A TRAGEDY.
I was prepared to find that Butler had carried my words forward. I
returned to the deck after breakfast, and the man trudged to the
forecastle, and not long afterward I observed the four seamen, the
fifth being at the helm, engaged in earnest conversation. They talked,
pipe in mouth, their hands deep buried in their capacious breeches
pockets, and sometimes they talked with their backs upon one another,
and sometimes they would pace the deck, passing one another, but always
talking, and frequently they directed their eyes aft, insomuch that I
expected every minute that the whole group would approach me and oblige
me to share in the discussion.
My manner and my words when I had visited madame below had been
altogether too pronounced for so shrewd an intelligence as that of Don
Christoval to miss the true meaning of. In short, I had as good as
said that I did not consider the lady to be his wife; that she had been
abducted--ferociously and inhumanly stolen from her father's home, and
that we Englishmen who formed his crew had been betrayed into an act
of criminal villiany by his rascally lies. All this I was conscious
I had as good as said, because, meaning it, I had looked it, and, in
a sentence, I had suggested it. I therefore concluded that the two
Spaniards would talk this matter of my suspicions over, decide upon
some prompt course of action, and come to me on deck--but what to do
and what to say? Would Don Christoval _admit_ the adventure to be one
of abduction, pleading the necessity of representing himself as married
that he might obtain the assistance of English seamen, since it was
clear that he would not ship Spanish sailors for the expedition; or
would he approach me with threats, defying me to disprove his statement
that the lady below was his wife, and giving me to understand that if I
did not mind my own business----.
My mind was rambling in speculations of this kind when I heard the
sound of a guitar and a voice singing. The skylight lay open; I heard
it as distinctly as though I were in the cabin. Don Lazarillo sat
smoking at the table, keeping time with his fingers, the rings upon
them sparkling as he tapped. It was not he who was playing the guitar
and singing; therefore it was Don Christoval. The sounds came from the
after-part of the interior, and I had no doubt whatever that madame's
door was open, and that Don Christoval was touching the strings and
lifting up his voice with some quite superstitious or quite rational
hope of exorcising the demon of madness out of the girl by the
bewitching music he was making.
Bewitching it was. I listened, wholly fascinated by it. His voice
was a clear, sweet, most thrilling and lovely tenor, soft and yet
penetrating, and controlled, so far as I could possibly judge, by the
most exquisite art. Whether he had ever before produced his guitar I
can not say; certainly this was the first time I had heard the sound
of it. He sang several airs; one of them so haunted me that I remember
long afterward humming it over to a friend of mine who was a very good
musician in his way, and he instantly pronounced it a composition of
Mozart, giving it an Italian name which I have forgotten. I should
never have supposed that music possessed the magic claimed for it
until I heard that sweet, thrilling tenor voice, threaded by the tones
of the delicately-touched guitar. The songs in succession wrought
a fairy atmosphere for the senses. The schooner melted out--the
ocean vanished. I was transported to a land sweet with the aroma of
the orange grove, romantic with Moorish palaces, melodious with the
laughter of dancers and the merry rattle of the castanets.
Bless me, thought I, as I paced the deck afresh when the singing was
ended, a man need not go to sea to visit distant countries when he may
travel farther than sail or steam can convey him by sitting at home and
listening to a tenor voice accompanied by a guitar.
Half an hour later the two Spaniards made their appearance. I had
marked the hideous cook steal to the companion-way, and judged that he
was keeping watch. The two Dons, with lighted cigars in their mouths,
walked the deck arm-in-arm. Don Christoval seemed to notice that the
men forward were observing him with unusual attention. I assumed this
because I perceived that he suddenly put on an air of carelessness, of
ease, even of gayety, such as certainly was not visible in him when he
first showed himself. This air I further remarked was swiftly copied by
his companion, but on _him_ it sat with a horrible awkwardness. He had
neither the figure, the beauty, nor the skill to act as his friend did.
