A PIRATES' DINNER.
"But the best of the joke was, the moment he spoke
Those words which the party seemed almost to choke,
As by mentioning Noah some spell had been broke,
And, hearing the din from barrel and bin,
Drew at once the conclusion that thieves had got in."
When the guests had assembled in the pirate's saloon it was some minutes
before their host appeared. When, however, he did step into the room
from his private apartment adjoining, he was altogether a different man
in outward appearance than in the early morning. In place of the loose
sailor summer rig which he then wore, he was now attired as a gentleman
of elegant fashion of the time in which we write. His lower limbs were
clothed with flesh-colored silk stockings, and fitted into a pair of
pointed toed pumps with buckles of brilliants that a duchess might have
envied. A pair of white cassimere breeches, which set off to advantage
his well-shaped leg, were tied in a dainty bow of rose-colored satin
ribbon below the knee, and fitted him like a second skin. His waistcoat
was of rose-colored watered silk, embroidered with silver, and which,
with its flaps and ample proportions, was halfway hidden by a dress coat
of green velvet. This last garment had a sort of navy cut, with standing
collar richly laced with silver, gold buttons in a double row of the
size of doubloons, with loose sleeves and cuffs heavily laced with
silver also. His linen was of the most gossamer fineness, the collar
thrown slightly back and confined by a single clasp of rubies the size
of beans, while below was a frill of cambric ruffles sparkling with opal
studs framed in diamonds. The ruffles, too, at his wrist were of the
most beautiful point lace, secured by royal brilliants, and he was
altogether a dandy of such princely magnificence that the courtiers of
the days of the old French monarchy might have taken him for a study.
His manner, likewise, was every way in keeping with his splendid attire;
and the ease and grace with which he excused himself to his guests for
keeping them waiting certainly denoted a knowledge of a higher order of
breeding and society than that in which his lot had been cast.
[Illustration]
From the very moment of his entrance, however, Don Ignacio had measured
him at a glance. His single glittering eye of jet had taken him in from
the laced collar of his coat to the buckles of his shoes. Not a jewel in
his dress, from the flaming opals in his bosom to the brilliant stones
at his wrists, and down to the sparkling clusters at his feet, did not
his one uneasy optic drink in the flash and estimate the value. Nay, he
calculated by instinct the weight of the gold buttons on his coat and
the price of the exquisite lace which fell in snowy folds about his
hands. Oh, a rare mathematician was Don Ignacio! What greedy thoughts,
too, passed through that little Spaniard's brain! "Ah!" thought he,
"shall I take my debt in those priceless gems, each one the ransom of a
princess, which the old Captain General may one of these days reclaim?
Hola! no! Or shall I receive more negotiable commodities in gold,
cochineal, or silks? Well! _Veremos!_ we shall see!"
The effect produced upon the good Padre Ricardo was altogether
different. As the captain entered with all his glorious raiment upon
him, he started back, and, bowing before him as if he were Saint Paul
himself, he seized his superior's white hand, and kissed it with fervent
devotion. Not satisfied with this mark of respect, he raised his dingy
paws, holding his crucifix before him, and murmured, in a sort of
ecstasy,
"_Mi hico! mi capitano! que brillante!_"--"My son! my captain! what a
brilliant being you are!"
Singularly in contrast, however, was the effect produced upon the
doctor, who merely raised his dark eyes in an abstracted gaze, gave
a careless and rather contemptuous nod of recognition, and then turned
to examine one of the richly-inlaid cabinets which adorned the
saloon. All these various phases of sympathy, attraction, or contempt
flickered like a sunbeam into Captain Brand's reflecting brain, as, with
a delicately-perfumed handkerchief in one hand, and a gold-enameled
and diamond-incrusted snuff-box in the other, he bowed gracefully to
his visitors, and seated himself at table.
The table was now rolled out into the centre of the saloon, laid with a
snowy-white damask cloth, and covered with the equipage for a banquet.
At either corner were noble branches of solid silver candelabra, which
would have graced an altar, as perhaps they had, and holding clusters of
wax-lights, which shed their rays over the display below. In the centre
arose a huge epergne of silver, fashioned into the shape of a drooping
palm-tree, whose leaves were of frosted silver, and about the trunk
played a wilderness of monkeys. Beneath, around the board, were
cut-glass decanters, flat bulbous flasks of colored Bohemian glass,
crystal goblets, delicate and almost shadowy wine-cups from Venice,
silver wine-coolers, all mingled in with a heterogeneous collection of
rare china and silver dishes. Such wines, too, as filled those vessels!
not a prince or magnate in all the lands where the vine is planted could
boast of so rare and exquisite a collection. Pure, thin, rain-water
Madeira, full threescore years in bottle! Pale, limpid Port, whose color
had long since gone with age, and left only the musk-like odor; flasks
of Johannisberg of pearly light; bottles of Tokay for lips of cardinals;
tall, slim stems of the taper flasks of the Rhine; while the ruby hues
of wine from the Rhone stood clustering about amid pyramids of
pine-apples, oranges, and bananas, and all loading the air of the saloon
with their delicious fragrance.
