THE
TRAGEDY OF IDA NOBLE
_A NOVEL_
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1892
COPYRIGHT, 1891,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A YANKEE RUSE 5
II. THE PEOPLE OF LA CASANDRA 33
III. DON CHRISTOVAL'S STORY 59
IV. A MIDNIGHT THEFT 90
V. MADAME 123
VI. A TRAGEDY 154
VII. DON LAZARILLO LEAVES US 185
VIII. IDA NOBLE 219
IX. CAPTAIN NOBLE 249
THE TRAGEDY OF IDA NOBLE.
CHAPTER I.
A YANKEE RUSE.
On Monday, August 8th, 1838, the large bark Ocean Ranger, of which I
was second mate, was in latitude 38° 40' N., and longitude 11° W. The
hour was four o'clock in the afternoon. I had come on deck to relieve
the chief officer, who had had charge of the ship since twelve. It was
a very heavy day--a sullen sky of gray vapor seeming to overhang our
mastheads within pistol-shot of the trucks. From time to time there had
stolen from the far reaches of the ocean a note as of the groaning of a
tempest, but there had been no lightning; the wind hung a steady breeze
out of the east, and the ship, with slanting masts and rounded breasts
of canvas, showing with a glare of snow against the dark ground of the
sky, pushed quietly through the water that floated in a light swell to
the yellow line of her sheathing.
Some time before I arrived on deck a vessel had been descried on the
port bow, and now at this hour of four she had risen to the tacks of
her courses, and her sails shone so radiantly in the dusky distance
that at the first glance I knew her to be an American. The captain
of my ship, a man named Hoste, was pacing the deck near the wheel; I
trudged the planks a little way forward of him, stepping athwart-ships,
or from side to side. The men, who were getting their supper, passed
in and out of the galley, carrying hook-pots of steaming tea. It was
an hour of liberty with them, the first of what is called the "dog
watches." The gloom of the sky seemed to heighten the quietude that
was upon the ship. The sailors talked low, and their laughter was
sudden and short. All was silent aloft, the sails stirless to the
gushing of the long salt breath of the east wind into the wide spaces
of cloths, and nothing sounded over the side save the dim crackling
and soft seething noises of waters broken under the bow, and sobbing
and simmering past, with now and again a glad note like the fall of a
fountain.
The captain picked up a telescope that lay upon the skylight, and
crossing the deck took a view of the approaching ship; then approached
me.
"She is an American," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"How do you know she is an American?"
"By the light of the cotton in her canvas."
"Ay, and there are more signs than that. She has put her helm over as
though she would speak us."
By five o'clock she was about a mile to a mile and a quarter distant on
our weather bow, at which hour she had backed her maintop-sail and lay
stationary upon the sea, rolling lightly and very stately on the swell,
the beautiful flag of her nation--the stars and stripes--floating
inverted from her peak as a signal of distress. Both Captain Hoste and
I had searched her with a telescope, but we could see no other signs of
life aboard her than three figures--one of which stood at the wheel--on
her short length of poop, and a single head as of a sailor viewing us
over the bulwark-rail forward.
We shortened sail as we slowly drew down, and when within speaking
distance Captain Hoste hailed her.
The answer was--"For God's sake send a boat!" Yet she had good boats of
her own, and it puzzled me, then, that she should request us to send,
seeing that there must be hands enough to enable her to back the yards
on the main.
Captain Hoste cried out, "But what is wrong with you?"
One of the figures on the poop or raised deck tossed his hands in a
gesture of agitation and distress, and in piteous, nasal Yankee accents
repeated, "For God's sake send a boat!"
Captain Hoste gazed for a while, as though hesitating. He then said to
me, "Mr. Portlack, there may be trouble aboard that ship, not to be
guessed at by merely looking at her and singing out. Take a couple of
hands in the jolly boat and ascertain what is wanted," and so saying he
bawled a command to the sailors forward to lay the maintop-sail of the
Ocean Ranger to the mast, while I called to others to lay aft and lower
away the jolly boat that was suspended at irons called davits, a little
distance past the mizzen-rigging.