Would Don Christoval challenge me for my suspicions? If so, I should be
honest with him; tell him in unmistakable English what my conviction
was; inform him that I would no longer share in the dastardly crime
into which he had betrayed his sailors; and insist that I should be
transshipped to the first vessel that passed, or that I should be
suffered to carry the schooner close enough to a coast, the nearest at
hand, to enable me to get ashore. It was likely enough that my full
mind showed in my face. A few times I caught him eyeing me askance,
but, beyond calling out some commonplace to me about the weather, the
progress of the schooner, and so forth, he said nothing.
It was, however, clear to me that, let his thoughts be what they would,
he could say nothing. I was the only navigator aboard the vessel; he
was entirely at my mercy, therefore; he would rightly fear that any
menaces, any bullying, any tall-talk, must only result in causing me to
sullenly throw up my command; in which case the schooner would be but a
little less helpless than were she reduced to the condition of a sheer
hulk by a gale of wind.
At noon I took an observation. Butler came aft to relieve me, and I
went to my quarters to work out my sights. When I had worked out my
sights and found out the position of the schooner on the chart, I
lighted a pipe and sat down to reflect. I was now so perfectly sure
that the unhappy young lady in the cabin had been kidnapped that my
thoughts were never for an instant influenced by the consideration that
there _might_ be a probability of the Spaniard's story proving true.
Everything pointed to this expedition as an adventure of abduction.
The sailors affirmed that the girl was bleeding and insensible when
carried through the hall past the room in which two of them with drawn
cutlasses were guarding her father and brother. This, then, signified
that she had been forcibly seized, and the state of her apparel and
the scratches upon her shoulder proved that there had been a struggle.
Would she have struggled had Don Christoval been her husband, to whom
she was yearning to be reunited?
My blood felt hot in my veins when I thought upon this outrage; when I
reflected how I had been made a party to this deed of villainy; how I,
as an Englishman, had been courted by a cunning, clever lie to abet the
stealing of a countrywoman of my own from her father's home in England
by a brace, as I might take them, of unprincipled Spanish adventurers.
Now, while I thus sat musing over my position, and considering what
course to shape to carry me clear of the dangerous association into
which misadventure had brought me, I was startled by a cry in the
adjacent cabin--a cry sharp, abrupt, terrible: affecting the ear as a
lightning flash affects the eye. The pipe I was about to raise to my
lips was arrested midway. I believe I am no coward, yet I must own that
that cry, that penetrating cry, seemed to thicken my blood, seemed to
stop the pulsation of my heart.
But the pause with me was brief. I dashed down my pipe, sprang to the
bulk-head door and flung it open. And now what a picture did I see! The
tall, commanding figure of Don Christoval was in the act of sinking
to the deck; his hand was upon the table, but the fingers were slowly
slipping from the edge of it, and, even as I looked, the man without
a sound fell at his length and lay motionless. In the doorway of the
port or left-hand berth stood the lady whom I have heretofore styled
Madame, but whom I will henceforth call Ida Noble. She grasped a knife
in her hand--a long carving knife it seemed to me, and I remember
noticing a red gleam in it as the vessel rolled, slipping the sunshine
out of a mirror toward where the girl was. She stood erect, with her
eyes fixed upon the body of the Spaniard; she was as stirless as he;
the figures of them both at that instant might have passed as a brace
of posture-makers representing a tragedy in one of those drawing-room
performances called _tableaux vivants_. Behind a chair on the starboard
side of the table crouched the figure of Mariana. He squatted, and
his attitude was exactly that of a monkey. His face was green; his
wide-open eyes disclosed twice the usual surface of eyeball; his
features were convulsed with terror, and never yet was there an artist
whose imagination could have reached to the height of that fellow's
hideousness, as he crouched, stabbed also, as I then believed, though
this was not so.
