CHAPTER XLV.

WE SAIL FOR EUROPE.

Estremera was a smart little Andalusian, with large whiskers, which he curled with great care, and he wore his black hair shorn short. He had little gold rings in his ears, and the red point of a cigarito perpetually gleamed between his teeth. He wore a broad-brimmed straw-hat, from which a scarlet ribbon floated, and he was entirely clad in a spotless suit of white linen--jacket, waist-coat, and trousers. The ample collar of a shirt that was broadly striped with red and white was folded over his shoulders. He was about to speak, when Antonio, who was supported by two of the crew, suddenly exclaimed to one of them--

"Benito Ojeda--hah! Don't you remember me, Benito?"

"What, Antonio, is this you?" replied the seaman; "the best Cubano that ever sailed past the Morro light."

"Do you know this man, Benito?" asked the captain.

"Right well, senor, and will bear witness to his character," replied the sailor bluntly.

"Much value your evidence will be," said Estremera, contemptuously, "when you are known to be the greatest picaroon on board. Come, esta, senor," he added to me, "you are welcome."

"Muchos gratias, senor capitano," replied I, bowing low, as I stepped forward.

"But what in the name of mischief am I to do to provision you all?" said Estremera, with perplexity.

"After what I have endured, senor capitano, a very little food will suffice for me."

"Were you ever in Spain?"

"No, senor."

"How, then----"

"Oh! one may speak Spanish without having been in Spain," said I, smiling.

"Of course--of course. But what is this?" he added, on perceiving the wounds of Antonio; "Caramba! have you been fighting--killing one another?"

"Senor," said Hislop, "this is the picaroon of whom I told you--he who slew our captain and shipmates, and whom we thrust overboard; but who, as if by a miracle, reached the island of Alphonso before us."

"Bueno! And what more?"

"On seeing your ship come to anchor outside the reef," said I, with some anxiety for the issue of the affair, "he endeavored to kill me; and but for the sword with which I was armed, he had assuredly done so."

"To kill you--santos!--and why?"

"Lest I should accuse him of those crimes which he had committed in the _Eugenie_, and which so many of her surviving crew, now here on board, are ready to substantiate."

"And now in the name of justice, senor capitano, I demand that he be strung up at once at the foreyard-arm!" said Hislop.

"Demonio! I have neither the power nor the will to do that, before all these accusations have been inquired into and proved; and there is no chance of our meeting with a Spanish ship of war in these seas," replied the captain.

There was a pause, during which José Estremera scratched his right ear with an air of perplexity; and the aspect of Antonio, as he drooped between his friend, Benito Ojeda, and another seaman, was truly ghastly in the moonlight.

"Take that man below, and have his wounds looked to," said Captain Estremera to some of the crew. "Senor Hislop, I wish to speak with you alone on these matters; and meanwhile, Senor el Gobernador," he added, to the Dutch gentleman, "will excuse us."

He and Marc Hislop now retired aft to the taffrail, over which they leant and conversed, while the most of the crew went below with Antonio, who would no doubt give them his version of the story; while I remained near the binnacle, anxiously waiting the result of this conference, and watching the changing features of the fertile shore, the curved bay, the foam-covered coral reef, and every thicket with which I was so familiar--the palms, the chestnuts, and bananas--as the great Spanish merchantman swung slowly round at her anchor, when the soft night wind veered from east to south.

Silence soon reigned fore and aft, for there was none on deck but some of the passengers, smoking over the taffrail, the anchor-watch amid ships, and some of the _Eugenie's_ men loitering about the forecastle-bitts, that they might have an opportunity of speaking with me before turning in.

It would appear that, being loath to add to the number of his crew, who were a mixed and somewhat mutinous band of Spaniards, Cuban Creoles, and lascars, and having still a long voyage before him, he offered to rid us of Antonio, and supply us with muskets and ammunition, some medicines and cooking utensils, some old sails and spars wherewith to erect a comfortable hut, and to leave us all on the island of Alphonso, to the chance of being taken off by the next passing ship, which very possibly might be a British one.

My heart died within me on hearing this strange and most unexpected proposal.

"How would you rid us of Antonio, senor?" asked Hislop, gravely; "do you mean by hanging him?"

"Oh no!--by taking him with me to Spain."

"For what purpose?"

"To have him tried before the regidores at Cadiz."

"While all the witnesses are left behind?" resumed the Scotchman, with surprise.

"Demonio--that is true!" said the captain, scratching his ear again, for a partiality to his countryman was evident, and a little use of the knife is not deemed a very heinous crime in the land of Don Quixote.

"You can all work?" said he, in another tone.

"All--all can hand, reef, and steer."

"Bueno--one English sailor is worth a dozen Lascars; so if it were not for breaking an agreement, I would maroon them all ashore there. Hanging your Cubano might be very useful to terrify some of my crew who are very discontented; but I have not the authority to do so--and the greater is the pity, as I shall have to feed him, and there is no use in feeding up a fellow merely to hang him. Caramba! there is nothing for it but keeping you all until we reach Teneriffe;--I shall be compelled to run into Palma or Santa Cruz for fresh water, at all events; and when there, I shall leave the whole affair in the hands of Senor, the Captain-General of the Canaries."

"And meanwhile the Cubano----"

"Shall be put in the bilboes in the cable-tier, as he must be too dangerous a picaroon to leave afloat among a ship's company like mine."

