The Treasure of Pearls 11 – Wraxall · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Treasure of Pearls 11The Two Captains of the "Goleta"
18
Literature · Romance
The Treasure of Pearls 11
The Two Captains of the "Goleta"
WraxallEnglish
Whilst señora Bustamente was formally taking some refreshment, Gladsden summoned Ignacio.
"Lieutenant," said he, sternly, "it is a honour for me to have Madam Vázquez, the bride of Benito Vázquez, the pearl diver, to present to you."
Ignacio bowed, and darted from his widely distended eyes an enormous show of admiration at the young Mexican.
"The famous pearl fisher," murmured he; "the take will be rare and splendid now."
"This lady," continued the master, "is our passenger, you are answerable for her being treated with the utmost deference, and the greatest attention by all the crew. We'll fashion a cabin for her hereabouts. All the men are forbidden to enter here under any pretence whatever. Do'ye hear, Master Ignacio?"
"Yes."
"Then what the mischief are you staring for?"
"Ha, Señora Vázquez?" he repeated. "Surely I behold with admiration dazed eyes the incomparable daughter of the martial hacendero, don José de Miranda."
"Eh! How now, what do you know of the lady?"
"Only that she was the chosen bride of his Excellency, don Aníbal Cristobal."
"Eh? Why, of course!"
"And that illustrious scoundrel," went on the late lieutenant of banditti, with a refreshing air of morality, "after having had the poor don tracked to his death by the venomous Apache, to whom I owe my brother's loss--one to him! A thousand devils pull at him--the captain not my lamented Pepillo--after all that show of hatred to him who took the lady out of his clutches, don Aníbal will not allow the double removal unimpeded, I'll wager you a thousand ounces against one poor, old, worn dollar, of the señorita and his dear Burlonilla."
"Indeed! We'll see about that."
The speaker marked a curious mixture of fear and doubt flit across the visage of Ignacio.
Benito, seeing that he was only in the way of his young wife's settling down in her new home, and having some neglected preparations to make ashore, proposed a hasty return thither.
The captain all the less reluctantly coincided with his expressed intention, as he had a confidential message to transmit to the British vice-consul--a young Jewish gentleman on whom he believed he could rely in such an emergency as impended.
In Benito's absence, captain Gladsden took further precautions. Disliking a budding smile on the phiz of Ignacio, he ordered him below, placing Bristol Jem at the head of affairs in his stead, and charged the carpenter to hurry on his woodwork. The rest of the time was given up to completing the readiness to start.
Going on 3 p.m. the Englishman was walking the deck under an umbrella, when he perceived a boat pushing off from the wharf. It could not be Benito, in this huge shallow punt, impelled by eight oars, in the bow of which six armed men in uniform were standing, while at the stern were seated two persons in gay array.
One was a stout dame, extravagantly caparisoned; the other, a tall man in almost as brilliant and absurd an attire. The latter was not altogether unfamiliar to the captain, and he smiled in anticipation of the affair to be communicated.
Whilst the heavily laden embarkation bore down upon the cutter with a leisure which was insulting, Gladsden ordered his ensign to be dipped three times. Immediately he had the satisfaction of perceiving the flag of the British consul execute the same movement. Benito had, therefore, delivered his message, to which this courtesy was an acknowledgment.
Gladsden went below, and approaching the bulkhead, behind which doña Dolores was ensconced, whispered to her:
"Lady! I have reason to suppose that a boat is coming hither with persons on board whose intention is to seize on you and take you to land in the absence of your husband. Now, you need not worry yourself. Don't show any tokens of being here. I have answered for your protection to don Benito, and I know quite how to take care of you, as well as my craft, against all the desperadoes in the Intendencia of all Sonora."
"Oh, do so, sir!" returned the young lady, a prey to deep emotion, spite of the Englishman's confident and jesting accent, "And we shall bless you! Out of the little window I, too, have espied the skiff coming; and I have recognised my aunt and the pretender to my hand. I would rather die than fall into their hands! Oh, why--oh, why is not Benito here?"
"Don't be under any uneasiness," reiterated the other; "I shall keep my pledge to your husband. Only, I say again, keep perdue, and do not reveal your presence by any noise."
"I promise to obey you, sir Captain. You are a really good man! Heaven will benefit you for the protection you accord me. I shall go on praying for you and myself!"
"Very well; so pluck up, Señorita, and soon the fun will be over!"
He remounted to the deck. He glanced over the bay, and went to the stem with his marine glass, looking over the oncoming "scow" contemptuously to view the shore near the consul's habitation. A longboat, manned by twelve oarsmen, and carrying the English flag at the stern, was seen to quit the pier and steer for the Burlonilla, making good time.
The port was "getting lively."
Though things were going on nicely enough, Gladsden did not mean to be taken unawares, and, not to be blamed for neglecting to take any precaution, he had a cutlass and a brace of boarding pistols laid handily on the sliding cover of the companionway. In those waters one never knows how matters may turn out, and, to prevent the turning out being unpleasant, a man is easiest when thoroughly on his guard.
Though the English representative's boat had left the shore some time after the native one, it was not slow in overhauling it, outstripping it without deigning to hail it or otherwise notice it, and ran alongside the Little Joker on the seaward side, while the other boat was rather far away.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Lyons," said Gladsden, receiving the deputy-consul, warmly.
"Yes, here I am, Captain. You can do anything you like with me, you know. Only, as your messenger was in a hurry to be off, I am very little informed upon passing matters, and I may be able to act better in your interest if you acquaint me how things stand and move."
Gladsden briefly told the story.