By this time a darker shade had entered the gloom of the sky, due
partly to the sinking of the hidden sun, and partly to the thickening
of the atmosphere as for rain. The sea, that ran in folds of leaden
hue, was merely wrinkled and crisped by the wind, and I had no
difficulty in making head against the streaming foam-lined ripples and
in laying the little boat alongside the American.
She was a tall, black ship with an almost straight stem and of a
clipper keenness of bow. Her stemhead and quarters were rich with gilt
devices; her towering skysail poles, the white trucks of which gleamed
like silver, seemed to pierce the dusky surface of vapor above them. I
sprang into the mizzen channel and stepped from the rail on to the poop.
Saving the man at the wheel there was but one person on deck; I sent a
look forward but the ship was deserted. _This_, I instantly thought to
myself, will be a case of mutiny. There has been brutality, or, which
is nearly as bad as brutality, bad food, and the men have refused duty
and gone below.
The person who received me was an American skipper of a type that
travel had rendered familiar. His dress was remarkable for nothing but
an immense felt, sugar-loaf-shaped hat--a Fifth of November hat. He had
a hard, yellow face with a slight cast in one eye, and his long beard
was trimmed to the aspect of a goat's. I did not observe in him any
marks of the agitation and distress which had echoed in his melancholy
return yell to us of "For God's sake send a boat!" He eyed me coolly
and critically, running his eyes over me from top to toe as though I
were a man soliciting work, and as though he were considering whether
to engage me or not. He then said, "Good afternoon!"
"Pray," said I, "what is wrong with you that you asked us to send a
boat?"
"Step below," said he, moving to the little companion hatch that
conducted to the cabin.
"I am in a hurry," said I, with a glance round the sea; "it darkens
quickly and I wish to return to my ship. Pray let me hear your wants."
"This way, if you please," he answered, putting his foot upon the
ladder.
There was no help for it: I must follow him or return to my ship
without being able to satisfy the questions which Captain Hoste would
put to me. As I stepped to the hatch it began to rain, but without
increase of wind; away to windward in the east the sea was already
shrouded with drizzle, and already to leeward the Ocean Ranger loomed
with something of indistinctness in the thickening atmosphere, her
white sails showing in the gathering dusk as she rolled like spaces of
pale light flung and eclipsed, flung and eclipsed again. The helmsman
at the wheel of the Yankee stared hard at me as I approached the
hatch. On entering the cabin, I found the captain with an air of bustle
in the act of placing a bottle and glasses upon the table.
"Sit you down, sit you down," he called to me. "Here is such a drop of
rum as I know some folks in your country would think cheap at a dollar
a glass."
"This is no time to drink," said I, "thanking you all the same, nor is
rum a liquor I am accustomed to swallow at this hour. Pray tell me what
is wrong with you."
"Wal," said he, "if you won't drink my health, then I just reckon
there's nothen for me to do but to drink yourn."
He poured out about a gill of neat rum which, first smelling it,
with a noisy smack of his lips he tossed down. I looked at my watch,
meaning to give him three minutes and then be off, let his distress be
what it might. The cabin was so gloomy that our faces to each other
could scarcely be more than a glimmer. The evening shadow, darker yet
with rain and with the wet of the rain upon the glass, lay upon the
little skylight over the table; the windows overlooking the main deck
were narrow apertures, and there was nothing of the ship to be seen
through them; yet, even as the Yankee put down his glass, fetching a
deep breath as he did so, I seemed to hear a sound as of men softly
treading, accompanied by a voice apparently giving orders in subdued
tones, and by the noise of rigging carelessly dropped or hastily flung
down.
"What ship is yourn?" said the captain.
"The Ocean Ranger," I replied. "But you are trifling with me, I think.
I am not here to answer that sort of questions. What do you want?"
"Wal," he answered, "I'll tell you what I want, mister. I'm short of
men, and men," he added, with a touch of brutal energy in his tone, "I
must have, or, durn me, if the Ephriam Z. Jackson is going to fetch
New York this side of Christmas Day. I reckon," he continued, with an
indiscribable nasal drawl, "that your captain will be willing to loan
me two or three smart hands."
