PLEASURE.
"But ever, from that hour, 'tis said,
He stammered and he stuttered,
As if an axe went through his head
With every word he uttered.
He stuttered o'er blessing, he stuttered o'er ban,
He stuttered, drunk or dry;
And none but he and the fisherman
Could tell the reason why."
"Babette," said Captain Brand, as he tapped a spoon against his
coffee-cup and puffed his cigar, while the stout dumb negress was
removing the remains of the light dinner, "Babette, old girl, you know
that we are going to leave here in a few days, and I should like to know
whether you care to go with us or remain here on the island."
The negress made a guttural grunt of assent, and nodded her head till
the ends of her Madras turban fluttered.
"Ho! you do, eh? Well, my Baba, I shall be sorry to leave you, for you
will be very lonely here, and it may be a long, very long time before I
come back."
Babette jerked her chin up this time, and did not grunt.
"It's all the same, eh? old lady! Well, I shall leave enough to eat to
last you a lifetime; but you will have to change your quarters, my Baba,
and live in the padre's shed, for I--a--don't think this house will be
inhabitable long after I am gone."
The negress gave another grunt and nod of assent.
"Yes. Well, old lady, the matter is decided, then; but, in case you
should have any visitors here after we have gone, you won't take any
trouble to describe what you have seen here? No! That shake of your head
convinces me--not if they roast you alive?"
The hideous sign of understanding that the woman expressed in her dumb
way would have convinced any body without the trouble of uttering a
word.
"_Bueno!_" said Captain Brand; "that will do for to-day."
Rising as he spoke, he stepped to a cabinet, slipped a large handful of
doubloons in his trowsers pocket, put on his hat, and walked out.
The sea-breeze swept over the island with its full strength, making the
lofty cocoa-nuts bow their tufted tops, the palm-trees rustle their
broad flat leaves and clash the stems together. The mangroves bent, too,
before the wind, and the sand eddied up in tiny whirls amid the great
expanse of cactus, while the vessels swung with taut cables to their
anchors. Even Captain Brand's hat nearly was blown off his dry light
hair as he joined his _compadre_, Don Ignacio, at the landing; and the
sandy dust blinded--though only for a moment--that one-eyed individual's
optic, and put out his cigarette as they struggled against the influence
of the breeze. But yet they walked on in the direction of the sheds, and
as they passed through the court-yard, where the men were lounging about
in yawning groups or sitting under the piazza, playing cards--getting up
and touching their hats as their chief passed--Senor Pedillo accosted
him thus:
"_Capitano_, the people are thirsty, and desire a barrel of wine."
"Not a drop, Senor Pedillo--not so much as would wet the bill of a
musquito! To-morrow at daylight let all hands be called, for we have
work to do, and we must be quick to do it."
Pedillo slunk away, abashed by the positive tone of his commander; and
Captain Brand, with his companion, passed on to the domicile of the
padre and doctor. Pausing at the open door of the shed, they looked in.
The padre was lying flat on his back on his narrow bed, with his mouth
wide open, and snoring like a key-bugle with leaky stops; while his
beads and crucifix--misplaced emblems in contact with drunkenness and
debauchery--were reposing on his ample chest. The doctor was sitting
beside his own couch, whispering words of childish comfort to the little
boy, whose pale cheeks and brown curls reposed on the pillow of the bed.
The poor child's thin, limp fingers rested like the petals of a drooping
lily in the dark, bony hand of his friend, and his dim hazel eyes were
turned sadly toward him.
"Holloa, _amigos_!" shouted Captain Brand, in a hearty voice. "We are
losing the glorious sea-breeze. _Vamanos!_ let us take a stroll to the
Tiger's Trap."
Hereupon Captain Brand entered the room, and gave the padre a violent
tweak of the nose, at the same time puffing a volume of cigar-smoke
into his beastly mouth, which combined effort brought the holy father
to life in a trice, choking and sputtering, as he arose, a jargon of
paternosters, which an indifferent hearer might have mistaken for a
volley of execrations, so savagely were they uttered.
"Take a sip of Geneva, my padre. There it is on the table. Ah! do you
call half a bottle a sip? Well! Come, doctor, let us be moving."
