“Feel bad? Do you? Handled you like a bag of shavings. Well, the boys
got their monkey up, hammering the Dagos. Here you, Mike, go look along
the deck, for a double-barrelled pistol. Move yourself a bit. Feel along
under the spars.”
There was something authoritative and knowing in his personality;
boyishly elated and full of business.
“We must put the ship to rights. You don’t think they’d come back for
another taste? The blessed old deck’s afloat. That’s my little dodge,
boiling water for these Dagos, if they come. So I got the cook to fire
up, and we put the suction-hose of the fire pump into the boiler, and we
filled the coppers and the kettles. Not a bad notion, eh? But ten times
as much wouldn’t have been enough, and the hose burst at the third
stroke, so that only one boat got anything to speak of. But Lord, _she_
dropped out of the ruck as if she’d been swept with langridge. Squealed
like a litter of pigs, didn’t they?”
What I had taken for blood had been the water from the burst hose. I
must say I was relieved. My new friend babbled any amount of joyous
information into me before I quite got my wind back. He rubbed his hands
and clapped me on the shoulder. But his heart was kind, and he became
concerned at my collapsed state.
“I say, you don’t think my chaps broke some of your ribs, do you? Let me
feel.”
And then I managed to tell him something of Seraphina that he would
listen to.
“What, what?” he said. “Oh, heavens and earth! there’s your girl. Of
course.... Hey, bo’sun, rig a whip and chair on the yardarm to take a
lady on board. Bear a hand. A lady! yes, a lady. Confound it, don’t lose
your wits, man. Look over the starboard rail, and you will see a lady
alongside with a Dago in a small boat. Let the Dago come on board, too;
the gentleman here says he’s a good sort. Now, do you understand?”
He talked to me a good deal more; told me that they had made a
prisoner--“a tall, comical chap; wears his hair like an old aunt of
mine, a bunch of curls flapping on each side of his face”--and then said
that he must go and report to Captain Williams, who had gone into his
wife’s stateroom. The name struck me. I said:
“Is this ship the _Lion?_”
“Aye, aye. That’s her. She is,” several seamen answered together,
casting curious glances from their work.
“Tell your captain my name is Kemp,” I shouted after Sebright with what
strength of lung I had.
What luck! Williams was the jolly little ship’s captain I was to have
dined with on the day of execution on Kingston Point--the day I had been
kidnapped. It seemed ages ago. I wanted to get to the side to look after
Seraphina, but I simply couldn’t remember how to stand. I sat on the
hatch, looking at the seamen.
They were clearing the ropes, collecting the lamps, picking up
knives, handspikes, crowbars, swabbing the decks with squashy flaps.
A bare-footed, bare-armed fellow, holding a bundle of brass-hilted
cutlasses under his arm, had lost himself in the contemplation of my
person.
“Where are you bound to?” I inquired at large, and everybody showed a
friendly alacrity in answer.
“Havana.” “Havana, sir.” “Havana’s our next port. Aye, Havana.”
The deck rang with modulations of the name.
I heard a loud, “Alas,” sighed out behind me. A distracted, stricken
voice repeated twice in Spanish, “Oh, my greatness; oh, my greatness.”
Then, shiveringly, in a tone of profound self-communion, “I have a
greatly parched throat,” it said. Harshly jovial voices answered:
“Stow your lingo and come before the captain. Step along.”
A prisoner, conducted aft, stalked reluctantly into the light between
two short, bustling sailors. Dishevelled black hair like a damaged
peruke, mournful, yellow face, enormous stag’s eyes straining down on
me. I recognized Manuel-del-Popolo. At the same moment he sprang back,
shrieking, “This is a miracle of the devil--of the devil.”
The sailors fell to tugging at his arms savagely, asking, “What’s come
to you?” and, after a short struggle that shook his tatters and his
raven locks tempestuously like a gust of wind, he submitted to be walked
up repeating:
“Is it you, Señor? Is it you? Is it _you?_”
One of his shoulders was bare from neck to elbow; at every step one of
his knees and part of a lean thigh protruded their nakedness through a
large rent; a strip of grimy, blood-stained linen, torn right down to
the waist, dangled solemnly in front of his legs. There was a horrible
raw patch amongst the roots of his hair just above his temple; there was
blood in his nostrils, the stamp of excessive anguish on his features, a
sort of guarded despair in his eye. His voice sank while he said again,
twice:
“Is it you? Is it you?” And then, for the last time, “Is it you?” he
repeated in a whisper.