"I reckon," I replied, with some heat, "that he will be willing to do
nothing of the sort, if for no other reason than because it's already a
tight fit with us in the matter of labor. If _that_ is your want--very
sorry, I'm sure, that we should be unable to serve you," and I made a
step toward the companion ladder.
"Stop, mister," he cried, "how might _you_ be rated aboard your ship?"
"Second mate," I replied, pausing and looking round at the man.
"Wal," said he, coolly, "I don't mind telling you that my second mate's
little better than a sojer"--by which he meant "soldier"--"and if so
be as you are willing to stop just here, I'll break him and send him
forrards, where he'll be of some use, and you shall take his place."
My astonishment held me silent for some moments. "Thank you," said I,
"my captain is waiting for me to return," and with a stride I gained
the companion steps.
"Stop, mister!" he shouted. "Men I must have, and at sea when the
pi-rate necessity boards a craft politeness has to skip. You can stop
if you like; but if you go you goes alone. I tell you I must have men.
Two men ye've brought, and they're going to stop, I calculate. _In_
fact, we've filled on the Ephriam Z. Jackson, and she's _ong rout_
again, mister. If _you_ go--"
I stayed to hear no more, and in a bound gained the deck. Sure enough
they had swung the topsail yard, and the ship, slowly gathering way,
was breaking the wrinkles of the sea which underran her into a little
froth under her bows! Five or six sailors were moving about the decks.
I rushed to the side to look for my boat; she lay where I had left
her, straining at the line, and wobbling and splashing angrily as she
was towed; but there was nobody in her. My two men were not to be
seen. I shouted their names, my heart beating with alarm and temper,
but either they were detained by force below, or, influenced by the
seaman's proverbial reckless love of change, they had been swiftly and
easily coaxed by a handsome offer of dollars and of rum into skulking
out of sight until I should have left the ship. My own vessel lay a
mere smudge in the rain away down upon the lee quarter, yet she was not
so indistinct but that I was able to make out she had not yet filled on
her topsail. I could imagine Captain Hoste bewildered by the action of
the Yankee, not yet visited by a suspicion of the fellow's atrocious
duplicity, and waiting a while to see what he intended to do.
I had followed the sea for many years, and my profession had taught
me speed in forming resolutions. Had the weather been clear, even
though the time were an hour or two later than it was, I should have
continued to demand my men from this perfidious Yankee. I should have
tried him with threats--have made some sort of a stand, at all events,
and taken my chance of what was to follow. But if I was to regain my
ship every instant was precious. It was darkening into night even as
I paused for a few moments, half wild with anger and the hurry of my
thoughts. My men were hidden; and my suspicions, indeed my conviction,
assured me that I might shout for them till I was hoarse to no purpose.
Then, again, the American vessel was now at every beat of the pulse
widening the distance between her and the Ocean Ranger. It was certain
that my first business must be to regain my own vessel while yet
a little daylight lived, and leave the rest to Captain Hoste; and
without further reflection, and without pausing to look if the American
captain had followed me out of the cabin, I dropped into the mizzen
channels and thence into the jolly-boat that was towing close under,
and cast adrift the line that held the boat to the ship's side. The
little fabric dropped astern tumbling and sputtering into the wide race
of wake of the ship that drove away from me into the dimness of the
rain-laden atmosphere in a large pale cloud, which darkened on a sudden
in a heavier fall of wet that in a minute or two was hissing all about
me.
I threw an oar over the boat's stern, and, getting her head round for
my ship, fell to sculling her with might and main. There was now a
little more wind, and the rain drove with a sharper slant, but the
small ridges of the sea ran softly with the boat, melting with scarce
more than a light summer play of froth on either hand of me, as I stood
erect sculling at my hardest. The heavier rush of rain had, however, by
this time touched the Ocean Ranger, and she now showed as vaguely as a
phantom down in the wet dusk. I could barely discern the dim spaces of
her canvas, mere dashes of faint pallor upon the gloom, with the black
streak of her hull coming and going as my boat rose and sank upon the
swell.
