---- I did compound
A certain stuff, which, being ta'en, would cease
The present powers of life; but in short time,
All offices of nature should again
Do their due functions.
CYMBELINE.
Shortly after the sea-breeze had set in--that is, between eleven and
twelve o'clock--a sail was discovered in the western horizon, standing
in for the land; which sail the commander of the Albatross, in a short
time, made out, with the help of his glass, to be the guarda-costa, to
his no small vexation and disappointment. She stood in, however; but
instead of anchoring as usual, in what may be called the outer harbor,
she ran close in to the landing-place, furled her sails, and then, to
Captain Williams's great relief, sent down her fore-yard, stripped it of
the sail and rigging, and launched it overboard. Two boats, full of men,
were soon seen towing it ashore, the spar having been "sprung" in one of
those sudden and violent "flaws" of wind so peculiar to high and
mountainous coasts.
All this was extremely gratifying to the commander of the American ship;
in the first place the Venganza (for that was the warlike name of this
redoubtable man-of-war), by lying so far up the harbor, was out of the
line between the Albatross and the point where it was intended to send a
boat that night; and secondly, the absence of so indispensable a spar as
the fore-yard would render pursuit impossible.
Captain Williams went on shore in the afternoon, and met the old Don,
who treated him with great condescension, and even hinted at the
probability of his making another visit to the Albatross, to which hint
the seaman replied as politely as could be expected. It was nearly night
when he once more entered dame Juanita's shop, from which he took the
liberty to despatch a message to Isabella. She appeared in a few
minutes, and hastily assured him that the prospect of success was
bright, and that nothing existed at that time that threatened to defeat
their plans.
As soon as he returned to his ship, he made preparations for getting
under way as speedily as possible; the bower anchor was hove up, and the
ship rode by a light kedge, there being then but little wind or tide;
the gaskets were cast off the topsails, and their places supplied with
ropeyarns, which would break as soon as the "bunts," or middle of the
sails, were let fall; the chewlines and other running-rigging were
overhauled; and every other plan for making sail upon the ship as
expeditiously and as silently as possible, was adopted. The crew of the
Albatross performed all these different acts of duty with silence and
alacrity. Although their commander had not communicated his plan to
them, they knew by instinct that something bold and daring was to be
attempted that night for the rescue of their favorite officer, and their
four messmates; and their hopes of a brush with the "Don Degos" were
most keenly excited. They were assembled on the forecastle, holding
"high dispute" and conjecture upon the course about to be pursued.
"Now if I was the old man," said one of the younger seamen, "I tell you
what I would do. I would jest land as many of us as could be spared,
with cutlasses and boarding-pikes"--
"And pistols," interrupted another.
"No; d--n your pistols; they make too much noise; they're all talk and
no cider; besides, they miss fire half the time; and before you get
ready for another shot, Don Dego has his thundering baggonet right in
your g--ts; and then where are you?"
"Now you may all of you," said an old seaman, "you may all of you just
pipe belay with your jaw-tackle-falls. Captain Williams knows what he's
about, and you'll know before morning what he's up to. You'd better take
a fool's advice, and catch a cat-nap before you're called away. The
boats a'n't histed up, and when did you ever know 'em in the water after
dark since we've been lying here?" So saying, the veteran disappeared
down the fore-ladder.
"There goes old Jemmy Bush, starn foremost down the fore-scuttle, like
a land-bear going into his hole."
"Well," said another smart, active young seaman, the favorite of the
crew; "I shall take old Jemmy's advice, and go and get forty winks in my
hammock. If there's more or less of us sent on this expedition, we
sha'n't be called away till ten or eleven o'clock, when all the Degos
are asleep, and there's nothing awake in the town but fleas and cats."
The proposition for sleeping prevailed, and the groups on the forecastle
began to disappear, when the voice of the second mate was heard:
"For'ard there!"
"Sir, sir," answered half a dozen eager voices at once.
"Who has the anchor watch?"
"Bill Thompson and Sam Hughes, sir."
"Go in the boats alongside, and see that they have their full
complement of oars; and see, too, that the masts and sails are on board
all of them."
"Ay, ay, sir."
"Do you hear that, my sons of brass?" said old Jones, the boatswain,
"that looks as if there was going to be wigs on the green before
morning."
We must now leave the marine department for awhile, in order to attend
to exclusively terrene concerns. As night closed, Morton could not avoid
feeling extreme anxiety; Isabella had not visited the prison since the
day previous, nor had she sent any message. Doubts the most annoying
possessed his mind--at one time he thought she had been detected in her
schemes for his rescue; then that her courage had failed, and she had
abandoned him to his fate; or that her affection for her relatives had
overcome her love for him. He had partially made known to his four
fellow-prisoners his hopes of relief, cautioning them against sleeping,
but enjoining upon them to keep perfectly quiet.
It was now past nine o'clock; and, with mingled feelings of
disappointment, grief, and anger, he was just resigning all hopes, when
the sentry at the door challenged. The next moment a person dressed in a
long, loose cloak stood before him, whom he immediately recognized as
his loved Isabella.
"I have brought you some supper and some wine," said the young lady,
addressing him, as usual upon similar occasions, in Spanish; "I ought to
have come before, but it was impossible."
So saying, she set her basket upon the stone bench, and, in so doing,
whispered Morton:
"Every thing is ready; be patient, and be guided by me."
"But how are you about to manage these fellows? it will take all night
to get them drunk, if that is your plan; for your soldiers, it cannot be
denied, are extremely temperate, and will seldom do me the honor to
empty more than a single bottle among the whole five."
"Hush, hush; I have a surer way than mere wine."
As she spoke she drew from her bosom a phial, containing a dark liquid.
Morton started back in horror--(he thought he saw, in the composed and
lovely countenance of the beautiful being before him, the cold-blooded,
deliberate, practised assassin--)
"Good God! Isabella, is it possible? never, never will I owe my life and
liberty to such abominable, such cowardly means!"
"Dismiss your suspicions," said Isabella, turning pale and trembling;
"they are unworthy of you, and wholly unmerited by me. Not to save
_your_ life, which I value as I do my own, would I commit mur--the crime
that you suspect. This phial contains a simple opiate, not half so
dangerous or disagreeable as the laudanum and camphor of your ship's
medicine chest. The sleep produced by it is speedy and deep, and lasts
four or five hours."
Observing that Morton still looked distrustingly, she continued, with
streaming eyes--
"Dear Charles, if you doubt me still, I will swallow the whole; its
operation will not take place before I reach home, and will only cause
long, deep sleep; but, in that case, your hopes of escape are cut off
_forever_. To-morrow, or the next day, at farthest, you are to be sent
to the capital"--her tears choked her utterance.
"Dearest Isabella," said Morton, taking her hands in both his, and
pressing them to his bosom, "forgive my cruel suspicions, but I own you
startled me exceedingly."
"Leave all to my management, and in half an hour all will be well."
In the mean time the seamen had "boarded" the basket, and spread its
contents upon the stone bench, that did triple duty as a bed, a seat,
and a table, as occasion required. The soldiers roused themselves at the
gurgling sound of the wine, as it was decanted into cups made of the
large end of an ox's horn, scraped thin, and capable of containing a
pint or more. Isabella dexterously poured the contents of the phial into
a cup, which was filled with wine, and Morton, taking it in his hand,
approached the corporal with a nod of invitation. After holding it to
his lips for some time, as if taking a deep draught, he passed it to the
corporal; that officer, touching his cap _a la militaire_, drank and
passed the horn, according to South American custom, to his comrades.
The prisoners and Isabella watched its circulation with most painful
anxiety, and soon had the felicity of beholding it turned bottom upwards
over the mouth of the sentry at the door. Another bottle was opened, and
poured, unobserved by the soldiers, into another cup, which, being
handed to the sailors, was almost immediately passed back again, "a body
without a soul." Another cup, medicated like the first, was prepared,
and the prisoners, apparently busied with their supper, awaited with
trepidation the effect of the medicine.
After the lapse of fifteen or twenty minutes, which seemed as many hours
to the prisoners, the corporal betrayed palpable symptoms of somnolency.
He had seated himself with his back to the wall, and his feet towards a
small fire that was kept burning in the middle of the guard-room every
night, to drive away the moschetoes, and had commenced a song, in a low
voice. The first stanza he managed very respectably; but, before he had
half finished the second, both the air and words seemed strangely
deranged; his head sank upon his breast, and he snored repeatedly,
instead of singing; he made an effort to arouse himself, uttered that
ejaculation common to all ranks and both sexes of Spaniards, but which
is too gross to be written, and, stretching himself at full length upon
the floor, was sound asleep in an instant. His three comrades were not
slow in following his example; wrapped in their _ponchos_, or South
American cloaks, they "took ground" around the fire, and were soon
asleep.
The sentry at the door, after two or three times stumbling over his own
feet, and as often dropping his musket out of his arms from mere
drowsiness, came into the guard-room to light a segar, which he
eventually accomplished at the imminent risk of pitching head foremost
into the fire. He resumed his station at the door, but was too sleepy
to walk on his post; he seated himself on the stone bench, the butt of
his musket resting upon the ground between his feet, and the muzzle
leaning against his shoulder; the lighted segar dropped from his mouth;
he leaned his head against the door-post, extended his feet and legs,
and in a few seconds his nasal organ, in strains like the nocturnal song
of one of our largest bull-frogs, gave notice that he was "absent
without leave" to the land of Nod.
Isabella now arose, and, motioning to the prisoners to remain quiet,
tripped backwards and forwards through the guard-room, to ascertain that
the soldiers were asleep. Having satisfied herself on this point, she
beckoned to them to follow her. In passing through the guard-room,
Morton as well as his companions felt a strong inclination to possess
themselves of the arms of the guard, which were piled in one corner.
Their fair guide however entreated them to desist; but one of the
seamen, in attempting, to use his own language, to "unship" one of the
bayonets, made so much noise with the muskets, as alarmed himself as
well as the rest; and the whole party sallied out unarmed.
Near the door they were met by another person, that alarmed the
prisoners exceedingly; but it proved to be Transita, Isabella's Mexican
servant, loaded with two "sizeable" bundles; for the annals of
elopements, from the earliest ages down to the present day, have not
recorded a single instance of a lady's running away from "cruel
parents" or cross husband without the accompaniment of a sufficient
quantity of baggage; nay, I have heard of one young lady who
accomplished a most perilous descent from her chamber window into the
arms of an expecting lover, and returned for her favorite lap-dog, at
the most imminent risk of detection and close imprisonment at the hands
of her "ugly, old, cross papa."
Transita, like her mistress, was dressed in boy's clothes, a disguise
that so effectually imposed upon the four sailors, that in a whispered
conversation between them it it was decided that the two "young
gentlemen" were the sons of the merchant to whom the cargo had been
sold. Keeping close to the side of the plaza, the whole party advanced
swiftly and silently without meeting a human being, and turned down the
open space where Don Gregorio had met his horrid fate. As the dreadful
scene rose to Isabella's memory, she could not repress a faint
exclamation of horror, and hurried with increased speed down the narrow
pathway on the edge of the cliff, to escape from the hideous
recollection. Just as they were emerging from their narrow and crooked
path into the street that terminated in the blind passage through the
wood, they were startled by the regular, heavy tread of soldiers,
apparently approaching them. It was a small patrol of a corporal and
three men from the barrack at the water side, but who were not connected
with the guard in the plaza. As they drew nigh, the party stood
perfectly still, except that one of the tars drew forth his jack-knife,
and another picked up a moderate-sized stone, observing in a whisper
that if they came too nigh, he would try which was the hardest, a
Spaniard's scull or that "ground nut," as he designated the stone which
he held in his hand. The soldiers, however, passed on without seeing
them, and in a few seconds their footsteps became inaudible.