AN OLD SPANIARD WITH ONE EYE.
"I fear thee, Ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
For thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand."
"The 'Panchita' has passed Mangrove Point," came in the hoarse whisper
from the signal-man. "You can see her now from below, sir."
Captain Brand put on a fine Panama hat, and stepped out on the veranda,
where, with a cigar in his mouth, he leaned over the balustrade, and
kept sharp watch on every thing that was going on below him. In a few
minutes a long pointed brown bowsprit protruded itself beyond the wall
of rocks, followed by a great triangular lateen sail, bent to a yard a
mile long, and tapering away like a fly-fishing-rod, where, at the end,
was a short bit of yellow and red pennant. As her bows came into view
they showed above a curved prow falling inboard, with a huge bunch of
sheepskin for a chafing-mat on the knob, and a thin red streak along the
wales, on a lead-colored ground, above her bottom, which was painted
green. As more of her proportions came into the picture, you saw a stout
stump of a mast, raking forward, with short black ropes of purchases for
hoisting the single yard, and heavy square blocks close down to the foot
of the mast. When this great sail had come out from the screen of rocks,
another light stick of a mast stood up over the taffrail, with another
lateen sail and whip-stalk of a yard, to which was bent the Spanish
Colonial Guarda Costa flag. In fact, she was a Spanish felucca all over,
from stem to stern, and truck to water-line. A few dingy hammocks were
stowed about halfway along her rail, and there were a good many men
moving about her decks in getting the cable clear, and a lot more
clinging like so many lizards along the bending yard, and all in some
attempt at uniform dress, in readiness to roll up the sail when the
anchor was down. There was a long brass gun, too, burnished like gold,
on a pivot slide, with all its equipment, trained muzzle forward in
front of the main-mast. No sooner had she sagged into the open basin,
with her immense sail hanging flat and heavy in the light air, than a
boat from the schooner boarded her, and presently she let go an anchor.
There were a few coarse compliments and greetings exchanged between the
crews of the two vessels, and some rough jokes made, as the last comer
veered out the cable, rolled up his sails, and set taut his running gear
in quite a tidy and man-of-war style.
"Go on board the felucca, Jose, and give my compliments to Don Ignacio,
and say I shall be happy to see him," cried Captain Brand from the
piazza to a man at the cove; "and tell him," continued he, "that I
should have called in person, but I can't bear the hot sun since I
caught the fever. Take my gig."
This was said in Spanish, and when he had finished speaking he shaded
his face behind the curtain and scowled.
"You're a bird of ill omen, my one-eyed friend; but one of these days
I'll wipe out old scores, and new ones too, perhaps," Captain Brand
muttered to himself; and, from his murderous expression of face, he
seemed just the man to carry out his threat. Meanwhile, a light
whale-boat of a gig, manned by four men and a coxswain, pushed off from
the shore, and in three strokes of the oars she was alongside the
felucca. The coxswain stepped over the low rail, and, walking aft,
turned down a cuddy of a cabin, took off his hat, and delivered his
message. A minute later he again got into the boat, and pulled to the
cove, where he said to the captain,
"Don Ignacio says he'll come in his own boat when he's ready."
"_Bueno!_" was responded aloud; and then to himself: "Don't ask or
receive favors, eh? What an old file the brute is!"
He said no more, but watched. Presently a small man came up out of the
cabin of the "Panchita," but so very slow, and with such a quiet motion
did he emerge, that one might suppose it was a wary animal rather than a
human being. He was scrupulously neat in attire--a brown pair of linen
trowsers, a Marseilles vest with silver filigree buttons, an embroidered
shirt-bosom with gold studs, and a dark navy-blue broadcloth coat, with
standing collar and anchor gilt buttons. His head-gear was simply a
white chip hat, with a very narrow brim and a fluttering red ribbon; but
beneath it his coal-black hair behind was chopped as close as could be,
leaving a single long and well-oiled ringlet on each side, which curled
like snakes around a pair of large gold rings pendent from his ears. His
complexion was dark, bilious, and swarthy, with a thin, sharp nose, and
a million of minute wrinkles, all meeting above, at the corners, and
under a small line of a mouth; quite like rays, in fact, and only
relaxed when the lips parted to show a few ragged, rotten pegs of sharp
teeth. But perhaps the most noticeable feature in his face was his
eye--for he had but one--and the spot where the other is seen in the
species was merely a red, closed patch of tightly-drawn skin, with a few
hairs sticking out like iron tacks. His single eye, however, was a jet
black, round, piercing organ, which seemed to do duty for half a dozen
ordinary glims, and danced with a sharp, malevolent scrutiny, as if the
owner was always in search of something and never found it, and every
body and every thing appeared to slink out of its light wherever it
glanced around. His age might have been any where from forty to sixty.
