CHAPTER X.

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, José, and give my compliments to Don Ignaçio, 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 Ignaçio 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 Ignaçio; 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 Ignaçio, _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 Ignaçio. _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 Ignaçio 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 Señor Ignaçio, "_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 Señor Ignaçio, 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,

"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."