WE TRANSHIP THE DOLLARS.
Although the hour was approaching high noon, and the day very glorious,
no light was in the cave beyond the length of the ship’s bowsprit. A
wall of darkness came to the bows of the ship; it might have been
something material, something you could lean against or stick with a
knife; the daylight touched it and made a twilight of it at the mouth,
then died out. The long and short of it is--it is my way, anyhow, of
explaining the strange thing--the filthy colored scoriæ, the gloomy
masses of cinder, pumice, lava--call it what you will--were
unreflective; light smote the stuff and perished, or was not returned,
so that a thin veil of dusk clothed with deepest obscurity any hollow it
lay in.
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
Built in th’ eclipse and rigged with curses dark.
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.