I had not been sculling more than three or four minutes when I
perceived that Captain Hoste had gathered way upon his ship. She was,
in fact, forging ahead fast and rounding away into the west in pursuit
of the American, leaving my boat in consequence astern of her out upon
her starboard quarter. It was very evident that the boat was not to be
seen from the Ocean Ranger--that Captain Hoste imagined me still on
board the American, and that, observing the Yankee to be sailing away,
he concluded it was about time to follow him--though this was a pursuit
I had little doubt Hoste would speedily abandon, for it was not hard to
guess that the Ephraim Z. Jackson would outsail the Ocean Ranger by
two feet to one.
The consternation that seized me was so excessive that my hands grasped
the oar motionlessly, as though my arms had been withered. I could do
no more than stand gaping over my shoulder at the receding ships. As to
shouting--why, already my vessel had put a long mile and a half between
her and my boat; and though I could not tell amid the haze of the rain
and the shadow of the evening what canvas she was carrying, I might
gather that Captain Hoste was pressing her, by the heel of her tall dim
outline, and by the occasional glance of the froth of her wake in the
thickness under her counter.
I threw my oar inboards and sat down to collect my mind and think. My
consternation, as I have said, was almost paralyzing. The suddenness of
the desperate and dreadful situation in which I found myself benumbed
my faculties for a while. I was without food; I was without drink; I
was also without mast, sail, or compass, in a little open boat in the
heart of a wide surface of sea, the night at hand--a night of storm, as
I might fear when I cast my eyes up at the wet, near, scowling face of
the sky and then looked round at the fast-darkening sea, narrowed to
a small horizon by the gloomy walls of rain, in the western quarter of
which the American had already vanished, while my own ship, as I stood
straining my gaze at the pale blotch she made, slowly melted out like
one's breath upon a looking-glass. Yet, heavy as my heart was with the
horror of my position, I do not remember that I was then sensible of
despair in any degree. When my wits in some measure returned, I thought
to myself, rascal as the Yankee captain has proved himself, he surely
will not be such a villain as to leave me to perish out here. He will
know, by the Ocean Ranger pursuing him, that Captain Hoste has not
seen my boat. Then he will shorten sail to enable the Ocean Ranger to
approach, and hail Captain Hoste to tell him that I am adrift somewhere
astern; so that at any hour I may expect to see the loom of my ship
close at hand in search of me, within earshot, with a dozen pairs of
eyes on the look-out and a dozen pairs of ears straining for my first
cry.
That my drift might be as inconsiderable as possible, I lashed the two
oars of the boat together, made them fast to the painter, threw them
overboard and rode to them. But when this was done it was dark, I
may say pitch dark; the rain fell heavily and continuously, and the
wind sang through it in a sort of shrill wailing such as I had never
before taken notice of in the wind at sea, and this noise put a new and
distinct horror into my situation because of my loneliness. The froth
of the streaming ripples broke bare and ghastly, and the run of the
waters against the boat's sides filled the atmosphere with notes as of
drowning sobbing. The cold of the night was made piercing by the wet
of it and the quarter whence the wind blew. I was soaked to the skin,
and sat hugging my shuddering body, forever staring around into the
blind obscurity, and forever seeing nothing more than the mocking and
fleeting flash of the near run of froth.
The breeze held steady, but something of weight came into the heave of
the little ridges, and from time to time the chop of the boat's bows as
she chucked into a hollow, meeting the next bit of a sea before she had
time to fairly rise to it; from time to time, I say, some handfuls of
spray would come slinging out of the darkness forward into my face, but
nothing more than that happened during those hours of midnight gloom.
Though never knowing what the next ten minutes might bring forth, I
had made up my mind that I was to be drowned, or if not drowned then
that I was doomed to some dreadful ending of insanity which should
be brought about by hunger, by thirst, by that awful form of mental
anguish which is called despair, and that if I were spared to see the
sun rise I should never see him set again.
But the night passed--the night passed, and I remember thanking God
that it was an August night, which signified, comparatively speaking,
short hours of darkness. It passed, and the breaking dawn found me
crouching and hugging myself as I had been crouching and hugging myself
during the black time that was now ending, staring in my loneliness,
and with a heart that felt broken, over the low gunwale of the boat at
the rim of the sea which slowly stole out all round me in a line of
ink against the ashen slant of the sky. It had ceased to rain, but the
morning broke sullen and gloomy; the heavens of the complexion they had
worn when the night had darkened upon them; the wind no stronger than
before, yet singing past my ears with a harsh salt shrillness that had
something squall-like in the keen-edged tone of it each time the head
of a swell threw me up to the full sweep.
I stood up, weak and trembling, and searched the ocean, but there was
nothing to be seen. Again and again I explored the horizon with eyes
rendered dim by my long vigil and by the smarting of the salt which
lay in a white crust about the eyelids and in the hollows, but there
was nothing more to behold than the gray ocean, freckled with foam,
throbbing desolately in the cold gray light to its confines narrowed by
the low seat from which I gazed.
I had now no hope whatever of being searched for and picked up by
my own ship. I did not doubt that she had pursued the Yankee, who
had outsailed her and been lost sight of by her in the darkness, and
that Captain Hoste, understanding the villainous trick that had been
played upon him, but assuming that I, as well as the two men, had been
detained by the American, had long ago shifted his course and proceeded
on his voyage. I looked at my watch, but I had forgotten to wind it
overnight, and it had stopped. By and by I reckoned the hour to be
between eight and nine. There was no sun to tell the time by. Not until
then was I sensible of hunger and thirst. Now on a sudden I felt the
need of eating and drinking, and the mere circumstance of there being
nothing to eat and drink--and more particularly to _drink_--fired my
imagination, which at once converted thirst into a consuming pain, and
I put my lips to my wet sleeve and sucked; but the moisture was bitter,
bitter with salt, and I flung myself down into the bottom of the boat
with a cry to God that, if I was to perish, my agony might come quickly
and end quickly.
I believe I lay in a sort of stupor for some hour or more; then
noticing a slight brightening in the heavens directly overhead, as
though due to the thinning of the body of vapor just there, I staggered
on to my feet, and no sooner was my head above the boat's gunwale than
I spied a vessel steering directly for me, as I was immediately able
to perceive. How far distant she was I could not have said, but my
sailor's eye instantly witnessed the course she was pursuing by the
aspect of her canvas, that was of a brilliant whiteness, so that at
first I imagined her to be the American in search of me, until, after
viewing her for some time steadfastly, I perceived that she was a
large topsail schooner, apparently a yacht, heeling from the wind, and
sliding nimbly through the water, as one might tell by the rapidity
with which the whole fabric of her enlarged.
The sight gave me back all my strength. I sprang into the bows, dragged
the oars inboard, and to one of them attached my coat, which I went to
work to flourish, making the wet serge garment rattle like the fly of a
flag as I swept it round and round high above my head. Within half an
hour she was close to me, with her square canvas aback to deaden her
way, the heads of a number of people dotting the line of her rail--a
shapely and graceful vessel indeed, with a band of yellow metal along
her waterline, dully glowing over the white edge of froth, as though
some light of western sunshine slept upon her, her canvas gleaming like
satin, a spark or two in her glossy length where her cabin port-holes
were, and the brassy gleam of some gilt effigy under her bowsprit,
from which curved to the masthead the lustrous pinions of her jibs and
staysail.
A red-headed man wearing a cap with a naval peak stood abaft the main
rigging in company with others, and as the beautiful little vessel came
softly swaying and floating down over the heave of the swell to my
boat, he cried out, "Can you catch hold of the end of a line?"
"Ay, ay," I answered, in a weak voice, lifting my hand.
"Then look out!" he bawled.
A seaman grasping a coil of rope sprang on top of the bulwarks and
sent the fakes of the line spinning to me. I caught the end with a
trembling grasp and took a turn round a thwart, but not till then
could I have imagined how weak I was, for even as I held the rope my
knees yielded and I sank into the bottom of the boat in a posture of
supplication, half swooning. The next moment the little fabric had
swung in alongside the schooner; I was grasped by some sailors and
lifted on board.
