CHAPTER XXXVIII.

VULTURES AND SHARKS.

"Oh ho! oh ho! Above! below! Lightly and brightly they glide and go; The hungry and keen on the top are leaping, The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping!"

"Ah! well-a-day! What evil looks Had I from old and young; Instead of the cross, the albatross About my neck was hung."

When Hardy had concluded his part of the tale, he stuck the stump of his cigar into the wine-glass of ashes, as if he had no farther use for either, moistened his throat with a bumper of tinta, and almost unconsciously passed his left arm around Harry Darcantel's neck.

Stingo drank two bumpers, as if he had a particularly parched throat; but Paddy Burns and Tom Stewart, strange to relate, never wet their lips, and passed their hands in a careless way across their eyes, as if there were moisture enough there--as, indeed, there was; feeling, as they did, in the founts of their own generous natures, for their dear friend who sat opposite.

Piron's head rested, face downward, on his outspread hands, and a few drops trickled through his close-pressed fingers, but they were not wine. And as he raised his head and looked around the board, where glowing, sympathizing eyes met his, he said, in a low, subdued voice,

"I trust I may thank Heaven for avenging the murder of our child!"

Even as he uttered these words, his gaze rested on the face of Darcantel; and striking the table with a blow that made the glasses jingle, he started back, as he had done on the frigate's quarter-deck, and exclaimed,

"Great God! can it be possible that that boy was saved from the clutches of the drowned pirate!"

Not so fast, good Monsieur Piron--not so fast. Your boy was saved, and Captain Brand was not drowned. So keep quiet for a time, and you shall not only see that bloody pirate, but hear how he departed this life; only keep quiet!

Paddy Burns said, with a violent attempt at indignation, "Wirra, ye spalpeen! is it thinking of old Clinker and his 'arthquake ye are?" While Tom Stewart ejaculated, "Heeh, mon! are you for breaking the commodoor's decanters and wine-glasses, in the belief that ye are the eerthquak yersel?" Stingo, who was more calm, and a less excitable Creole, merely murmured, "Commodore, we want to hear more of what took place, and then what became of you for the past sixteen or seventeen years."

"You shall hear more if you are not tired, gentlemen, though I have very little to add to what Hardy has already related of the 'Centipede.' Steward, let the servants turn in; and brew us, yourself, a light jorum of Antigua punch! Now, then," said Commodore Cleveland, "I'm your man!

"After we had scaled the guns on both sides of the 'Scourge,' as Hardy has told you, the captain thought it an unnecessary trouble to lower the boats to pick up the chips floating about the mouth of the channel; and, besides, it would have been a bit dangerous, since the sea was coming in savagely, boiling about the ship, with a very uncertain depth of water around and under us; and, moreover, we had our hands full the best part of the night in reeving new running-gear, bending a new sail or two that had flapped to pieces when every thing was let go by the run in coming to anchor. However, before morning, we were in cruising trim once more, and ready to cut and run in case it was expedient to lose our ground-tackle, and get out of what we afterward learned was the Garotte Gorge. But by sunrise the wind fell away into a flat calm, and with the exception of the long, triple row of rollers heaving in occasionally from seaward, we lay as snug and quiet as could be.

"After breakfast the quarter boats were lowered, and Hardy took one, and I got in the other, and we pulled in toward the jaws of the channel, between the Lion Rock and the ledge on the opposite side.

"There were still a good many fragments of the wreck, which had escaped the reacting current out to sea, floating about on the water; some of the timbers, too, of the hull were jammed in the black gums of the ledge, shrouded in sea-weed and kelp, as if all had grown there together. Farther on was part of the fore-mast and top-mast, swimming nearly in mid-channel, anchored as it were by one of the shrouds--twisted, perhaps, around a sharp rock below. The top-sail was still fast to the yards, hoisted and sheeted home, and laid in the water transversely to the masts, just as it fell under the raking fire of our first broadside, jerking over the main-top-mast with it.

"A myriad of sea-birds, from Mother Carey's chickens to gulls and cormorants, and even vultures and eagles from the shore, were clustered on the wreck as thick as bees--screaming, croaking, and snapping at each other with their hard beaks and bills, while thousands more were hurrying in from seaward, and either swooped down over the ledge, or tried to find a place on the floating spars.

"The gorge, too, was alive with barracoutas and sharks, leaping out of water, or with their stiff triangular fins cutting just above the surface, and sometimes even grazing the blades of the cutter's oars. I pulled slowly toward the wreck of the fore-mast, and hooked on to the reef-cringle of the fore-top-sail. The birds did not move at our approach, and one old red-eyed vulture snapped on the polished bill of the boat-hook, leaving the marks of his beak in the smooth iron. Down in the clear green depths, too, the water was alive with ravenous fish, and we could see at times hundreds of them with their heads fastened on to some dark object, rolling it, and biting it, and pulling every way, with now and then the glance of a clean-picked bone shining white in the limpid water as the mass was jerked out of our sight.

