WE SAIL FOR EUROPE.
Estremera was a smart little Andalusian, with large whiskers, which
he curled with great care, and he wore his black hair shorn short.
He had little gold rings in his ears, and the red point of a cigarito
perpetually gleamed between his teeth. He wore a broad-brimmed
straw-hat, from which a scarlet ribbon floated, and he was entirely
clad in a spotless suit of white linen--jacket, waist-coat, and
trousers. The ample collar of a shirt that was broadly striped with
red and white was folded over his shoulders. He was about to speak,
when Antonio, who was supported by two of the crew, suddenly
exclaimed to one of them--
"Benito Ojeda--hah! Don't you remember me, Benito?"
"What, Antonio, is this you?" replied the seaman; "the best Cubano
that ever sailed past the Morro light."
"Do you know this man, Benito?" asked the captain.
"Right well, senor, and will bear witness to his character," replied
the sailor bluntly.
"Much value your evidence will be," said Estremera, contemptuously,
"when you are known to be the greatest picaroon on board. Come,
esta, senor," he added to me, "you are welcome."
"Muchos gratias, senor capitano," replied I, bowing low, as I stepped
forward.
"But what in the name of mischief am I to do to provision you all?"
said Estremera, with perplexity.
"After what I have endured, senor capitano, a very little food will
suffice for me."
"Were you ever in Spain?"
"No, senor."
"How, then----"
"Oh! one may speak Spanish without having been in Spain," said I,
smiling.
"Of course--of course. But what is this?" he added, on perceiving
the wounds of Antonio; "Caramba! have you been fighting--killing one
another?"
"Senor," said Hislop, "this is the picaroon of whom I told you--he
who slew our captain and shipmates, and whom we thrust overboard; but
who, as if by a miracle, reached the island of Alphonso before us."
"Bueno! And what more?"
"On seeing your ship come to anchor outside the reef," said I, with
some anxiety for the issue of the affair, "he endeavored to kill me;
and but for the sword with which I was armed, he had assuredly done
so."
"To kill you--santos!--and why?"
"Lest I should accuse him of those crimes which he had committed in
the _Eugenie_, and which so many of her surviving crew, now here on
board, are ready to substantiate."
"And now in the name of justice, senor capitano, I demand that he be
strung up at once at the foreyard-arm!" said Hislop.
"Demonio! I have neither the power nor the will to do that, before
all these accusations have been inquired into and proved; and there
is no chance of our meeting with a Spanish ship of war in these
seas," replied the captain.
There was a pause, during which José Estremera scratched his right
ear with an air of perplexity; and the aspect of Antonio, as he
drooped between his friend, Benito Ojeda, and another seaman, was
truly ghastly in the moonlight.
"Take that man below, and have his wounds looked to," said Captain
Estremera to some of the crew. "Senor Hislop, I wish to speak with
you alone on these matters; and meanwhile, Senor el Gobernador," he
added, to the Dutch gentleman, "will excuse us."
He and Marc Hislop now retired aft to the taffrail, over which they
leant and conversed, while the most of the crew went below with
Antonio, who would no doubt give them his version of the story; while
I remained near the binnacle, anxiously waiting the result of this
conference, and watching the changing features of the fertile shore,
the curved bay, the foam-covered coral reef, and every thicket with
which I was so familiar--the palms, the chestnuts, and bananas--as
the great Spanish merchantman swung slowly round at her anchor, when
the soft night wind veered from east to south.
Silence soon reigned fore and aft, for there was none on deck but
some of the passengers, smoking over the taffrail, the anchor-watch
amid ships, and some of the _Eugenie's_ men loitering about the
forecastle-bitts, that they might have an opportunity of speaking
with me before turning in.
It would appear that, being loath to add to the number of his crew,
who were a mixed and somewhat mutinous band of Spaniards, Cuban
Creoles, and lascars, and having still a long voyage before him, he
offered to rid us of Antonio, and supply us with muskets and
ammunition, some medicines and cooking utensils, some old sails and
spars wherewith to erect a comfortable hut, and to leave us all on
the island of Alphonso, to the chance of being taken off by the next
passing ship, which very possibly might be a British one.
My heart died within me on hearing this strange and most unexpected
proposal.
"How would you rid us of Antonio, senor?" asked Hislop, gravely; "do
you mean by hanging him?"
"Oh no!--by taking him with me to Spain."
"For what purpose?"
"To have him tried before the regidores at Cadiz."
"While all the witnesses are left behind?" resumed the Scotchman,
with surprise.
"Demonio--that is true!" said the captain, scratching his ear again,
for a partiality to his countryman was evident, and a little use of
the knife is not deemed a very heinous crime in the land of Don
Quixote.
"You can all work?" said he, in another tone.
"All--all can hand, reef, and steer."
"Bueno--one English sailor is worth a dozen Lascars; so if it were
not for breaking an agreement, I would maroon them all ashore there.
Hanging your Cubano might be very useful to terrify some of my crew
who are very discontented; but I have not the authority to do so--and
the greater is the pity, as I shall have to feed him, and there is no
use in feeding up a fellow merely to hang him. Caramba! there is
nothing for it but keeping you all until we reach Teneriffe;--I shall
be compelled to run into Palma or Santa Cruz for fresh water, at all
events; and when there, I shall leave the whole affair in the hands
of Senor, the Captain-General of the Canaries."
"And meanwhile the Cubano----"
"Shall be put in the bilboes in the cable-tier, as he must be too
dangerous a picaroon to leave afloat among a ship's company like
mine."
