ANTONIO EL CUBANO.
As the strange boat pitched about on the waves some of our men
asserted that, at times, they could see a man's head above the
gunwale. Others expressed their doubts of this, and in the midst of
such discussions we sheered alongside. Hislop caught its bow by the
boat-hook, and while retaining his hold, fended off, to prevent her
being dashed against ours.
In the bottom of this boat, which was evidently the clinker-built
skiff of a merchant vessel, and was all painted yellow, as a
preservation from the sun in a warm climate, there lay under the
thwarts a man, either asleep, in a stupor, or dead,--at first we knew
not which; but he was pale enough to have passed for the last.
By his tawny visage and coal-black beard, his long scarlet cap and
sash, in which a sheathed knife was stuck, and also by the rings in
his ears, we recognized him to be a Spanish seaman. He was a man
naturally of a tall and powerful frame, but of forbidding aspect,--of
great personal strength, but wasted apparently by toil, by exposure
and famine.
A dark and coagulated crust of something like blood appeared on his
baked lips and thick moustaches, on the blackness of which, the
saline particles of the sea foam, dried by the tropical sun,
glittered white as hoar frost on a bush in winter.
As we roused him, he grasped his knife instinctively and repulsively,
but relinquished it, and then stared wildly at us, muttering in
imploring tones,
"Aqua, aqua, por amor de Dios!"--(water, for the love of God).
"Misericordia! O senores,--O Ave Maria, misericordia!"
"Here, Jack Spaniard, ship a drop o' this; it is the real Jamaiky,"
said Tattooed Tom, pouring between the parched lips of the Spaniard
some rum from a bottle, which most likely had been put in the boat by
the foresight of Hislop.
The black eyes of the castaway dilated and flashed as the spirit
revived him, restoring his wasted energies, and bringing a hectic
color to his cheek.
"Belay now," said Tom; "you must get some Thames water from the brig
before you take more of this."
"Muchos gracias--many, many thanks," said the Spaniard, in tones of
thankfulness.
"Enough o' that;--stow your slack, and come on board if you can,"
said Tom, testily, as he had sulky recollections of our adventures at
the Grand Canary.
Restored by the mouthful of alcohol, the Spaniard staggered up, but
with difficulty; and then we perceived that gouts of blood, dried and
encrusted by the sun, were on his person, and on the inside of the
boat, especially on one of the thwarts.
"What is this--blood?" asked Hislop, with an imperceptible shudder.
The Spaniard started, and became, if possible, paler at the question,
as he nervously clutched the gunwale of his boat with both hands, and
said, in broken accents,--
"My dog, senores; I killed a dog that was with me, because--because
it went mad in the hot sunshine, and being without water."
"Why did you not throw it into the sea?"
"It would have bitten me, senor, and might perhaps have come into the
boat again."
"Likely enough," muttered one of our men.
"You could have knocked it over with an oar," said Hislop; "but did
your dog wear _this_!" he added, fishing up with the boat-hook a cap
that lay in the bilge water under the stern sheets of the skiff.
"That cap is mine," said the Spaniard, in a husky voice, while
closing his eyes, as if wearied or appalled.
"Have you two heads?" asked Hislop, sternly
"No, senor; but--but--"
"What then?"
"A man may have _two_ caps for all that."
Perceiving that he was on the point of sinking again, Tom Lambourne
poured some more of the rum into his mouth, and we dragged him into
our boat, setting the skiff, which was quite useless to us, adrift
once more.
"What was your ship?" asked Hislop, who spoke Spanish fluently.
"The _Marshal Serrano_--a Spanish brig from Cadiz."
"From the Canaries last?" I inquired hastily.
"Yes; bound to Costa Rica."
Tom Lambourne gave me a rapid glance, as he spat on his hands and
pushed his oar through the rowlock.
"She foundered and went down with all hands on board," continued the
famished Spaniard, in a broken voice and with quivering hips.
"_All?_" reiterated Hislop, sternly and dubiously.
"All, save myself, senor," replied the other, hesitatingly, and
lowering his hollow eyes; "I escaped in the skiff."
"With your dog?"
"Si, Senor."
"In what latitude did this take place?"
Without a moment's hesitation, the Spaniard gave us the latitude and
longitude.
"I can't make out this fellow's story in any way," said Hislop, in
English. "By the theory and law of storms, we should have had a
touch of the same gale which foundered his brig--if such a gale
existed. He has deserted, or been marooned. I don't believe a word
he says. What is your name?" he asked in Spanish.
"Antonio."
I started on hearing it, for my suspicions were becoming more and
more confirmed.
"Antonio. What more?"
"El Cubano, or the Cuban; for so my shipmates termed me, and I have
no other name."
"Quick, my lads," said Hislop; "lay out on your oars."
We were soon alongside the _Eugenie_, and had our castaway hoisted on
board, when, for a time, an end was put to our queries, but not to
our surmises, by his becoming insensible. We had questioned him
already perhaps too much, considering the weakness of his condition.
He adhered to his original story in every particular when examined by
Weston and Hislop a day or two after; that he belonged to the Spanish
merchant brig, _Marshal Serrano_, the same craft which had worked
with us out of the road stead of Santa Cruz; that she had foundered
in a storm, being overmasted and overladen, and that he alone had
escaped of all the crew; that when his dog became mad, he had slain
the animal and cast the carcase into the sea; and that he had been a
week floating about in an open boat, without food and without aught
to cool his parched tongue, save the heavy tropical dew of heaven,
when we found him; and to the truth of all this, he was ready to
swear over two crossed knives, in the fashion of his country.
In short, we were obliged to content ourselves with his narrative,
which Hislop duly engrossed in the ship's log, while expressing great
disbelief as to its authenticity.
In the first place, our mate denied that any such storm as that in
which the Cuban alleged his brig perished had ever existed; and he
deduced from his favorite theory that we were, and had been, in the
direct _track_ of such a storm, and must have felt its influence long
ere this.
Hence he thought it more probable that the man had deserted in the
night, perhaps in consequence of committing some crime, or for the
same reason had been marooned and set adrift.
The crew were divided in opinion, and Tom Lambourne openly expressed
his disbelief that the blood which covered the clothes of the Cuban
and the thwart of the boat ever came from the veins of a dog; and
others asserted that he must have quarrelled with an unfortunate
shipmate, and killed him; or had perhaps assassinated him in sleep
for the horrible purpose of prolonging his own existence.
Amid these unpleasant surmises as to his character and position, in a
few days the Spaniard joined the crew in working the ship, and proves
himself to be a steady, industrious, and able seaman; and as three of
our hands were on the sick list, his services were the more valuable.
On remarking this to Tom Lambourne,
"It is all very true, sir," he replied; "but I don't like a seaman
who cannot look his shipmate right in the face."
"You are a physiognomist," I suggested.
"Don't know what kind of a _mist_ that may be, Master Rodney; but
this I know--there is always something cunning and dangerous in a
fellow who looks over your shoulder, as that Spaniard does, when he
should look at your eyes."
Antonio had an excessive dislike for deck duty by night. He
exhibited a strange dread of being left alone, and could scarcely be
prevailed upon to look over the vessel's side, always shrinking back,
as if he expected to see something hideous rise out of the sea.
Weston suggested that perhaps his recent suffering had unmanned and
rendered him nervous; but the crew thought otherwise.
In his sleep, Antonio frequently disturbed the men in the forecastle
bunks by his mutterings, his wild dreams, outcries, and sonorous
Spanish maledictions.
I was at the wheel on a calm and lovely night (it was the 13th of
January), when we were off the beautiful shore of Hispaniola. I
remember well that Cape Samanna bore west by south, and Cape Cabron
west by north; for my task of steering was new to me, and Weston's
orders were "to keep her full and by,"--that is, as close to the wind
as possible without making the canvas shiver.
I could see the lights that glittered in the distant villages that
studded the low but fertile peninsula of Samanna. All was still and
quiet in the ship and around it. Soothed by the solemnity of the
hour and the vast solitude of the sea, my heart was full, and busy
memory brought before me loved faces and voices, places and scenes,
that were far, far away in dear Old England.
The brig was gliding through the water rapidly but imperceptibly, and
almost without a sound; the men of the watch were leaning over the
bulwark to leeward; and the air, the sea, and all aloft and below,
seemed to sleep in the moonlight; not a reef point pattered on the
taut canvas, and scarcely a wavelet rippled, save in the dead-water
astern that marked the white wake of the _Eugenie_.
Suddenly a shrill and piercing cry rang out upon the night, and
Antonio the Cubano rushed from the forecastle with the wildest terror
expressed in his black eyes; his visage was pale and ghastly, and the
perspiration glittered like bead drops on his clammy brow. With his
bare feet, he stumbled over the chain cable, which lay coiled on the
deck, for on that afternoon we had hauled it up, and bent it to the
working anchor.
He came running aft in his shirt, brandishing a knife in his hand,
and exclaiming, in fierce and then imploring accents--
"Who says I did it?--who dares to say so?"
Then letting his arms drop as he slunk back to his bunk, we heard him
groan out--
"_El cuchillo--el cuchillo!_" (the knife--the knife).
Hence, under such circumstances, it may easily be supposed that among
the crew there floated strange and dark surmises as to the past life
of Antonio el Cubano.