When the party had become fairly seated around the board, and while the
host was bailing out the soup from an enormous silver tureen with a
tea-cup--for it did not appear that he had ever been presented in the
usual way with a ladle--fishing out the floating morsels of rich
callipee, with the delicate frills of his sleeves turned back, he began
the conversation in the Castilian language:
"Well, _amigos_, we are taking our last feast together, I fear, on this
little cluster of rocks, for a long time to come."
"How!" exclaimed the padre, as he stuffed a wedge of turtle fat in his
oily mouth, and opened his round black eyes to their fullest extent in
manifest surprise.
"_Como, mi hico!_" he repeated, as he passed a dirty paw over his smooth
chin, and looked inquiringly.
"Yes, holy father, our good friend Don Ignacio here has brought us
somewhat startling intelligence. Capital soup, this. I shall give
Babette a dollar. Yes, the eagles and vultures are after us; all the
West India fleet; the Lord only knows how many ships, and brigs, and
gun-boats. Glass of Madeira with you, doctor?" wiping his thin lips with
a corner of the damask table-cloth as he spoke; "and they have tampered,
too, with my old friends the custom-house people. Take away the tureen,
Babette--and, in point of fact, I shouldn't be the least surprised to
see a swarm of those navy gentlemen off the reef here at any moment. A
sharp knife, Babette, for these teal--a duck should be cut, not torn.
Try that Moselle, Don Ignacio; I know your fancy for light wines. This
was given me by a Captain--'pon my soul, I forget his name; he had such
a pretty wife, Madame Matilde," glancing at the frame of miniatures on
the wall; "sweet creature she was; took quite a fancy for me, I believe,
and might have been sitting here at this moment, but a--really I forget
her other name. However, it makes no difference: the wine is called
Moselle."
Now be it here observed that Don Ignacio drank very little wine or
stimulants of any sort, and never by any chance a drop from any vessel
which, with his single bright eye, he did not see his host first indulge
in. This self-imposed sacrifice may have been owing to his diffidence,
or modesty, or deference to Captain Brand, or, perhaps, other and
private reasons of his own; but yet he never broke through that rule of
politeness and abstemiousness. Sometimes, indeed, he carried his
principles so far as to refuse a meat or the fruits which his host had
not partaken of, and always with a slow shake of his brown fore finger,
as if he did not like even to smell the dish presented to him.
"What! not even a sip of that nectar, _compadre mio_?"
The compadre shook his digit, and observed that drinking nectar
sometimes made people sick.
The captain laughed gayly, and said, "Bah! learning to drink does the
harm, and not the art, when properly acquired."
During all the foregoing interlude the doctor remained in his grave,
calm humor, and only when the captain alluded to the lady whose
husband's name escaped him did he show signs of interest. Then his eye
followed the look toward the miniature, and his jaws came together with
a slight grating spasm.
Padre Ricardo, however, was in excellent sympathetic spirits, eating and
drinking like a glutton of all within his reach, and turning his full
eyes at times, as if to a deity, upon his friend the captain. Once he
spoke--
"But, my son, you were talking of leaving this quiet retreat, where we
have passed so many happy hours."
"Yes, friend of my soul! Those fellows with commissions, and pennants at
their mast-heads, and guns, and what not, seem determined to do us a
mischief." The devout padre crossed himself, and pressed the crucifix to
his greasy lips. "Ay! they would no doubt arraign us before some one of
their legal tribunals. Put us in prison, perhaps; or maybe give us a
slight squeeze in a rope or iron collar!"
The padre groaned audibly, and dropped the wing of a teal he was
gnawing, forgetting, strange as it may seem, to cross himself.
"_Hola, mi padre!_ cheer up! We are worth a million of dead men yet. The
world is wide, the sea open, and with a stout plank under our feet and
one of these fellows"--here he balanced a long carving-knife, dripping
with blood-red gravy, in his hand--"in our belts, who can stop us?"
There was the cold, ferocious-eyed gleam of a dying shark in the
speaker's eyes as he went on with his carving; but the priest gave a
jerk of trepidation with his chin, and appeared anxious to hear more.
"Don Ignacio, try a bit of this roast _guana_; it's quite white and
tender. No? Babette, give me some of that rabbit stew!" The one-eyed
individual was likewise helped to some of that savory ragout, and
proceeded to pick the bones with much care and deliberation.
"Still _triste_, my _padre_! Come, come, this will never do. Join me in
a bumper of this generous old Port. _Bueno!_ may we attain the same age!
By the way, where did this rich stuff come from?" holding up the
decanter between the light and his face as he spoke.
