CHAPTER XXII.
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 Ignaçio, 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--Señor Pedillo accosted him thus:
"_Capitano_, the people are thirsty, and desire a barrel of wine."
"Not a drop, Señor 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 Ignaçio 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 Ignaçio, 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 Ignaçio 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 Ignaçio 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 monté.
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 Ignaçio 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, _señores_!" 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, _chère_ 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 Ignaçio'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 Ignaçio, if your men and boats are at the cove, we will make sharp work with your business. _Vamanos!_"