A mad woman grasping a long knife is a formidable object; much more
formidable is she when that knife is stained with blood, and when the
person she has slain is still in view, lying a corpse a little distance
away from her. On my showing myself, Mariana cried out, but whether
in Spanish or English I knew not. What was I to do? What would you do
were you suddenly confronted by a mad woman armed with a long knife? I
looked up at the skylight and saw the horror-stricken countenance of
Don Lazarillo peering down; but even as my eye went in a glance to
the Spaniard's livid face, one of the sailors, and then another of the
sailors, came to his side. Count twenty, and the time you will occupy
in doing so will comprise the period from the moment of my opening the
door to look out down to this instant.
Next moment the girl threw the knife on the deck with a gesture of
abhorrence, courtesied with irony to the body of Don Christoval, and
closed the door of the berth upon herself. Then there was a rush. We
could all find our courage now. Mariana sprang from behind his chair,
overturning it; Don Lazarillo, followed by the two sailors, came in a
few bounds through the companion-hatch. I stepped to the side of Don
Christoval's body, and stood looking upon him. Stone dead I knew him
to be. In Calcutta during a cholera outbreak, and on board an emigrant
ship visited with fever, I had many a time stood beside the dying and
the dead, and the spectacle of death was very familiar to me.
"Lock her door!" shrieked Don Lazarillo.
One of the seamen picked up the knife and viewed it at arm's length. I
carefully turned the body over.
"Ay, there it is," said I, pointing to a cut slightly stained with
blood in the Spaniard's waistcoat. The wound was in the left ribs,
and one had but to glance at the knife to cease to wonder that the man
should have dropped dead.
"Lock the door!" again shrieked Don Lazarillo in his broken English,
looking from the body of his friend to the door, and from the door
to the body of his friend, and recoiling, and shrinking and hugging
himself, and so munching his lips that one watched to see froth upon
them--doing all this as he looked.
Mariana repeatedly crossed himself, uttering all sorts of Spanish
ejaculations in a voice like the subdued low of a calf.
"Is he dead, sir?" asked one of the sailors.
"He can never be more dead," said I, stooping to look into the face of
the body. "They drove her mad, and this is how she requites them. A
cruel, bloody business, my lads. Fling that knife overboard."
The fellow launched it javelin-fashion through an open port-hole. Don
Lazarillo began to scream out in Spanish. His meaning might have some
reference to securing the lady; I do not know.
"Silence!" I roared. "Do you want to be the next victim?" and in my
wrath I made an infuriate gesture as of stabbing; on which, with one
wild look at me, he fled up the companion steps and remained above,
viewing us through the skylight.
Butler and another seaman, both very pale, and fetching their breath
quickly, entered the cabin and looked at the body.
"Here's a murdering job to happen!" said Scott.
"Who's done this?" cried Butler, who had been somewhere forward when
Don Christoval's wild death-shriek had sounded.
Mariana, with a paralytic gesture, pointed to Miss Noble's berth.
"Who's done it?" repeated Butler, in a voice strong and hoarse with
horror.
"The girl whom these Spaniards have driven mad," said I. I turned to
Mariana. "Did you see Don Christoval stabbed?"
"Ah, Dios! yes," he answered; and in language which is to be as little
conveyed as his voice, or the expressions which chased his face, which
at every instant gave a new character to his ugliness, he contrived to
make us understand this: that Don Christoval had entered the lady's
room, where he, Mariana, heard him address her soothingly; that the
door was suddenly flung open, and that, at the same moment, even as the
Spaniard stood on the threshold, the girl buried the knife in his side.
"How did she come by the knife?" cried Butler.
Mariana, trembling violently, with his eyes fixed upon the door of
Miss Noble's berth, as though at every moment he expected to behold it
thrown open, made us understand that the negro boy, some time during
the morning, had left a basket of the cabin cutlery upon the table,
and that the girl must have looked out and possessed herself of a
knife at some moment when the two Spaniards were on deck, and when
he--Mariana--had quitted his post of sentry to enter Don Christoval's
berth. This was conjecture on the fellow's part, but beyond doubt it
was accurate.