A berth was prepared for Hislop and me in the steerage, while the rest of our shipmates were berthed among the Spaniards and dirty Lascars, neither of whom were much to their liking.

Food and wine were immediately provided for me. I partook of them greedily, and believe that, but for the new strength they gave me, I should have sunk altogether.

Old Tom Lambourne, Ned Carlton, and Probart, the carpenter, now rejoined me and expressed great discontent that Antonio was not "run up at once," adding the satisfaction with which they would all have "walked aft with the line, had he been at the other end of it," and prophesying evil to the ship and her crew if he was kept aboard.

"But what is the captain to do?" asked Probart; "'tain't no use attempting to kill that Cubano--he is either Davy Jones or the Devil!"

"Or Whirlwind Tom, as puts maggots into the midshipmen's nuts," said Lambourne, "and makes a sound ship leak, nobody knows how or why; sours the burgoo forward and the wine aft; makes many a poor fellow lose his hold when laying out on the yard-arm in a dark night, and works all manner o' mischief aboard."

"If he ain't Whirlwind Tom, out and out," added Probart, solemnly, and with increasing energy, as if by describing their own fears they wished to apologize for their desertion of me, "if he ain't Whirlwind Tom, I say he's something as bad, and I wish I was clear o' this here craft, before he works us all a mischief."

"I think he's the ghost of some old buccaneer that's been hung at Port Royal, or marooned on the Albuquerque Keys long ago," said Lambourne. "He has already found an old shipmate aboard, and may I never see the Nore again if they won't be up to something sly before long: for that fellow has sin enough on his soul to sink a seventy-four!"

The _San Ildefonso_ was a beautiful ship, and very man-o'-war-like in her general aspect.

Her decks were clean and spotless. Every rope was tidily belayed and coiled away in its place, and the brass mountings of her binnacle lamps, of her wheel and capstan, were all polished till, like the twelve brass nines she carried, they shone with the brightness of burnished gold.

She was thoroughly Spanish, though--for all the food on board, even to the cabin biscuits, had the flavor of garlic; and every thing else, even to the red and yellow flag at the gaff peak, was redolent of Havana cigars.

Her cargo was valuable, and consisted of the most choice productions of Java, such as sugar, coffee, pepper, indigo, and tobacco, with spices of all kinds.

Among her cabin passengers she had the Dutch Governor of Surabaya, a province of Java, which is bounded on the north by the sea of that name, and on the east by the Straits of Madura. He was a retired soldier, and latterly had been a planter, and was now returning home to Holland with a vast quantity of luggage, in which, as Hislop informed me, according to the rumor current about the forecastle, an almost fabulous amount of guilders was packed in canvas bags.

"And with a crew so mixed as ours," he added, "it is the reverse of pleasant to have such constant whispering about it, when we have to run along the wildest portion of the west coast of Africa."

For three days the _San Ildefonso_ remained at anchor a few fathoms off the reef, while her crew took every thing of value from the waterlogged brig that lay on the western shore.

Her iron cables and remaining anchor, her copper bolts, and a log or two of mahogany, with some coils of Manilla rope, were brought on board. The poor fellow whose bones were hanging at the fore-channel, found a Christian grave, for he was buried near the rock which had the Spanish legend carved on it; and there Fra Anselmo, the Portuguese missionary, performed the funeral services of his church; and solemnly for the unknown dead, the prayer seemed to go up to Heaven from that lonely islet in the South Atlantic.

Then, to my joy, the boats were hoisted on board,--the topsails were cast loose, and preparations made for leaving Alphonso.

The windlass was manned, and I saw Marc Hislop with the rest, handspike in hand, heaving short on the anchor, in his anxiety to get under way.

"Heave, my lads,--_heave and rally_!" I heard him shout, as if he had an English crew under his orders, and wished them to work briskly.

The anchor was soon tripped, and the headyards were filled as she payed off; but too slowly for Hislop's sailor eyes, for he shouted again in English, which he was safe to use,--

"Sheet home, you lubbers! Oh, Rodney, how slow these jack-Spaniards are! I would rather have one of our own sort than a hundred of them. Never mind--all's one for that! I'll have my foot on a deck of good British oak ere long. Now the canvas fills--she's under way at last, and walks through the water like a brave and handsome craft as she is!"

Now the island of Alphonso began to recede; the tall trees lessened to shrubs, the great bluffs to little tufted rocks, while the arms of that old familiar bay seemed to close and blend with the shore, as we bore away to the northward before a fresh, fair southern breeze.

Though I detested the island and all its features, yet I could not but watch them with interest, for it was a shore I should never see again.

The evening was lovely, and the blue waves of the ocean rolled in shining ripples which seemed to flow along with us.

Hislop and I stood on the forecastle leaning over the lee bow, and watching the white foam bubbling under her forefoot, as the sharp cutwater cleft the sea, till the rising spray began to sparkle about the catheads; then the brine-dripping anchors were fished up to the gunwale, and finally hoisted on board.

Fresher came the breeze, and now, as the studding-sail booms were rigged out to port and starboard, the ship flew through an ocean crimsoned by the setting sun, and I heard Hislop, as he sat on the bowsprit, singing in the lightness of his heart,--

Gaily we go o'er the salt blue seas, And the waves break white before us; Our canvas aloft swells out in the breeze; And _home_ points the pennant o'er us.