon the ocean, in the society of some of the roughest of my own calling. For months at a stretch I had never set eyes on a woman, and when I was ashore, whether in foreign parts or in my own country, the girls I fell in with were not of a sort to teach me to know exactly what to do when I chanced upon the company of a Señorita Aurora.

I did the best I could with the imperfect and monkey-like speech of the hands and shoulders to induce her to desist from waiting upon me and return to her chair; and in this I was helped by the arrival of Jimmy, to whom I gave several unnecessary orders, merely to emphasize to the lady the desire. I gesticulated that she should sit, and cease to do me more honor than I had impudence to support.

Presently she pointed to the bottle of claret—there stood but one bottle on the table—and looked at me in silence, but with an expression of such eloquence as Jimmy himself could not have missed the meaning of.

“Wine,” said I.

“Vine,” she repeated; and then to herself, “Vino—vine; vino—vine.”

She next pointed to the piece of salt beef.

“Meat,” said I.

“Meat—carne; meat—carne,” she repeated.

She pointed to several objects. I gave her the English names, and she pronounced them deliberately, in a rich voice, invariably tacking the Spanish equivalent to the word, as though she wished me to observe it. I sat for about a quarter of an hour over my supper, and then, looking at the clock significantly, and then up through the skylight, that she might gather my intention, I arose, giving her a little bow. She rose also, and, pointing upward, tapped her bosom, most clearly saying in that way—“May I accompany you?”

“Si, señorita,” said I, expending, as I believe, in those words the whole of my stock of her tongue.

A fine smile lighted up her face, and she addressed me; and what I reckon she said was that it would not take me long to learn Spanish. She picked up her hat, and then, looking at the table, pointed, and showing her white teeth, said, “Bread—pan; meat—carne; vine—vino;” and so on through the words I had interpreted, making not one blunder either of pronunciation or indication of the object, saving that she called wine vine, and ham yam.

I conducted her on deck; I believe Yan Bol had been surveying us from the skylight; I perceived his big figure lurching forward when I emerged, and his way of going made me suppose that he had been looking through the skylight with his ear bent. “An old ape hath an old eye,” thought I, as I watched him disappear in the darkness.

The crew were assembled on the forecastle and singing songs there. They had rigged up two or three lanterns and sat in the light of them, drinking rum-and-water out of mugs, and smoking pipes. A strange voice was singing at that moment; I listened, and guessed it to be one of the two Spaniards. The girl paused and listened too. She then ejaculated, “Ay! Ayme!” and went to the rail, and gazed out to sea.

There blew a soft wind, cool with dew, out of the southwest. I looked for the island, but the shadow of it was blent like smoke with the darkness. The ripples ran in faint, small ivory curls, and the water was full of roaming glows of phosphorus. The Spanish sailor ceased to sing. A fiddle struck up, screwing and squeaking into a tune which immediately set my toes tapping; a hoarse cough succeeded, and then rang out the roaring voice of Travers: