CHAPTER XVII.

ANTONIO EL CUBANO.

As the strange boat pitched about on the waves some of our men asserted that, at times, they could see a man's head above the gunwale. Others expressed their doubts of this, and in the midst of such discussions we sheered alongside. Hislop caught its bow by the boat-hook, and while retaining his hold, fended off, to prevent her being dashed against ours.

In the bottom of this boat, which was evidently the clinker-built skiff of a merchant vessel, and was all painted yellow, as a preservation from the sun in a warm climate, there lay under the thwarts a man, either asleep, in a stupor, or dead,--at first we knew not which; but he was pale enough to have passed for the last.

By his tawny visage and coal-black beard, his long scarlet cap and sash, in which a sheathed knife was stuck, and also by the rings in his ears, we recognized him to be a Spanish seaman. He was a man naturally of a tall and powerful frame, but of forbidding aspect,--of great personal strength, but wasted apparently by toil, by exposure and famine.

A dark and coagulated crust of something like blood appeared on his baked lips and thick moustaches, on the blackness of which, the saline particles of the sea foam, dried by the tropical sun, glittered white as hoar frost on a bush in winter.

As we roused him, he grasped his knife instinctively and repulsively, but relinquished it, and then stared wildly at us, muttering in imploring tones,

"Aqua, aqua, por amor de Dios!"--(water, for the love of God). "Misericordia! O senores,--O Ave Maria, misericordia!"

"Here, Jack Spaniard, ship a drop o' this; it is the real Jamaiky," said Tattooed Tom, pouring between the parched lips of the Spaniard some rum from a bottle, which most likely had been put in the boat by the foresight of Hislop.

The black eyes of the castaway dilated and flashed as the spirit revived him, restoring his wasted energies, and bringing a hectic color to his cheek.

"Belay now," said Tom; "you must get some Thames water from the brig before you take more of this."

"Muchos gracias--many, many thanks," said the Spaniard, in tones of thankfulness.

"Enough o' that;--stow your slack, and come on board if you can," said Tom, testily, as he had sulky recollections of our adventures at the Grand Canary.

Restored by the mouthful of alcohol, the Spaniard staggered up, but with difficulty; and then we perceived that gouts of blood, dried and encrusted by the sun, were on his person, and on the inside of the boat, especially on one of the thwarts.

"What is this--blood?" asked Hislop, with an imperceptible shudder.

The Spaniard started, and became, if possible, paler at the question, as he nervously clutched the gunwale of his boat with both hands, and said, in broken accents,--

"My dog, senores; I killed a dog that was with me, because--because it went mad in the hot sunshine, and being without water."

"Why did you not throw it into the sea?"

"It would have bitten me, senor, and might perhaps have come into the boat again."

"Likely enough," muttered one of our men.

"You could have knocked it over with an oar," said Hislop; "but did your dog wear _this_!" he added, fishing up with the boat-hook a cap that lay in the bilge water under the stern sheets of the skiff.

"That cap is mine," said the Spaniard, in a husky voice, while closing his eyes, as if wearied or appalled.

"Have you two heads?" asked Hislop, sternly

"No, senor; but--but--"

"What then?"

"A man may have _two_ caps for all that."

Perceiving that he was on the point of sinking again, Tom Lambourne poured some more of the rum into his mouth, and we dragged him into our boat, setting the skiff, which was quite useless to us, adrift once more.

"What was your ship?" asked Hislop, who spoke Spanish fluently.

"The _Marshal Serrano_--a Spanish brig from Cadiz."

"From the Canaries last?" I inquired hastily.

"Yes; bound to Costa Rica."

Tom Lambourne gave me a rapid glance, as he spat on his hands and pushed his oar through the rowlock.

"She foundered and went down with all hands on board," continued the famished Spaniard, in a broken voice and with quivering hips.

"_All?_" reiterated Hislop, sternly and dubiously.

"All, save myself, senor," replied the other, hesitatingly, and lowering his hollow eyes; "I escaped in the skiff."

"With your dog?"

"Si, Senor."

"In what latitude did this take place?"

Without a moment's hesitation, the Spaniard gave us the latitude and longitude.

"I can't make out this fellow's story in any way," said Hislop, in English. "By the theory and law of storms, we should have had a touch of the same gale which foundered his brig--if such a gale existed. He has deserted, or been marooned. I don't believe a word he says. What is your name?" he asked in Spanish.

"Antonio."

I started on hearing it, for my suspicions were becoming more and more confirmed.

"Antonio. What more?"

"El Cubano, or the Cuban; for so my shipmates termed me, and I have no other name."