"The bowmen, however, attracted my attention, and one of them sang out, as he pointed with his finger, 'I say, Mr. Cleveland, here's the captain and his priest lying in the belly of the top-sail!'

"I walked forward, while the men fired a few pistols to scare away the birds, and looked in. There, about a foot below the water, lay one drowned man and half the body of another, who had evidently been cut in twain by a twenty-four pound shot at the stomach, leaving only a few revolting shreds of entrails dangling beneath the carcass. The other corpse was a large, burly, fat man, wrapped in a black cassock, with a knotted rope to confine it at the midriff, and around his thick bare neck was a string of black beads, holding a gold and ebony crucifix, pendent in the water. The eyes of the one with half a body had been picked out by the gulls, but he still possessed a fang-like tusk, sticking through a hare-lip under a fringe of wiry mustache, which gave me a tolerable correct idea of his temper even without seeing his eyes. The truck and shivered stump of the main-top-mast, too, with the piratical flag still twisted around it, lay across his chest; but, as we approached, an eagle seized it in his beak, and, tearing it in tattered shreds, flew aloft, with the remains of the parted halliards streaming below his talons.

"The large lump rolling slowly over beside him had the crown of the head shaved, and the mouth and eyes were wide staring open, as if it was chanting forth a misericordia for his own soul. As I stood gazing at these revolting objects, and while the men were firing pistols and slashing the oars and boat-hooks around to drive away the greedy birds, a huge pelican, unmindful of powder or ash, made one dashing swoop into the sail, and as he came up and spread his broad pinions--nearly as broad as the sail itself--he held in his pouch the crucifix from the padre's neck, and as he slowly flapped his great wings and sailed away, with the beads dropping pit-a-pat-pat on the glassy surface of the water, a cloud of cormorants, gulls, and vultures took after him to steal his plunder.

"At the same time the sharks--many of them resting their cold, sharp noses on the very leech of the top-sail--waiting like hungry dogs for a bone, with a thousand more diving and cutting in the water beneath, at last cut through the canvas belly of the sail, and, before you could think, the floating corpses were within their serrated jaws. In another moment the bodies rose again to the surface outside the sail and wreck; then another dash from the monsters, and a greedy dive and peck from the birds; a few bubbles and shreds of black threads, and that was the last of those wretches until the sea shall give up its dead.

"As for Hardy, he pulled higher up the gorge, and examined the rocks and pools on both sides, but saw nothing living or dead, and we both returned to the ship."

Had Dick Hardy landed at the flat rock where the eddy swept in under the Lion's paws, he might have seen the footprint of a man, with a straw slipper in it; and following the track a few yards farther, he would have passed his sword through a villain lying bleeding in a mangrove thicket; and found, too, in his belt, snugly stowed away, a lot of gleaming jewels, with a sapphire gem of priceless value on the finger of his bloody hand. But never mind, Hardy! You will hear more of that man one of these days, and you will have no cause for regrets--though he will, perhaps; and, meanwhile, let him wander in quest of fresh villainies over Spanish South America.

"Well, gentlemen," resumed Commodore Cleveland, "although I have doubts whether the mangled carcass we saw in the sail was the captain of that notorious 'Centipede,' yet I felt confident at the time, and do now, that it was scarcely possible for him or a man of his crew to have escaped our fire and the water and rocks combined. So that evening, when the land-wind made, we tripped anchor and sailed away from the coast of Darien."

"Come, my friends," said Piron, in a low, tremulous voice, rising as he spoke, "we must not push Cleveland too far to-night, for it is getting late, you know, and they keep early hours on board men-of-war."

"No hurry, Piron! I'll talk to you all night, if you have the patience to listen to me. No? Then I'll have the boat manned." He touched a bell-rope which hung over his head, and the cabin door opened. "Orderly, my compliments to the officer of the watch, and desire him to call away the barge."

While some of the gentlemen in the forward cabin left the table, and stood about in groups chatting till the boat was reported, Piron put his arm around the commodore's belt, and they moved aft into the starboard stateroom. Little Mouse was lying sound asleep on the elegant cot, with all his clothes on, but with a smile on his lips, and dreaming, maybe, of the dear widowed mother he would one of those days make proud of him.

"Cleveland, my old friend, tell me more of that young Darcantel!"

"Hist! Piron, don't wake little Tiny! There's nothing to tell more than he is my adopted nephew, and the son of the gentleman who occupies that stateroom opposite. But when we go out to Escondido I'll tell you about his father, who has led a very adventurous life."

"Well, good-night! You will bring young Darcantel with you, and this little rogue, too, here in the cot. My wife and her sister will be delighted to see you all. Good-night!"

As the "Monongahela's" bell struck eight for midnight, the commodore's guests got in the barge and pulled toward the shore.

At the same time, a light gig, with handsome Harry Darcantel, went alongside the "Rosalie," and Commodore Cleveland turned into his friend's cot opposite, leaving small Mr. Mouse to sleep his dream out till morning; while, as the barge ran up to the landing at Kingston Harbor, and a gold ounce was slipped into the old coxswain's honest paw, what did they all think about? Good-night!