Don Lazarillo continued to gaze at us through the skylight with an
expression as of a horrible sneer upon his face. I again stooped
over the form of Don Christoval, felt his pulse, and examined his
half-closed, fast-glazing eyes, then bade a couple of the seamen pick
the body up and convey it to the cabin the Spaniard had occupied. While
this was doing, I grasped the handle of the door of Miss Noble's room.
"Mind!" shrieked Don Lazarillo from above. Mariana ran on deck. I felt
the idleness of announcing myself by knocking. More knives than one it
was possible she might have concealed; I therefore at first held the
door but a little way open and looked in.
The girl was standing beside the bunk or sleeping-shelf; her elbows
were upon the edge of it, her cheeks in her hands, and she stood
motionlessly gazing, as I might suppose, through the port-hole. She was
robed as in the morning; that is to say, in a crimson dressing-gown,
which, in that era of short skirts, clothed her to her heels. She was
but a little above the average stature of woman, though she had looked
far taller than she really was when she stood in the doorway grasping
the knife, with her eyes upon the dead Spaniard.
Finding her unarmed, I entered, carefully sweeping the room as I did so
with my eyes for any signs of a knife or other weapon. The four seamen
stood in the doorway, and she did not turn her head. I approached her,
keeping a distance of some two or three feet between us, and prepared,
poor lady! for any act of violence. Still she continued to stare
through the port-hole.
"Miss Noble," said I, "you smiled at me this morning. Look at me now.
You will remember me as your friend."
She turned her head slowly; not more mechanical could have been that
extraordinary movement had clock-work produced it. When her soft brown
eyes--in which assuredly I witnessed nothing of that sparkle or fire of
madness which is said to burn in the vision of the insane--were upon
me, she frowned and bit her under lip, exposing her small white front
teeth. I believed from her expression that she was struggling with
her memory. She then suddenly turned fully round, as though sensible
of being watched from the door, and the sailors, to the wild look she
gave them, stirred and fell back with uneasy shuffling motions of their
feet. She stared at them for a while, and afterward at me, preserving
her frown, and holding her lip under her teeth; she was deadly white,
but spite of her frown, which you would have thought must give an
expression of disdain or anger or contempt to her brow, her face was
meaningless. She eyed me fixedly for some moments, then, with the
former slow motion of her head, resumed her first posture. I stepped to
the door.
"What is to be done?" said I.
"It's a cruel business. The Spaniard's been rightly sarved out,"
exclaimed one of the sailors.
"What is to be done?" I repeated; for here, to be sure, was a
condition of ocean life that had never before been encountered by my
experience.
The men gazed at the girl in silence. I mused, and presently said,
"One of you keep this door; the rest of us must turn to and search the
cabin, to make sure there is nothing in it with which she can hurt
herself."
There were four of us, and there being little to examine, we had soon
satisfied ourselves that there was no weapon anywhere hidden. She took
not the least notice of us; but when I explored her sleeping-berth,
upon whose edge, as I have told you, her elbows reposed, she fell
back a step or two, and then, going to the arm-chair, seated herself,
clasping her knees and rooting her eyes to the deck.
"Will she have a knife about her?" said Butler, in a hoarse whisper.
I thoroughly considered this, and, after a narrow scrutiny of her,
decided that she had not concealed a knife upon her, and I was the
more willing to believe so because I had not the heart--I will not say
the courage--to search her. It shocked me to think of offering any
violence to the poor girl, and violence I knew it must come to--she
would resist, a struggle would increase her madness--if I laid my
hands upon her. But I was certain she had not concealed a knife. The
dressing-gown she wore was without a pocket. The sleeves were loose,
and while she stood at the bunk I had noticed that her arms, whose
wrists were still clasped by bracelets, were bare, whence I concluded
that the dressing-gown concealed the ball attire she had been brought
aboard in. So I decided that she had not secreted a weapon, because,
recollecting her attire as she lay upon the sofa in the cabin after she
had been brought to the schooner, I could not conceive that it offered
any points for the concealment of a knife.