Don Ignacio's glittering optic pierced clear through the light ruby
medium of the wine, cut-glass decanter and all, as he furtively watched
his host, and was prepared to dodge in case the heavy vessel should slip
out of the captain's hand. Such things had happened, and might again;
besides, a hard flint substance with a multitude of sharp projections,
two or three inches thick and five or six pounds in weight, falling from
a height on a man's head, might kill him. The Don thought of all this,
and twitched something up his sleeve with his hand under the table. But
Captain Brand, it seemed, had no intention of smashing his elegant
dinner set of glass, and putting down the decanter and raising a finger
to his forehead, he said, "How did that wine come into my possession?"
"Somebody gave it to you, perhaps. _Quien sabe?_ (Who knows?)" suggested
Don Ignacio.
Without heeding the interruption, the captain's eye rested on the
brilliant snuff-box on the table beside him, where the letter L was set
in diamonds and blue enamel on the back, and catching it with a rap, his
face lighted up, and as he took a pinch and passed the box to the padre,
he exclaimed,
"Ah! now I remember, my old friend--the Portuguese countess from Oporto.
_Dios! de mi alma!_ (God of my soul!) what a stately beauty was her
daughter!"
Here Captain Brand sneezed, and, drawing a delicately-perfumed lace
handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket, blew his nose. Meanwhile the box
went round the table; Padre Ricardo took a huge pinch with his dirty
fingers, and feasted his eyes upon the precious lid. The doctor scarcely
gave the elegant bawble a glance as he helped himself. The Don, however,
examined it with the eye of a connoisseur, and not only that, but he
threw a spark at the captain's flashy waistcoat, and thought he detected
some other article in the capacious pockets vice the handkerchief.
Perhaps he may have been mistaken and perhaps not, though he was so very
suspicious an old villain that he sometimes did his friends injustice.
Nor did he put his thin brown fingers, with the few grains of snuff he
had dipped from the box, to his sheepskin nostrils till he had watched
the effect it had produced on those around him.
"Ah! my friends, I remember distinctly now all about it," continued the
captain, as he returned the kerchief and shook a few specks of the
titillating dust from his point-lace sleeve; "it is about three years
ago, just before you came to live with me, padre, that we fell in with a
large ship bound to Porto Rico. She had been disabled in an awful
hurricane, which had taken two of her masts clean off at the decks, and
was leaking badly. We, too, had been a little hurt in the same gale, and
having made a pretty good season, I was anxious to get back here and
give the crews a rest. Well, we made out the ship about an hour before
sunset, and it was quite dark before we came up with her. There she lay,
rolling like a log, though there was not much sea on, and we could hear
her chain-pumps clanking, and saw the water spouting out from her
scuppers as pure almost as it went into her hold. As we came up
alongside they hailed me for assistance, and said the ship was sinking,
and could not live till morning.
"Of course I could give them no actual assistance, situated as I
was"--here the narrator smiled as he glanced round upon his guests--"it
would have been simply absurd, you know, the idea of my putting men on
board to keep her afloat for the nearest gibbet. Bah! I did not dream of
such ridiculous nonsense. However, I determined to make her a visit,
and, if there should be any thing to save from the wreck in an undamaged
condition, why, I should look around.
"Not too much of that Port, _mi padre_; think of your rheumatism in the
morning! Doctor, you don't drink!
"Well, going on board, I found two lady passengers--the wife and
daughter of an old judge of the island of Porto Rico, with half a dozen
servants, who were all screaming, and praying, and beseeching me to save
them--all but one, a tall, graceful girl, with a large India shawl
wrapped around her shoulders, her white arms glancing through the folds,
and a pair of dark, liquid, almond-shaped eyes, such as I had never
before seen. The fact is, my friends, I had always before fancied blue.
But there stood this girl, with eyes like a wounded stag, leaning up
against the weather bulwarks near the open cabin door.
"Babette, take away all but the wine and fruit, and bring fire. Pass
that box this way, if you please, _compadre_! Thank you."
Don Ignacio seemed to have an affection for the trifle, and had counted
the brilliants over and over again, and made a mental calculation of
their weight and value; and when he did move it as he was desired, his
greedy eye followed it with fascination.
"Yes, it's very pretty, and I set a great store by it," parenthesized
the host, as he resumed his tale:
"The girl never screamed or even spoke, and, amid all the hubbub of a
drunken skipper and a disorderly crew, she remained quiet and unmoved.
To assure the people, I told them that I would stay by the ship and do
what I could for them. At this the old lady clasped me around the neck,
and kissed me, and blubbered over me more than ever she did, I imagined,
to the old Spanish judge, her husband--imploring me too, by all the
saints she could think of, to take herself and daughter out of the
sinking vessel at once. You may believe that I would much rather have
been treated in that way by the lovely girl with the wonderful eyes
instead of the fat, rancid old woman beside her; but there was no help
for it just then, and so I consented, with all the professions of
sympathy I could make, to do as she desired."
Here the captain lit a pure Havana, and, after a few puffs and a sip of
Port, continued: