CHAPTER XLIV.

SNUFF OUT OF A DIAMOND BOX.

"Hark! a sound, Far and slight, Breathes around On the night; High and higher, Nigh and nigher, Like a fire Roaring bright."

"Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace-- Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right; Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily, Roland, a whit."

Another week rolled on. Old Clinker had pounded the parchment down as flat as last year's palm-leaves, rustling himself like the leaves of an old book, and began to squeeze out a few dry remarks about earthquakes. He at last got Paddy Burns, who was a round, fat man, with much blood in him, in such a state of excitement, by talking about cracks, and yawning chasms, and splits in the earth, clouds of dust, sulphureous smells, and beams falling down and pressing people to powder over their wine, that Paddy declared he thought he was swallowing sawdust and eating dried codfish at every sip of Antigua punch and suck of orange he took.

Tom Stewart, likewise, said he couldn't sleep a wink for quaking, and had cut a slice clean out of his chin while shaving, because his glass shook by a slamming door, and he thought his time had come.

Darcantel said nothing, but he took a quiet fancy to old Clinker, and talked for hours with him of the effect earthquakes had upon ships, and especially of general matters connected with the shipping interest, being withal very particular with regard to the appearance of the crews.

Piron looked grave, and heard the old clerk out, as if dried fruit were better than fresh, and limes sweeter than oranges.

Well, they were all sitting over their dessert at their last dinner at Escondido, for they were all going to leave old Clinker in the morning.

"Well, Clinker," said Piron, kindly, "don't let us talk any more about the earthquake. You told me yesterday that you had a note from Colonel Lawton, saying he would not take passage in the brig with us to New Orleans, as his business obliged him to leave before we could sail?"

Clinker choked out something like "Yes," as if it were the last sound a body could sigh with three or four hundred tons on his back.

"I'm dooced glad to hear it, Piron; for your military friend didn't enlist my fancy at all, and I don't believe any more of his patriot sarvice than I do in Clinker's earthquake. That colonel is a baste; and if my words prove true, I'll lave a thousand pounds to old Clinker there."

Paddy Burns's words did prove true; and old Clinker was with him when he gave a quake the earth had nothing to do with, it being entirely of an apoplectic nature; but he got the thousand pounds nevertheless.

"For once in your life, Burns, I agree with ye; and if that military mon went to shoot grouse with me in the Hielands, I'd tramp behind him, and keep both barrels of me gun cocked. The devil take his black wig and his green eyes! and he passing himsel' aff for a Scot, too! Tut, mon!"

"By the way, Clinker," said Piron, during a pause in the conversation, "if the colonel is not going with us, I must take him back his magnificent snuff-box he forgot when he left us so suddenly the other morning. Here it is, with the letters of his name on it in brilliants. I thought it too valuable to send by one of the blacks, and I kept it to carry myself."

How singular it was that the colonel should have forgotten his royal treasure! Keep your wits about you, Captain Brand, or one of these days you'll be forgetting your pistols.

"Given to him by a connection of his family, was it, Paddy? Weel, mon, let's take a peench for the honor of Sackveel Street, and then push it along to Meester Darcantel."

The doctor was sitting in his calm, grave way, listening to the disjointed words--like dry nuts dropping on the ground--from the shriveled lips of Clinker; but as he abstractedly put his fingers in the box, and turned his eyes languidly as he pushed down the lid, he gave a bound from his chair--with the box clutched in his left hand--giving a jar to the room and table that even made Clinker believe the forty-year earthquake had come before its time.

Standing there, with his tall, majestic figure, like a statue of bronze, his right arm poised with clenched hand aloft in a threatening attitude, his dark, grizzled locks bristling above his head, the black eyes flaming with an inhuman light, as if prepared to crush, with the power of a god, the pigmies around him, he said, in a deep low voice, which made the glasses ring and shudder,

"Who owns this bawble?"

"It belongs to a Colonel Lawton who has been staying here!" exclaimed Piron, quickly and hurriedly.

"What sort of man?" came again from those terrible lungs, without relaxing a muscle of his frame.

"A square-built, tallish fellow, of about feefty, with greenish-blue eyes, a black wig, and a glorious sapphire ring on the only finger of his left hand!" roared Burns and Stewart together.

Again came the jar of the earthquake to make the building, table, glasses, and all shake, as Paul Darcantel strode with his heels of adamant out of the sala and to the veranda; then a bound, which was heard in the room; and after five minutes' stupid silence Banou appeared.

The buckra gentleman had torn rather than led his master's barb from the stable, and scarcely waiting for a saddle, had thrown himself like an Indian across his back. There! his master might hear the clattering of the hoofs up the steep.

"The mon's daft--clean daft, mon!" "Be me sowl, it's the only pair of eyes I iver wouldn't like to look at over me saw-handled friend, Joe Manton!" "He's taken the box with him," crackled Clinker.

But that was the last that Paddy Burns, or Stewart, or Clinker ever saw of man or box. Piron rose and listened to the sound of the receding hoofs from the veranda; and when he resumed his place his lips were sealed for the night. _He_ saw, however, and the rest of them heard a good deal about the man and the box in time to come.

Did that blooded horse, as he dashed round the curve of the peak, with his thin nostrils blazing red in the dark night, know who his rider was, and on what errand he was bound? It was not snuff that distended those wide nostrils as he plunged down the broken road, through the close, deep forest, over rocks and water-courses, without missing a step with his sure, ringing hoofs; and mounting the sharp gorge beyond with the leap of a stag, his mane and tail streaming in the calm, thick night; the eyes lanterns of pursuing light, flashing out before his precipitous tread in jets of fire, as his feet struck the flinty stones, with a regular, enduring throb from his heaving chest, as an encouraging hand patted his shoulder and urged him onward.

Down the mountain again, with never a shy or a snort--the horse knowing the rider, and the man the noble beast; the lizards wheetling merrily, and the paroquets on the tree-tops waking up to chatter with satisfaction. Then into the beaten track along by the sea-shore, the horse increasing his stride at every minute, the spume flying in flakes from his flaming nostrils, and the man bending to his hot neck, smoothing away the white foam, until, with a panting stagger, horse and rider stood still in the town of Kingston.

"Here, my boys, rub this your master's horse down well, and walk him about the court-yard for an hour. There! Take this between you!"

One last pat of the steed's arched neck, a grateful neigh as the dark face pressed against his broad head, and Paul Darcantel strode away in the gray light of the morning.

"Gorra mighty! Nimble Jack, look at dis! Bress my modder in hebben, it am one gold ounce apiece, sure as dis gemman's name Ring Finger Bill! De Lord be good to dat tall massa! Him must hab plenty ob shiner to hove him away on poor niggers!"

Even while the tall man strode on toward the port, and as the happy blacks were chattering over their yapper, and walking the gallant steed up and down the paved court-yard, a dull, heavy-sailing Spanish brigantine was slowly sagging past Gallows Point and the Apostles' Battery, when, creeping on by the frowning forts of Port Royal, she held her course to sea.

Very different sort of craft from the counterfeit brigantine, with clean, lean bows, slipping out from the Tiger's Trap one sultry evening before a hurricane, which went careering, with a sea-hound after her, down to the Garotte Gorge. Different kind of a crew too; and Captain Brand must have remarked the contrast, with his keen, critical, nautical eye--that is, if he chanced to sail in both brigantines, as there is much reason for believing he did--with great disgust, on board the dirty, dumpy old ballahoo now just clear of Drunkenman's Cay, and heading alongshore for Helshire Point, bound for St. Jago de Cuba.