A berth was prepared for Hislop and me in the steerage, while the
rest of our shipmates were berthed among the Spaniards and dirty
Lascars, neither of whom were much to their liking.
Food and wine were immediately provided for me. I partook of them
greedily, and believe that, but for the new strength they gave me, I
should have sunk altogether.
Old Tom Lambourne, Ned Carlton, and Probart, the carpenter, now
rejoined me and expressed great discontent that Antonio was not "run
up at once," adding the satisfaction with which they would all have
"walked aft with the line, had he been at the other end of it," and
prophesying evil to the ship and her crew if he was kept aboard.
"But what is the captain to do?" asked Probart; "'tain't no use
attempting to kill that Cubano--he is either Davy Jones or the Devil!"
"Or Whirlwind Tom, as puts maggots into the midshipmen's nuts," said
Lambourne, "and makes a sound ship leak, nobody knows how or why;
sours the burgoo forward and the wine aft; makes many a poor fellow
lose his hold when laying out on the yard-arm in a dark night, and
works all manner o' mischief aboard."
"If he ain't Whirlwind Tom, out and out," added Probart, solemnly,
and with increasing energy, as if by describing their own fears they
wished to apologize for their desertion of me, "if he ain't Whirlwind
Tom, I say he's something as bad, and I wish I was clear o' this here
craft, before he works us all a mischief."
"I think he's the ghost of some old buccaneer that's been hung at
Port Royal, or marooned on the Albuquerque Keys long ago," said
Lambourne. "He has already found an old shipmate aboard, and may I
never see the Nore again if they won't be up to something sly before
long: for that fellow has sin enough on his soul to sink a
seventy-four!"
The _San Ildefonso_ was a beautiful ship, and very man-o'-war-like in
her general aspect.
Her decks were clean and spotless. Every rope was tidily belayed and
coiled away in its place, and the brass mountings of her binnacle
lamps, of her wheel and capstan, were all polished till, like the
twelve brass nines she carried, they shone with the brightness of
burnished gold.
She was thoroughly Spanish, though--for all the food on board, even
to the cabin biscuits, had the flavor of garlic; and every thing
else, even to the red and yellow flag at the gaff peak, was redolent
of Havana cigars.
Her cargo was valuable, and consisted of the most choice productions
of Java, such as sugar, coffee, pepper, indigo, and tobacco, with
spices of all kinds.
Among her cabin passengers she had the Dutch Governor of Surabaya, a
province of Java, which is bounded on the north by the sea of that
name, and on the east by the Straits of Madura. He was a retired
soldier, and latterly had been a planter, and was now returning home
to Holland with a vast quantity of luggage, in which, as Hislop
informed me, according to the rumor current about the forecastle, an
almost fabulous amount of guilders was packed in canvas bags.
"And with a crew so mixed as ours," he added, "it is the reverse of
pleasant to have such constant whispering about it, when we have to
run along the wildest portion of the west coast of Africa."
For three days the _San Ildefonso_ remained at anchor a few fathoms
off the reef, while her crew took every thing of value from the
waterlogged brig that lay on the western shore.
Her iron cables and remaining anchor, her copper bolts, and a log or
two of mahogany, with some coils of Manilla rope, were brought on
board. The poor fellow whose bones were hanging at the fore-channel,
found a Christian grave, for he was buried near the rock which had
the Spanish legend carved on it; and there Fra Anselmo, the
Portuguese missionary, performed the funeral services of his church;
and solemnly for the unknown dead, the prayer seemed to go up to
Heaven from that lonely islet in the South Atlantic.
Then, to my joy, the boats were hoisted on board,--the topsails were
cast loose, and preparations made for leaving Alphonso.
The windlass was manned, and I saw Marc Hislop with the rest,
handspike in hand, heaving short on the anchor, in his anxiety to get
under way.
"Heave, my lads,--_heave and rally_!" I heard him shout, as if he had
an English crew under his orders, and wished them to work briskly.
The anchor was soon tripped, and the headyards were filled as she
payed off; but too slowly for Hislop's sailor eyes, for he shouted
again in English, which he was safe to use,--
"Sheet home, you lubbers! Oh, Rodney, how slow these jack-Spaniards
are! I would rather have one of our own sort than a hundred of them.
Never mind--all's one for that! I'll have my foot on a deck of good
British oak ere long. Now the canvas fills--she's under way at last,
and walks through the water like a brave and handsome craft as she
is!"
Now the island of Alphonso began to recede; the tall trees lessened
to shrubs, the great bluffs to little tufted rocks, while the arms of
that old familiar bay seemed to close and blend with the shore, as we
bore away to the northward before a fresh, fair southern breeze.
Though I detested the island and all its features, yet I could not
but watch them with interest, for it was a shore I should never see
again.
The evening was lovely, and the blue waves of the ocean rolled in
shining ripples which seemed to flow along with us.
Hislop and I stood on the forecastle leaning over the lee bow, and
watching the white foam bubbling under her forefoot, as the sharp
cutwater cleft the sea, till the rising spray began to sparkle about
the catheads; then the brine-dripping anchors were fished up to the
gunwale, and finally hoisted on board.
Fresher came the breeze, and now, as the studding-sail booms were
rigged out to port and starboard, the ship flew through an ocean
crimsoned by the setting sun, and I heard Hislop, as he sat on the
bowsprit, singing in the lightness of his heart,--
Gaily we go o'er the salt blue seas,
And the waves break white before us;
Our canvas aloft swells out in the breeze;
And _home_ points the pennant o'er us.