As he stepped on deck, clear of the cuddy cabin hatch, his sinister
optic played about in its socket--now scanning the long brass gun, the
half-furled sails, the crew, the ropes, or taking a steady, unwinking
glance at the midday sun, and then shining off to the shore, and
sweeping in the "Centipede," the little pool of blue water, and the
mouth of the inlet. Feeling apparently satisfied with the present aspect
of affairs, he slowly pulled out a machero from his waistcoat pocket,
plucked a cigarette from the case, and then proceeded deliberately to
strike a light. Even while performing this simple operation, his uneasy
orb, like unto a black bull's-eye, traversed about in its habitual way;
and when he raised the spark of fire with his brown, thin hand, and the
claws of fingers loaded with rings, he seemed to be looking into his own
mouth. Nodding to a fellow who stood near, with a crimson sash around
his waist, he inclined his eye toward the shore, blew out a thin wreath
of smoke from his lungs--all the while his vigilant organ shining like a
burning spark of lambent jet through the smoke--and merely said,
"The boat!"
In a moment a small cockle-shell of a punt was lowered from the stern of
the felucca, when, stepping carefully in, he seized a scull, and with a
few vigorous twists pushed her to the landing at the cove.
During all these movements of the commander of the felucca Captain Brand
was by no means an inattentive observer; and, indeed, he was so
extremely critical that he stuck the tube of a powerful telescope
through an aperture of the curtains around him, and not only looked at
his cautious visitor, but he actually watched the expression of his
uneasy eye, and almost counted every wrinkle--finely engraved as they
were--on his swarthy visage; but, if Captain Brand's own visage
reflected an index of his mind, he did not seem over and above pleased
with what he saw.
"Has a bundle of papers under his arm! I can see the hilt of that
delicate blade, too, sticking out from his wristband. Ah! I've seen him
throw that short blade from his coat-sleeve and strike a dollar at
twenty yards! Wonderful skill with knives you have, Don Ignacio; but you
never yet tried your knack with _me_! Oh no, my Tuerto--bird of ill omen
that you are! We can't do without one another just yet, so let us wait
and see what's in the wind!"
Soliloquizing these remarks, Captain Brand withdrew his telescope as the
commander of the felucca approached, and, with a cheerful smile, waited
to receive him. A few moments later the one-eyed individual mounted the
rope-ladder stairway, carefully feeling the strands, however, and
looking suspiciously around him as he stepped lightly on the piazza.
"_Ah! compadre mio!_" exclaimed Captain Brand, in Spanish, as he seized
his visitor by the flipper, and squeezed his fingers till the pressure
on his valuable rings made him wince, as he was led into the large and
spacious saloon, while at the same time the captain gave him a hearty
slap between his narrow shoulders.
"_Ah! compadre!_ How goes the friend of my soul?"
The small man gave no symptoms of joy at this warm greeting; but,
screwing his wiry frame out of the captain's caresses, his eye flashed
like a spark of fire quickly up and down and all around the apartment,
as if making a mental inventory of the furniture, and not omitting his
tall companion, from the crown of his head to the toes of his straw
slippers, when he quietly remarked through his closed teeth,
"_Como estamos?_"--"How are we?"
"Ah, Don Ignacio, _poco bueno, poco malo_! Half and half. Just getting
well over that maldito attack of Yellow Jack."
"Hum! more bad than good. No? I've brought you some letters from the
agent at Havana."
"Thanks--thanks, my friend. Ho! Babette! Babette! Some anisette for Don
Ignacio. _Presto!_ my good Baba. There--that will do!" he said, merrily,
as the liqueur and glasses were placed on the table. "And don't omit the
turtle-soup for dinner, and tell Lascar Joe to make it. Ah! I
forget--the best cook I had--the devil's making soup of him now.
However, do the best you can, my Baba, and let us have dinner about
sunset."
Then turning to his visitor, with a graceful bow and a laugh, he added,
"And we'll have the doctor to join us, and tell how he cut off our poor
friend Gibbs's leg with a hand-saw. _Dios! amigo!_ Capital joke, 'pon my
honor!"