Down by the narrow gorge of the inlet, and over the smooth rocks and
shelly shore, the party took their way, Don Ignacio leading with the
amiable priest, on whom he glared with his malevolent eye as if--he not
being a person from whom money or its equivalent could be squeezed--the
greedy old Spaniard would like to transfix him with a glance. In the
rear came Captain Brand and the doctor, the former as gay as a bird--of
the vulture species--and his companion grave, severe, and preoccupied.
Stopping as they reached the Tiger Trap Battery, where, after Captain
Brand had made a close inspection of the guns, and held sharp confabs
with the men who rose to receive him, he moved away a few steps, and,
resting his body against the lee side of a projecting rock, removed the
cigar from his frozen lips, and said,
"The arguments you have urged, monsieur, and the views you entertain,
have a certain amount of reason in them. It is true you were deceived in
coming here, but yet you swore to remain and not betray us when you did
come. Well--ah! don't interrupt me; I divine what you are going to
say--you did not know what our real character was. Perhaps not.
Nevertheless, I can not consent to your going away with that old rascal,
Don Ignacio, there--that is, if he would take you, which I think he
would not, as your presence on board might compromise him with the Cuban
authorities; and," went on Captain Brand, as he crossed his legs, and
held his fine Panama hat on his head as a ruffle of the sea-breeze shot
around the rock, "with respect to your remaining here on the island, you
will only have that dumb old beast of a Babette for company; and it is
highly probable that the English or American cruisers will be down upon
you before a change of the moon, and they might--a--hang you, perhaps,
for a pirate. Ho! ho!"
"If Don Ignacio declines to take me, Captain Brand, of course I can not
go in the felucca; but, let come what will, I am resolved not to sail in
the 'Centipede.'"
The pirate regarded the doctor for a moment with a cold, freezing look,
not wanting, however, in a partial glimmer of respect and admiration, as
he thus resolutely stated his determination; and then, putting his
finger lightly on the doctor's arm, as he saw Don Ignacio and the padre
draw near, he said impressively, in a low tone,
"_Monsieur le Docteur_, do not make hasty resolutions. _I_ command here,
and my will is law. I will turn the matter over, however, in my mind,
and give you a final decision before we part to-night. Now let us
return. The sun is down, and the rocks are slippery."
"Well, _caballeros_, let us have a little social amusement," said
Captain Brand, as he sat down at the table in the padre's and doctor's
quarters, and wound up his splendid watch, the present from the Captain
General of Cuba. "But bear in mind that we must break up at midnight,
for our _compadre_ here has a multitude of articles to get on board his
felucca to-night, and I must be astir at daylight."
Did Captain Brand think, while he turned the key of that gold repeater,
of the bloodstained wretch he had put to death in the morning, who was
lying stark and still in his narrow, damp resting-place, or of the poor
little sufferer who had been torn from his heart-broken mother sleeping
near him? Oh no, certainly not. Captain Brand was thinking of a little
game of monte.
The padre lugged out a small store of dollars, and a gold ounce or two,
and other stray bits of gold, down to quartitos or eighths of
doubloons--all of it donations made him for remission of sins and
absolutions, presented at one time and another from the pirates of his
flock, such donations falling in pretty rapidly after a successful
cruise, but dwindling away to most contemptible gifts long before his
flock took to sea again.
Captain Brand was very liberal to his crew, dividing a great deal of
money with them, but, since he rarely visited any foreign ports, they
had little chance of squandering it; and in the end it served merely as
a gaming currency to play with, and eventually coming back to him as
contributions for stores, ammunition, rigging, and so forth. The
captain, therefore, was a large gainer by the operation, as most of the
articles in eating and drinking, and the vessel's outfit, were--as we
know--generally presented to him, so that he was enabled to stow away
the cash for future gratification.
Don Ignacio Sanchez was likewise a moneyed man, and came provided with a
long pouch of solid gold, which he made into little piles before him of
the exact size of those of the captain. The doctor, however, declined to
play, and sat an indifferent spectator of the game.