I closed the door upon her, and we stood outside consulting. Our
debate determined us to this: that while she continued in this passive
condition she was to be left as she was; that for the present the five
seamen would take it turn and turn about to watch that she did not quit
her room; that she was to be fed as heretofore, that is to say, food
and wine were to be placed before her, of which she would partake if
she chose, for no man could compel her to eat. Then, no longer choosing
that the helmsman should remain alone on deck--for Don Lazarillo,
Mariana, and the negro boy counted for nothing--I went to the companion
steps and was followed by Butler and two others.
Don Lazarillo and Mariana stood a little way forward of the skylight.
They conversed, and their gestures expressed unbounded horror and
dismay. On our appearing, they fell silent and watched us. Some
distance beyond them was the figure of the negro boy. There was nothing
in sight. The white canvas soared round and brilliant, and the rigging
was vocal with the gushing of the blue breeze. Astern of us ran an
arrowy wake of foam, and off the weather bow rose a steady sound of
seething, like to the noise made by the boiling foot of a cataract
heard afar.
I took up a position near the tiller, that was in the grasp of the
seaman Tubb, and the sailors stood near me.
"What's happened below?" said Tubb.
"The tall Spaniard's been stabbed dead by the mad lady," answered South.
Tubb delivered himself of a long whistle, following it on by an
agitated swing of the tiller that hove the schooner to the wind two
points before he could recover her.
"And now what is to be done?" said I. "You see the pass we've been
brought into. Two men dead of the adventure, and the rest of us guilty
of a deed that must earn us transportation for life should the law get
hold of us. What's to be done, I say? Is this voyage to Cuba to be
prosecuted? Our duty is--and let me tell you our policy is--to make all
the restitution that is possible, and that we can alone do by conveying
the poor lady home."
"I ain't going home," cried Butler in a voice of obstinacy, smiting his
thigh.
Don Lazarillo and Mariana crept, or sneaked rather, by a pace nearer to
us and stood listening.
"And _I_ ain't going home," said Tubb, fetching the head of the tiller
a whack. "You talk of transportation for life, Mr. Portlack; d'ye want
it to happen, sir?"
"No," I answered; "but I wish to do what is right, and to make it as
right as right can be by doing it quickly. The lady must be restored to
her friends."
"No offense, Mr. Portlack," said Scott, "but we aren't to forget that
you're on the right side of the hedge. You wasn't in the melhee; we
was. Your going home can't sinnify; ourn means lagging for all hands."
The two Spaniards sneaked a little closer.
"I wish to suggest nothing likely to imperil you," said I. "Though
I was never willingly of you--you don't want me to tell you how it
happens that I'm here; yet being of you, you'll find me with you,
content to share in all that may befall you. As to my being on the
right side of the hedge," cried I, rounding upon Scott, "that's but a
notion of yours. The lawyers may think very much otherwise. But I say
this, that since these two Spaniards have decoyed our heads into a
noose, the only way to avoid being strangled is to whip our heads out
again; and d'ye ask how that's to be done? My answer is, Do what is
right. Act so that you'll be able to say, should you come to be charged
as helpers in this crime of abduction: We believed the lady to be the
Spaniard's wife; we were told that a man had a right to his own, and
we were willing to help him to his own, but the moment we found we had
been deceived we turned to like honest men, to make all the amends in
our power by restoring the poor lady to her friends. _That_ is what's
in my head, and it is the advice I give you, and wish you to act upon
for my sake and for yours."
South looked thoughtfully at Butler; but Butler, with an angry
countenance, vengefully smiting his thigh again with his clinched
fist, cried out, "There's to be no going home with me. There's to be
no taking the chance of the law with me. There's to be no risking
even a week o' jail with me. Ye may call it Cuba, or ye may call it
Madagascar, but let no man speak of the United Kingdom. I've got my
liberty, and I'm for keeping of it. 'Sides," he whipped out, "who's
going to pay me my money, now the Spaniard as hired us is dead and
gone?"
The eyes of the men at this were at once bent upon Don Lazarillo.
"Sooner than go home I'd start away in that there boat," said Scott,
pointing to the cutter on the main deck, "and take my chance of making
the land or being picked up. I once had a fortnight of quod for
refusing to sail after joining. That was enough for me. No more, thank
ye." He stepped to the rail and violently expectorated.
"Who's going to pay us?" said Trapp. "If t'others are of my mind,
there'll be no leaving this schooner till we've received every farden
of our money. We've earnt it, by----!" he added, hitting the tiller
head another thump.
"Mr. Portlack," said Butler, gazing at me gloomily and mutinously, "you
still talk as if you was cocksure that the lady wasn't the tall gent's
wife."
I paused while I gazed at him, then, with vehement strides, walked up
to Don Lazarillo.
"You and your dead friend," I cried, staring into the shrinking and
working face of the man, "have cheated me and the men here by your lies
into the commission of a crime. You know," I thundered, determined
to terrorize him into a confession of the truth, "that the poor lady
below, whom you have driven mad, was not Don Christoval's wife. Dare to
tell me she was, you villain, and I'll fling you overboard!"
"What ees it you say?" he cried, with his swarthy face of the color of
pepper with fear.
"_You_ understand me!" I shouted, addressing Mariana. "You have been in
the secret, too, from the beginning. Own it, you dog, own it, or I'll
throttle you."
I raised my hand; the ugly creature delivered a singular cry and
dropped on his knees.
"Señor Portlack," he whined, "spare my life, for the blessed Virgin's
sake, and if I do not tell you the truth may Satan catch my soul
now and carry it away to eternal torment. The señorita was not the
cavalier's wife. The caballero's story was true in all but that part.
She was the lady of his love, but not his wife. If I'm not speaking the
truth, may my soul be tormented for ever and ever." Saying which he
crossed himself and stood up.
The obligation of feigning wrath alone preserved me from bursting into
a laugh at the sight of his hideous face convulsed with fear.
"Explain to Don Lazarillo," cried I, sternly, "what you have told me."
He did so. Don Lazarillo watched him with sparkling eyes and ashen
cheek, and on his ceasing made as if he would strike him.
"Will you deny that Mariana speaks the truth?" I exclaimed.
The Spaniard shot at me a look of mingled malice, hate, and fright,
then, with a shrug of the shoulders that convulsed his figure, he
turned his back, and, with clasped hands, stood viewing the ocean over
the rail.
"Now, men," said I, addressing Butler and the others, "you have heard
the truth for yourselves, and you may read it also in that Spanish
gentleman's behavior. Isn't it abominable that we Englishmen, or let
me say that _you_ Englishmen, should have been tricked by the lies of
a brace of foreigners into helping them to steal a poor young lady of
your own country from her father's home? For what purpose was this
done? There was little enough love in it, I'll swear. She is no doubt
an heiress, and the Don that lies dead below hoped, by stealing her,
to steal her fortune also; and you may take it that yonder gentleman,"
I continued, pointing at Don Lazarillo, "entered upon this inhuman
undertaking as a speculation. That's my notion, and if he understands
what I'm saying, he knows that I've hit the truth. He was to share in
the plunder, on condition of his finding money enough to equip this
expedition."
My eyes rested upon Mariana as I spoke; the ugly rascal, to whom
my words seemed perfectly intelligible, let his head sink, in an
affirmative gesture. The wretch, in fact, was horribly frightened,
feared for his life, in short, and by the looks of him I might not only
know that he was willing to tell all, but to tell more than all, to
appease my wrath, which I must own was largely simulated.
Butler stepped up to Don Lazarillo, whose back was still upon us, and
touched the man's elbow with his forefinger.
"Here," said he, "what about my money?"
Don Lazarillo appeared deaf, and continued to stare over the rail.
Butler thrust at his elbow again with his long forefinger.
"I am asking," he said, "about my money. Who's a-going to pay me?"