The seamen formed a wide ring, and, looking at me, he talked to himself
confidentially.
“Escaped--the _Inglez!_ Then thou art doomed, Domingo. Domingo, thou art
doomed. Dom... Señor!”
The change of tone, his effort to extend his hands towards me, surprised
us all. I looked away.
“Hold hard! Hold him, mate!”
“Señor, condescend to behold my downfall. I am led here to the
slaughter, Señor! To the slaughter, Señor! Pity! Grace! Mercy! And
only a short while ago--behold. Slaughter... I... Manuel. Señor, I am
universally admired--with a parched throat, Señor. I could compose
a song that would make a priest weep.... A greatly parched throat,
Señor,” he added piteously.
I could not help turning my head. I had not been used half as hard
as he. It was enough to look at him to believe in the dryness of his
throat. Under the matted mass of his hair, he was grinning in amiable
agony, and his globular eyes yearned upon me with a motionless and
glassy lustre.
“You have not forgotten me, Señor? Forget Manuel! Impossible! Manuel,
Señor. For the love of God. Manuel. Manuel-del-Popolo. I did sing, deign
to remember. I offered you my fidelity, Señor. As you are a _caballero_,
I charge you to remember. Save me, Señor. Speak to those men.... For the
sake of your honour, Señor.”
His voice was extraordinarily harsh--not his own. Apparently, he
believed that he was going to be cut to pieces there and then by the
sailors. He seemed to read it in their faces, shuddering and shrinking
whenever he raised his eyes. But all these faces gaped with good-natured
wonder, except the faces of his two guardians, and these expressed a
state of conscientious worry. They were ridiculously anxious to suppress
his sudden contortions, as one would some gross indecency. In the
scuffle they hissed and swore under their breath. They were scandalized
and made unhappy by his behaviour.
“Are you ready down there?” roared the bo’sun in the waist.
“Olla raight! Olla raight! Waita a leetle,” I heard Castro’s voice
coming, as if from under the ship. I said coldly a few words about the
certain punishment awaiting a pirate in Havana, and got on to my feet
stiffly. But Manuel was too terrified to understand what I meant. He
attempted to snatch at me with his imprisoned hands, and got for his
pains a severe jerking, which made his head roll about his shoulders
weirdly.
“Pity, Señor!” he screamed. And then, with low fervour, “Don’t go away.
Listen! I am profound. Perhaps the Señor did not know that? Mercy! I
am a man of intrigue. A _politico_. You have escaped, and I rejoice at
it.”... He bared his fangs, and frothed like a mad dog.... “Señor, I am
made happy because of the love I bore you from the first--and Domingo,
who let you slip out of the Casa, is doomed. He is doomed. Thou art
doomed, Domingo! But the excessive affection for your noble person
inspires my intellect with a salutary combination. Wait, Señor! A
moment! An instant!... A combination!...”
He gasped as though his heart had burst. The seamen, open-mouthed, were
slowly narrowing their circle.
“Can’t he gabble!” remarked someone patiently.
His eyes were starting out of his head. He spoke with fearful rapidity.
“... There’s no refuge from the anger of the _Juez_ but the grave--the
grave--the grave!... Ha! ha! Go into thy grave, Domingo. But you,
Señor--listen to my supplications--where will you go? To Havana. The
_Juez_ is there, and I call the malediction of the priests on my head if
you, too, are not doomed. Life! Liberty! Señor, let me go, and I shall
run--I shall ride, Señor--I shall throw myself at the feet of the
_Juez_, and say... I shall say I killed you. I am greatly trusted by
the reason of my superior intelligence. I shall say, ‘Domingo let
him go--but he is dead. Think of him no more--of that _Inglez_ who
escaped--from Domingo. Do not look for him. I, your own Manuel, have
killed him.’ Give me my life for yours, Señor. I shall swear I had
killed you with this right hand! Ah!”
He hung on my lips breathless, with a face so distorted that, though it
might have been death alone he hated, he looked, indeed, as if impatient
to set to and tear me to pieces with his long teeth. Men clutching at
straws must have faces thus convulsed by an eager and despairing hope.
His silence removed the spell--the spell of his incredible loquacity. I
heard the boatswain’s hoarse tones:
“Hold on well, ma’am. Right! Walk away steady with that whip!”