"Let us begin, _senores_!" exclaimed the Don, as he rapidly shuffled the
cards, and his keen, black spark of fire lit up with animation at the
rich prospect before him. "We are losing precious time. I'll be
_banquero_! _Vamanos!_"
So they began. The cards were dealt, and the betting went on. The padre
forgot breviary and beads in his excitement, and as his little pointings
were swept away, he forgot, too, the sacred ejaculations he was wont to
lard his discourse with, and he became positively profane. The captain
won largely in the beginning, and jeered his _compadre_ with great zest
and enjoyment; but that one-eyed, rapacious old Spanish rascal was not
in the least disturbed, and bided his time. At first the conversation
was light and jovial, Captain Brand insisting upon the doctor describing
minutely how he had hacked his friend Gibbs's leg off with a hand-saw,
laughing hugely thereat, and wiping the icy tears from his cold blue
eyes with his delicate cambric handkerchief. Then the fascinating game
began to fluctuate, and the luck set back with a steady run into the
piles of the banker. Captain Brand liked as little to lose his money as
any other gambler in cards, stocks, or dice, and he was somewhat chafed
in spirit; but what especially irritated him was losing it to that
wrinkle-faced, one-eyed, greedy old scoundrel, with no possible hope of
ever seeing a dollar of it again. As for the padre, he was dead broke;
and since his friends would not lend him a real, and the banker did not
play upon credit, he sat moodily by, and gloated over the winnings of
the Tuerto, cursing his own luck and that of his companions likewise.
"Ho!" growled Captain Brand, "_maldito a la sota!_ I have lost my last
stake!"
Even while he spoke the poor little boy murmured in a sobbing voice,
"Mamma, _chere_ mamma!" and turned uneasily in his little nest from his
fitful slumber.
"That crying imp again!" said the now angry pirate, as he hurled the
padre's half empty gin jug in the direction of the couch, which crashed
against the wall, and fell in a shower of glass splinters over the
little sleeper.
The child gave one terrified shriek, and, starting from the bed in his
little night-dress, now soiled and torn, he ran and threw himself on his
knees before the doctor. Another bottle was raised aloft by the long
muscular arm of the pirate; but, before you could wink, that arm was
arrested, and the missile twisted from his grasp.
"For shame, you coward! Don't harm the boy. He will die soon enough in
this awful den without having his brains dashed out."
"Ho, _Monsieur le Docteur_!" muttered the villain, looking as if he
would like to taste the heart's-blood of the resolute man who stood
before him, as he pushed a hand into his waistcoat pocket, "do you
presume to call names and oppose _my_ will?"
But, controlling his passion with a violent contortion of face that
would have made one's blood run cold to see it, he changed his tone and
said,
"Nonsense, doctor; you seem to take rather a strong interest in the
brat--possibly an injudicious one; but, since he is my prize, you know,
by law, come--what will you give for him? Ah! happy thought, we will
play for him! There, deal away, _compadre_. _Sota_ and _cavallo_! I take
the knave again, and you ten doubloons against the boy on the horse."
The doctor said not a word, but nodded assent, and seemed absorbed in
the game.
"_Presto!_ Turn the cards, you old sinner! Quick! _Por dios!_ horse has
kicked me, and the knave loses! _Monsieur_, the brat is yours!"
Then starting up, Captain Brand hastily pulled out his watch, and said,
"_Hola, caballeros_, the time is up! I must say good-night."
Don Ignacio's brown thin fingers, like a dentist's steel nippers, laid
down the cards, and carefully picked up his winnings, even to the
smallest bit of the precious metal, and dropped it piece by piece into
his long pouch, following them each with his glittering eye, like a
magpie peering into a narrow-necked bottle, and smiling with his
wrinkled old lips as the dull chink of the coin fell upon his ear. When
he had performed this operation, he tied up the mouth of the bag as if
he was choking somebody to death; and then, twitching something which
was partly hidden in his sleeve, he arose in readiness to go out.
As, however, Captain Brand turned to follow his _compadre_, he looked
carelessly toward the doctor, and said,
"By the way, monsieur, I have made up my mind with respect to our
conversation to-day, and you _shall_ remain on the island. No thanks.
Adieu. Now, Don Ignacio, if your men and boats are at the cove, we will
make sharp work with your business. _Vamanos!_"