The other seamen now drew close to the Spaniard, who stood as though
deaf. Mariana rapidly and hoarsely uttered a sentence or two in
Spanish, probably a translation of Butler's words. Don Lazarillo then
whipped round; his eyes glowed like live coals, but his ashy pallor was
more defined than before. On finding himself confronted by the three
sailors, he placed himself in the posture of a man at bay with a sword
in his hand, only, happily, he was without a sword.
"What do you want?" he cried.
"Who's a-going to pay us?" shouted Butler, unnecessarily exerting his
lungs, as the custom is with us English when we address foreigners,
whose incapacity to understand seems to suggest deafness to our insular
minds.
Don Lazarillo, looking toward me, exclaimed, "I speak about dat wiz ze
Capitan Portlack."
"Ay," cried Scott, "but if you can talk to him, you can talk to us.
It's we that's consarned. It's us as wants to know who's a-going to
pay us. You've brought us into a blooming mess with your lies, and the
five of us men, as Captain Dopping shipped at Cadiz, stands for to be
transported if so be as our law catches hold of us, and all along of
you and him as lays below. If you can talk to Mr. Portlack, you can
talk to us."
"What you weesh me say?" cried the miserable Spaniard, extending his
arms, and casting a look of entreaty at me.
"Who's a-going to pay us men?" vociferated Butler, striking the palm of
his left hand with a leg-of-mutton fist. The men stood so close to Don
Lazarillo that he was forced to dodge his head here and there to catch
a sight of Mariana, to whom he cried out something in his native tongue.
"Señor Portlack," said the cook, in a cringing attitude, "Don Lazarillo
beg me say he will speak wid you. I will translate."
"Let it be so, men," I exclaimed; "you'll do no good by shouting
questions to a man who doesn't understand you."
They drew away sulkily. Don Lazarillo pulled off his hat to pass a
large colored silk handkerchief over his forehead. He then stepped up
to me. The cook posted himself close to him, and the sailors, with whom
now was the negro boy, took up a station within easy earshot. Mariana
translating, the dialogue took this form:--
"The men wish to know who is to pay them their wages?"
"Don Christoval is now dead," answered the Spaniard. "This adventure
therefore terminates!"
"How?--terminates?" I cried. "We are still upon the high seas. We have
still the young lady with us to restore to those from whom you and your
friend stole her. No, no, this adventure has not yet terminated!"
"What do you mean to do?" he asked.
"That is no answer to my question. Who will pay those men for the work
they have done, the risks they have run, and have yet to run?"
He put his hand to his brow, and, after a pause, said, "I must think."
The sailors fell a-shouting exclamations. The chorus was swelled by the
voices of the man at the helm, and by the fellow below, who had got
upon the cabin table, and stood with his head in the open skylight,
listening.
"Silence!" I cried; "how am I to transact your business if you
interrupt me? The men," I continued, addressing the Spaniard, "look
to you for payment. They will not lose sight of you until you pay
them. Have you money with you, or the equivalent of money?" I added,
fixing my eyes upon his rings and brooch; "for _I_ must be paid, Don
Lazarillo, and _they_ must be paid."
"I will answer. I will be honorable. I will give my word; and the
word of a Spanish gentlemen is gold." A growl proceeded from the
seamen. "But first, as a matter of courtesy, to help my mind in its
blindness--for the death of my friend has caused my brains to spin
round in my head--I entreat you, señor, to tell me what are your
intentions?"
"To restore the young lady to her friends."
"What!" he cried, shouting the words with a face of horror to Mariana;
"you will proceed to England?"
I responded with a vehement nod.
"Then vot sall become of me?" he exclaimed in English.
I shrugged my shoulders. He folded his arms tightly upon his breast,
and, with bowed head, fell to measuring a few feet of the deck. We all
watched him in silence while he thus walked. Suddenly he stopped, and,
turning upon Mariana, addressed him volubly and with amazing energy,
making a very windmill of his arms. I knew that he was saying a great
deal more than Mariana could translate, more, indeed, to judge from the
expression that entered the cook's face, than the repulsive-looking
creature would choose to translate. Nevertheless, I waited in patience,
making a single gesture of command to the sailors to be still.
Mariana then spoke; the substance of his speech was this: Don Lazarillo
asked for a few hours. He desired to look over the effects of his dead
friend; he desired time to mature a proposal which he hoped to make
to me. This was substantially all that Mariana translated. Yet, owing
to his slow delivery and to his broken-winded English, the matter he
delivered appeared to contain much more than was in it. I had no doubt,
however, that Don Lazarillo in his speech had acquainted the fellow
with some half-formed scheme in his mind, as good for Mariana perhaps
as for himself.
I told the cook to inform the Don that we would give him until six
o'clock that evening, and that if he was not ready with his proposals
by that hour, I should shift the schooner's helm for England, where,
on my arrival, it would be my duty to deliver him and Mariana into the
hands of justice. The cook, in translating this, was almost as ashen in
color as the other.
Don Lazarillo descended into the cabin. Butler came up to me.
"You're merely frightening the man, I hope, sir," said he, "with this
here talk of sailing to England?"
"Let's settle with him first," I answered, "and then I'll call a
council of the crew. Meanwhile it is senseless to keep the schooner
under all this canvas. Let us shorten sail and lay her with her head to
the east until we hear what Don Lazarillo has to say for himself."
He looked doubtfully round the sea, then consented. So we reduced the
schooner down to what is termed a scandalized mainsail and a jib,
and all that afternoon she lay under that canvas, blowing along very
quietly eastward.
Some time about four o'clock I went below and asked Trapp, who was
still on watch in the cabin, if all had been quiet in the lady's cabin.
"Ne'er so much noise as a mouse would have made, sir," said he.
I lightly tapped on the young lady's door, and without waiting for
a response, which I knew I should not obtain, I turned the handle
and looked in. The girl was seated in her chair, but her head lay
back upon the cushioned round of it. Her eyes were sealed, and her
lips apart. I looked at her, scarcely knowing whether she was alive
or dead; but presently observing that her bosom rose and fell, I
went to her side, put my ear to her mouth, and heard her breathing
regularly and peacefully. I stood a while looking at her, my heart
full of pity. I peered closely at her fingers: her rings were rich and
beautiful--diamonds and rubies of great value; but I might make sure
now there was no wedding-ring buried among the three or four which
armored the finger the ring would have been on. One little foot showed,
and I perceived that she was shod with white satin. There was something
to shock me in the ironic contrast created by the sight of that satin
shoe--the contrast between the grim and tragic reality that was now
hers and the festal vision of the ball-room, with its swimming figures,
the bright music of the dance, the gleam of fans, the scent of flowers.
I was happy to discover that she was able to sleep. It seemed to my
plain mind a good sign, for I had often been told that sleeplessness
was one of the horrible conditions of insanity; that not to be able
to sleep drove men mad; and that when they were mad still they were
sleepless. Strange as it will seem, I could not, I did not, associate
any horror of assassination with that restful figure. I had seen her
standing at the door, and had marked the red gleam upon the knife she
held; I had seen the tall and handsome Spaniard in the act of falling,
then tumbling his whole length and expiring. Yet I could gaze at this
poor girl without the least emotion of aversion, without the least
sense of that sort of horrid unaccountable fascination with which
red-handed crime constrains the gaze of the spectator.
This was not, I think, because I knew she was mad, and, being mad,
irresponsible, and, being irresponsible, virtually guiltless. No; it
was because of a singular atmosphere of purity and sweetness about
her as she now lay sleeping. Beautiful she was not. Indeed, she was
not even what might be called pretty; but now that she slept the
demon within her slept also. What was native in her showed in her
countenance. You witnessed it in this slumber of madness as you would
have beheld it in her waking hours of sanity. I stood viewing her and I
thought to myself she is a refined lady, pure, gentle, and good.