All hands! bring ship to anchor, ahoy!
BOATSWAIN'S MATE.
In the meantime Isabella had suffered her full share of persecution.
Shortly after the family had retired from the coast to the vicinity of
the city of Tepic, where Don Gaspar had an estate, he had urged her to
accept Don Gregorio before their return to St. Blas. The tears and
entreaties of the unhappy girl had, however, so far mollified him that
he consented to put it off some time longer. A severe fit of the gout,
during which Isabella attended him with the most assiduous and
unremitting affection, had also operated as a powerful auxiliary to her
wishes. Pressing her affectionately to his bosom one day, the old
governor declared his unwillingness to part with her; and, "upon this
hint she spake," and easily obtained from him a promise not to trouble
her with any matrimonial schemes till she had completed her
twenty-second year, and even then, if she felt disinclined to the holy
state, she should be at liberty to retire to a convent. As she was not
yet twenty-one, she regarded this reprieve as equivalent to a full
release, and awaited anxiously the return of the dry season. It came at
last, and the family returned to St. Blas.
Several American ships, whalemen and others, visited the port for
supplies, and for the purpose of a little private speculation, with
which the custom-house was not troubled. Dame Juanita's shop, being
rather the largest in St. Blas, and possessing, moreover, the additional
attraction of her own buxom countenance, and that of a pretty daughter
behind the counter, was visited daily by the mates and crews of these
ships; and of them she inquired, by direction of Isabella, concerning
the officers of the Orion, without success for a long time, till at last
the mate of a trader declared that he knew Mr. Morton very well; that
when he saw him last he was engaged fitting out a ship bound round Cape
Horn; and that she was, in all probability, on the coast at that moment,
and would most probably soon visit San Blas.
This intelligence operated like a cordial upon Isabella's spirits; her
eyes were constantly directed towards the western horizon; every sail
that appeared, caused the utmost trepidation and eager hope; and when
the distant sail proved to be some coasting vessel, or the guarda-costa,
that was prowling about continually, her disappointment was keen and
painful. Her cousins laughed at the perseverance with which she watched
the harbor; and, fearful of exciting suspicions, she afterwards only
looked out upon the blue expanse of ocean when alone.
At last, one lovely morning, just after the sea-breeze had commenced
blowing, a white speck was seen in the horizon, that rapidly increased
in size, till in two hours it was plain to all eyes that it was a large
ship, and many thought a man of war. Various were the speculations as to
her object, and still more so as to her nation; for coming directly
before the wind, her colors could not be seen.
As she approached the anchorage, her light sails were taken in and
furled, with a despatch very unlike the manoeuvres of a merchantman,
and which confirmed the opinion of her being a man-of-war. Presently a
flash of red flame and cloud of thick, white smoke issued from her
starboard bow, followed by a corresponding one from the other side, and
repeated alternately, to the number of twenty-one; but the fourth flash
was distinctly visible to those on shore, before the roar of the first
gun came booming over the water, awakening the thousand echoes that
slumbered in the hills and woods about the city.
The ship, having now reached her intended berth, slowly emerged from her
"sulphurous canopy," that the light breeze had kept wrapped around her,
like a veil; and, clewing up her topsails, gracefully swept round
towards the westward, as if intending to go out to sea again; and, in
the evolution, a large, bright-colored, new American ensign floated upon
the gentle breeze from her mizen gaff. She remained stationary for an
instant, when the anchor was dropped, and the sails furled; and the
machine, that but half an hour before,
"Walked the waters like a thing of life,"
now lay upon their bosom a dark, motionless, inanimate mass.