"Quick, my lads," said Hislop; "lay out on your oars."

We were soon alongside the _Eugenie_, and had our castaway hoisted on board, when, for a time, an end was put to our queries, but not to our surmises, by his becoming insensible. We had questioned him already perhaps too much, considering the weakness of his condition.

He adhered to his original story in every particular when examined by Weston and Hislop a day or two after; that he belonged to the Spanish merchant brig, _Marshal Serrano_, the same craft which had worked with us out of the road stead of Santa Cruz; that she had foundered in a storm, being overmasted and overladen, and that he alone had escaped of all the crew; that when his dog became mad, he had slain the animal and cast the carcase into the sea; and that he had been a week floating about in an open boat, without food and without aught to cool his parched tongue, save the heavy tropical dew of heaven, when we found him; and to the truth of all this, he was ready to swear over two crossed knives, in the fashion of his country.

In short, we were obliged to content ourselves with his narrative, which Hislop duly engrossed in the ship's log, while expressing great disbelief as to its authenticity.

In the first place, our mate denied that any such storm as that in which the Cuban alleged his brig perished had ever existed; and he deduced from his favorite theory that we were, and had been, in the direct _track_ of such a storm, and must have felt its influence long ere this.

Hence he thought it more probable that the man had deserted in the night, perhaps in consequence of committing some crime, or for the same reason had been marooned and set adrift.

The crew were divided in opinion, and Tom Lambourne openly expressed his disbelief that the blood which covered the clothes of the Cuban and the thwart of the boat ever came from the veins of a dog; and others asserted that he must have quarrelled with an unfortunate shipmate, and killed him; or had perhaps assassinated him in sleep for the horrible purpose of prolonging his own existence.

Amid these unpleasant surmises as to his character and position, in a few days the Spaniard joined the crew in working the ship, and proves himself to be a steady, industrious, and able seaman; and as three of our hands were on the sick list, his services were the more valuable.

On remarking this to Tom Lambourne,

"It is all very true, sir," he replied; "but I don't like a seaman who cannot look his shipmate right in the face."

"You are a physiognomist," I suggested.

"Don't know what kind of a _mist_ that may be, Master Rodney; but this I know--there is always something cunning and dangerous in a fellow who looks over your shoulder, as that Spaniard does, when he should look at your eyes."

Antonio had an excessive dislike for deck duty by night. He exhibited a strange dread of being left alone, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to look over the vessel's side, always shrinking back, as if he expected to see something hideous rise out of the sea. Weston suggested that perhaps his recent suffering had unmanned and rendered him nervous; but the crew thought otherwise.

In his sleep, Antonio frequently disturbed the men in the forecastle bunks by his mutterings, his wild dreams, outcries, and sonorous Spanish maledictions.

I was at the wheel on a calm and lovely night (it was the 13th of January), when we were off the beautiful shore of Hispaniola. I remember well that Cape Samanna bore west by south, and Cape Cabron west by north; for my task of steering was new to me, and Weston's orders were "to keep her full and by,"--that is, as close to the wind as possible without making the canvas shiver.

I could see the lights that glittered in the distant villages that studded the low but fertile peninsula of Samanna. All was still and quiet in the ship and around it. Soothed by the solemnity of the hour and the vast solitude of the sea, my heart was full, and busy memory brought before me loved faces and voices, places and scenes, that were far, far away in dear Old England.

The brig was gliding through the water rapidly but imperceptibly, and almost without a sound; the men of the watch were leaning over the bulwark to leeward; and the air, the sea, and all aloft and below, seemed to sleep in the moonlight; not a reef point pattered on the taut canvas, and scarcely a wavelet rippled, save in the dead-water astern that marked the white wake of the _Eugenie_.

Suddenly a shrill and piercing cry rang out upon the night, and Antonio the Cubano rushed from the forecastle with the wildest terror expressed in his black eyes; his visage was pale and ghastly, and the perspiration glittered like bead drops on his clammy brow. With his bare feet, he stumbled over the chain cable, which lay coiled on the deck, for on that afternoon we had hauled it up, and bent it to the working anchor.

He came running aft in his shirt, brandishing a knife in his hand, and exclaiming, in fierce and then imploring accents--

"Who says I did it?--who dares to say so?"

Then letting his arms drop as he slunk back to his bunk, we heard him groan out--

"_El cuchillo--el cuchillo!_" (the knife--the knife).

Hence, under such circumstances, it may easily be supposed that among the crew there floated strange and dark surmises as to the past life of Antonio el Cubano.