"Let the boat go adrift, she's of no use to us," the red-headed man
cried out.
Another standing near him exclaimed with a strong foreign accent, but
in good English, "Stop! what name is written in her?"
Some one answered, "The Ocean Ranger, London."
"Let that be noted, and then let her go," said the voice with the
foreign accent.
In this brief while I stood, scarcely seeing though I could hear,
supported by the muscular grip of a couple of the seamen who had
dragged me over the side.
"Bring a chair," exclaimed the red-headed man.
"No," cried the other with a foreign accent, "let him be taken into the
cabin and fed. Do not you see that he perishes of hunger and of thirst
and of cold?"
On this I was gently compelled into motion by the two seamen, who
conveyed me to an after hatch and thence down into a little interior
that glittered with mirrors, and that was luminous and fragrant besides
with flowers. I was still so much dazed as hardly to be fully conscious
of what I was doing. Sudden joy is as confounding as sudden grief,
and the delight of this deliverance from my horrible situation was
as disastrous to my wits (weakened by the fearful night I had passed
through) as had been the shock to them when I found myself adrift in
the boat on the previous evening. The two seamen quitted the cabin,
leaving me seated at the table, but their place was immediately taken
by the red-headed man, by the gentleman with the foreign accent,
and a minute later by a third person, a short, square, hook-nosed,
black-browed, inky-bearded fellow. They viewed me for a while in
silence; one of them then called "Tom," and a negro boy stepped through
a door at the foremost end of the cabin.
"Bring brandy and water; also some cold meat and white biscuit. Bring
the brandy first."
Who spoke I did not know. A tumbler of grog was placed in my hand, but
my arm trembled so violently that I was unable to raise the glass to
my lips. Some one thereupon grasped my wrist and enabled me to drink,
which I did greedily, muttering, as I recollect, a broken "Thank God!
thank you, gentlemen," as I put the glass quivering upon the table.
"How long have you been in this plight?" inquired the red-headed man
in a voice whose harshness and coarseness, half demented as I was, I
remember noticing.
"Ask him no questions yet," exclaimed one of the others. "Let him have
meat, dry clothes, and sleep, and he will rally. Ay! he will rally, for
he has a lively look."
The effect of the brandy was magical. It clarified my sight as though
some friendly hand had swept a cobweb from each eyeball. It filled my
body with strong pulses, and enabled me to hold my head erect. But by
this time the negro boy had reappeared with a plate of cold boiled beef
and a dish of biscuit, and I fell to--eating with the animal-like rage
of starvation. I devoured every scrap that was set before me, and then
with a steady hand raised and drained a second glass of grog that had
been mixed by the man with the foreign accent. And now I felt able to
converse.
"Gentlemen," said I, making a staggering effort to bow to them, "I
thank you from the bottom of my heart for rescuing me from a horrible
death. I thank you gentlemen for this bitterly-needed refreshment."
"You are soaked to the skin," said the man with the foreign accent.
"You will tell us your story when you are dry and comfortable. Captain
Dopping, you can lend this poor man some dry linen and clothes?"
"Ay!" responded the other, in his coarse determined voice. "Are ye able
to stand?"
"I think so," I replied.
I rose, but observing that I faltered, he came round to where I was
swaying, grasped me by the arm and led me to a little cabin alongside
the door through which the negro boy had emerged. In this cabin were
two shallow bunks or sleeping-shelves, one on top of the other. The
room was lighted by a circular port-hole, and by what is called a
bull's-eye--a piece of thick glass let into the deck overhead. My
companion rummaged a locker, and tossing a number of garments into the
lower bunk, bade me take my pick and shift myself and then turn in,
and, saying this in a harsh, fierce way, he withdrew.
I removed my wet clothes, and grateful beyond all expression was the
comfort of warm dry apparel to my skin, that for more than twelve
hours had been soaked with rain and steeped in brine. I then stretched
my length in the lower sleeping-shelf, and, after putting up a prayer
of gratitude for my deliverance, closed my eyes and in a few minutes
fell asleep.