"Is that all!" exclaimed deputy-consul Lyons, laughing finely, as Jews do. "Don't you be alarmed, but let me deal with this fellow. The friend of don Stefano must be a suspicious character, and that he is the chief of the in-country night marchers, and also the doer of little piracies with this same brigantine does not, therefore, startle me. But your visitors are hailing you. You might receive them with that bulldog sweetness of demeanour which characterise us British," he went on, smiling shyly. "Before all, put away those weapons, quite useless. The affair will finish with more of a display of brass than steel or lead."
"I will hope so, though it's a thing of indifference," replied the master of the Little Joker. "Anyway, I rely on you."
"That's the best."
So the cabin boy removed the weapons, while his captain, accompanied by the British sub-consul, strode to the gangway thrown open in the low waist, arriving just in time to offer his hand to the lady passenger of the shallop. Behind her the drolly accoutred sham Chilian commodore scrambled aboard.
Doña Josefa de Miranda was of elephantine form, with her hair, neck, ears, and arms literally laden with gems, gold eagles, and Mexican coins, pierced and strung in the shape of collars and bracelets. A thousand dollar China crape shawl showed all its florid pattern in embroidery, spread on her broad shoulder. A figured muslin dress, much too short, was caught in at what she probably flattered herself was a waist, by a sash sprinkled with precious stones. A profusion of costly rings shone on her gloved hands. It was manifest that don José de Miranda in his flight had left some valuables which his kinswoman had forestalled the executors in securing.
Nothing could be more repulsive in its uncomeliness than the swarthy lineaments of this corpulent being, whose carping physiognomy and small glistening coffee coloured eyes wore an expression of indescribable spitefulness.
Close to her escort, captain Gladsden undoubtedly recognised the scarred hook nose, hatchet face, and lank figure of his gambling opponent. It was the same grotesque uniform which had been donned to astonish the natives at the supper table of don Stefano.
When this precious pair came in upon the deck of the Little Joker, the armed men attempted to follow. But Mr. Holdfast--whose enforced stay in the fort, penniless, scornfully used by the Guaymasians, had filled him with terrible detestation of all Mexicans in general, and Western ones in particular--gleefully obeyed his orders by bidding them keep their distance. At once the corporal seemed indisposed to bow to this injunction, and seized the Turk's head at the end of the rope guard of the gangplank, thus railed to assist the lady, the first officer, without losing an atom of his habitual coolness, shoved the skiff head off so roughly with his foot as to make the soldier lose his balance and fall between the two gunnels into the water. This, to the laughter of the seamen, who cherish an animosity towards soldiers, and, furthermore, against the armed police, always seeking an excuse to be manifested. Luckily, the soldier had kept his hold of the main ropes, and hung long enough to be lifted up into the boat to the disapproval, if a certain splash of a tail in the water not remote, signified anything, of a shark which had immediately prepared to sup on him instead of the cook's waste.
Meanwhile, without deigning to attach the least interest to this suggestive episode, the massive dame, giving the new master of the brigantine a lofty look, used her most cutting tone to demand, haughtily, if she were addressing the commander of the bark.
"Yes, madam," replied Gladsden, bowing stiffly, "for which recent coming into possession I am happy, because it procures me the honour of receiving on my deck as weighty a personage as your ladyship appears to be. To whom have I the favour of speaking?"
The proud woman announced herself, sonorously, as "Doña Maria Josefa Dolores Miranda y Pedrosa y Saltabadil de la Cruz de Carbaneillo y Merlusa." The hearer bowed deeply at each bead on the string, darting a look aslant as if he feared the little brigantine was rather top-heavy with all these names. Then she pointed to her companion, who had been eyeing the ship's new crew with an annoyed face which was diverting enough to anyone in the secret of his interest, like an exhibition of a curious wild beast.
"This is--for you need save yourself the trouble to name an old acquaintance--Don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Pizarro Almagro de Cortes," took up the gibing captain, with a wink for the consulary assistant. "It is rather crushing, besides, your ladyship, to have here a descendant of three of the conquerors."
Don Aníbal was curling his moustache to keep his countenance. His native impudence was oozing out at every pore.
"This gentleman," proceeded the important lady, "is my son-in-law, hence his accompanying me."
"Your daughter must be a happy woman to be the mate of so brilliant an officer, an admiral, at least, I suppose?"
"Well, the alliance will not come off for a little spell, within these four-and-twenty hours, sir. To conduce to that beneficent result, you see me here."
"I am fully aware, Señorita," returned Gladsden, getting tired of keeping up the chaff, "that I would never have boasted the possession of this craft but for don Aníbal, but, in compensation, I hardly believe he comes to me to be furnished with a wife, unfortunately, unless it be the gunner's daughter, to which alliance he is heartily welcome to my consent. I am afraid he will go away a bachelor for all the marriageable young ladies here."
It is lamentable to record that the sailors, who had been bandying verbal bonbons with the soldiers, chafing on the shallop, raised a laugh at the expense of Don Aníbal, who perfectly well understood, in his other part of pirate, that to marry the gunner's daughter, is to be bound, face down, on a cannon and there undergo a flogging. So he drew himself up with a savage gleam in the eyes:
"Mind what you say, or I will have you to know that I am very rich, and otherwise of good position. It will be easy for me to make you repent any insolence to me or my friend. So, take my caution for it, you had better be respectful, and not forget whom you are addressing."
Gladsden slapped the Panama on his head which he had so far held in hand.
"If it comes to that, ma'am," he said, "you must allow me to remark, with all the respect that you claim, and which I will show you inasmuch as you are of the gentle sex, and for that reason solely, that you are labouring under an error. You don't seem fairly to know whom you are talking to! I am the captain and owner of this goleta, and, moreover, I am a foreigner. My deck is the same thing as a piece of the country under the colours of which I sail. However grand you may be over there, on land, your power falls pretty flat on these planks. I have the honour to present to you the deputy of Her Britannic Majesty's Consul who will bear me out in my observation."