Captain Brand's honor! Lord have mercy upon us! And he had very few
jokes, and never told one himself.
"Hum!" replied the Tuerto, in the pause of the conversation. "There's
better jokes than that to hear. _Mira!_ look!"
With this brief rejoinder he threw a bundle of newspapers on the table,
and, pulling out a packet of letters from a breast pocket, pitched it
toward his host. Then helping himself to a thimbleful of anisette, he
took off his narrow-brimmed chip hat for the first time, polished up his
eye a bit with the knuckle of his fore finger, and looked at his
companion fixedly.
"Letters, I see, from our old friend Moreno, at Havana," said Captain
Brand, as he sat down on the settee, and with a pretty tortoise-shell
knife cut round the seals. "Ah! what says he? 'Happy to inform you,' is
he? 'Packages of French silks seized by custom-house on account of
informal invoice and clearance.' Why didn't the fool forge others, then?
Well, what next? 'Schooner "Reel," from Barbadoes, with cargo of rum and
jerked beef, wrecked going into Principe, and crew thrown into prison on
suspicion of being engaged in--' Oh! ah! served them right, when I
ordered them to St. Jago--delighted they must be! 'Bills for advances
and stores now due, please remit, per hands of Don Ignacio Sanchez--'"
Here Captain Brand caught a ray from the one eye of his companion, which
he returned with interest; and then laying the letters down on the table
with the softest motion in life, he exclaimed, with a sigh,
"Not the best news in the world, as you say, _compadre_; all those rich
goods, and those bags of coffee, and pipes of rum gone to the devil. But
these are little accidents in our profession."
"_Como?_" said Senor Ignacio, "_our_ profession?" shaking his fore
finger before his paper cigar in a deprecating manner. "Speak for
yourself, _amigo_."
"Ah! true," the other went on--"my profession. The freedom of the seas,
the toll of the tropics, the right of search, and all that sort of
buccaneering pastime, is liable, you know, to the usual risks."
Here he inclined his head to one side and gave a slight clack to his
lips, as if to illustrate in a humorous way a man choking to death with
a knotted rope under his ear. "However, we must be more cautious in
future and retrieve the past disasters, for there are still on the sea
as good barks as ever floated."
Captain Brand said this as if he were a merchant of large means and
strict integrity, and was about to enter into some shrewd commercial
speculation.
"Hum!" murmured Senor Ignacio, while pouring out another little glass of
anisette. "_Amigo mio!_ you had better read the papers from Havana
before you talk of another cruise."
"Oh! delighted to read the news--quite refreshing to get a peep at the
world after being cooped up here for months! Another French revolution!
Bonaparte alive yet! A Patriot war! Nelson and Villeneuve! All
interesting."
Thus glancing rapidly over the prints, pausing at times at a paragraph
that arrested his attention, then tossing a paper away and taking up
another, till suddenly Captain Brand's hand shook with passion as he
read aloud,
[Illustration: "HE TOUCHED THE BELL OVERHEAD AS HE SPOKE, AND, PUTTING
HIS MOUTH TO THE TUBE, ASKED, 'ANY THING IN SIGHT?'"]
"His Britannic majesty's squadron has been augmented on the West India
station. The brig 'Firefly,' corvettes 'Croaker' and 'Joker,' touched at
Nassau, New Providence, on the 2d instant, bound to leeward. We also
learn that the United States have fitted out a squadron of small
vessels, called the Musquito Fleet, to search for the noted pirate
Brand, who has so long committed atrocities among the islands. He was
last chased by the American corvette 'Scourge,' off Morant Bay, on the
east coast of Jamaica, but escaped during the night. The following day a
shattered boat was picked up, which had been cut adrift from the
piratical schooner, containing several dead and dying bodies of the
pirates. One of the latter gave such information to the captain of the
'Scourge' as leads to the hope that Brand's retreat may soon be
discovered and his nest of pirates be destroyed. Recent advices from
Principe state that a vessel loaded with valuable merchandise struck on
the Cavallo Reef and went down. The crew, however, five in number, were
rescued, but on landing were identified by the mate of the English bark
'Trident' as a portion of the men who robbed that vessel and murdered
the master and several of the passengers. Our readers may remember that
among the latter were two sisters, who leaped overboard and were
drowned, to save themselves the horror of a more cruel fate. The men
alluded to, who were wrecked in the brig off Principe, were sent in
chains to Havana, and were yesterday publicly garroted in the Plaza of
Moro Castle."