I slept until about three o'clock in the afternoon. On waking I found
the interior bright with sunshine. I lay for a little, thinking and
taking a view of the cabin. My faculties, refreshed by sleep, were
sharp in me. I could remember clearly and realize keenly. The disaster
which had befallen me was a great professional blow. It had deprived me
of my ship, and robbed me of an appointment I had been forced to wait
some tedious months to obtain. With the ship had gone all my clothes,
all my effects, everything, in short, I possessed in the wide world,
saving a few pounds which I had left in a bank at home. The Ocean
Hanger was bound on a voyage that would keep her away from England for
two years and a half, perhaps three years; so that for, let me say,
three years all that I owned in the world, saving my few pounds, would
be as utterly lost to me as though it had gone to the bottom.
While I thus lay musing, the door of the berth opened, and the
red-headed man--Captain Dopping--entered. Having my eyes clear in my
head now, I immediately observed that he was a freckled, red-haired,
staring man, with big protruding moist blue eyes and scarlet whiskers;
all of his front teeth but two or three were gone, and the gaps in his
gums gave his face, when he parted his lips, the grin of a skull.
I got out of the bunk when he entered.
"How do you feel now?" said he, eying me in a hard, deliberate,
unwinking way.
"Refreshed and recovered," said I.
He ran his gaze over my figure to observe what garments belonging to
him I had arrayed myself in, then said, "What is your name?"
"James Portlack."
"What are you?"
"What _was_ I, you must ask," said I, with a melancholy shake of the
head. "Second mate of the bark Ocean Ranger," and I told him briefly of
the abominable trick which the Yankee captain had played off on Captain
Hoste, and which had resulted in leaving me adrift in the desperate and
dying condition I had been rescued from.
"A cute dodge, truly," said he, without any exhibition of astonishment
or dislike, nay, with a hint in his air of having found something to
relish in the American's device. "It is what a Welshman would call
'clebber.' This is a yarn to tickle Don Christoval."
"Who is Don Christoval?" said I.
"He is Don Christoval del Padron."
"The owner of this schooner?"
He gave a hard smile, but returned no answer.
"What is the name of this vessel?" I asked.
"La Casandra."
"Where are you from?"
"Cadiz."
"To what port?" said I, with anxiety.
He gave another hard smile, and then, eying me all over afresh,
exclaimed, "Come along on deck. Don Christoval and Don Lazarillo will
be wanting to see you, now you're awake."
I asked him to lend me a cap, not knowing what had become of mine, and
followed him through the small brilliant cabin into which I had been
conducted by the two seamen. I had a quick eye, and took note of many
things in a moment or two. The cabin was peculiarly furnished, that is,
for a sea-going interior. It gleamed with hanging mirrors; the sides
were embellished with pictures, such as might hang upon the walls of
a room ashore; there were little sofas and arm-chairs, of a kind you
might see in a drawing-room, but not in the cabin of a vessel, whether
a pleasure-craft or not. In short, it was evident that a portion of the
furniture of a house had been employed for fitting out this interior.
But where the vessel herself showed, I mean the ceiling or upper deck,
the sides, the planks left visible by the carpet--_there_ all was
plain and even rough, by which signs I might know that La Casandra was
not a yacht, despite the shining of the mirrors and the gilt of the
picture-frames, the rich carpet under foot, the crimson velvet sofas
and chairs.
I followed Captain Dopping up the narrow companion-steps, and gained
the deck. The rain was gone, the gloomy sky had rolled away down the
western sea-line, and the afternoon sun shone gloriously in a sky of
blue piebald with stately sailing masses of swollen cream-colored
vapor, which studded the blue surface of the sea with island-like
spaces of violet shadow. A pleasant breeze was blowing, and it was
warm with the sunshine. The schooner was under all the canvas it was
possible to spread upon her, and how fast she was sailing I might
know by the white line of her wake. I had no eyes at the instant for
anything but the horizon, the whole girdle of which I rapidly scanned
with some wild silly notion in me of catching a sight of the cloths of
the Ocean Ranger, that in searching for me might have been navigated
some leagues to the north.