CHAPTER L.

SANTA CRUZ.

A few days after crossing the tropic of Cancer, on a lovely afternoon, we again saw the Peak of Teneriffe lighted up by the western sunshine, and rising like a cone of red flame from the blue sea.

The clouds seemed to rise with it, and ere long we saw its base spreading out beneath them.

"Tennyreef again!" I heard old Tom Lambourne muttering, as he leaned over the lee bow with a short pipe in his mouth; "Dash my wig! I have had a spell enough of Tennyreef before this!"

Manuel Gautier and Hislop now came with a party of seamen to get the anchors off the forecastle to her bows. This was no light task, the reader may be assured, for they were each about forty-five hundred weight; and now the ponderous cables rattled along the deck as they were bent to the iron rings.

We approached this singular island from a point that was new to me; but still its great and most familiar features were the same as when I first saw them from the deck of the _Eugenie_.

Estremera now reminded us that, when at Teneriffe, we should not fail to visit the two great sights of the island--the Valley of the Diamond and the old Dragon-tree of Caora.

The wind was fresh and fair, but fell light after sunset; and when the high land of the Grand Canary was on our starboard beam, it almost died away. As we crept on we saw the lighthouse at the base of La Montana Roxo, sparkling like a star above the waves of the sea, which in the warm sunset seemed to have turned into blood or port-wine, so deeply crimson was the glow that lingered on the clouds and on the shore; and then the vast peak--save where girdled in mid air by a light floating vapor--seemed all of a deep violet tint, dotted at its base by the white walls of houses, or of sugar-mills, and by groves of cocoa and rosewood trees.

Darkness was soon there, but still the sunset lingered in rays of fire upon the mighty Peak of Adam, on which the eye never tired of gazing.

By midnight we were abreast of it, and all was darkness at last, save where the millions of stars were sparkling in the wide blue dome of the sky.

Hislop and I were in the morning watch when the ship arrived off the mouth of the harbor of Santa Cruz--that pretty town, which Humboldt termed the grand caravanserai between Spain and the Indies.

A flash that broke upon the darkness, with a light puff of smoke floating away from the old castle walls, indicated the morning gun, and that dawn was visible.

It seemed as if it were but yesterday when the _Eugenie_ and the Costa Rican brig had worked out of the same harbor together, in the same species of dull twilight, and that all which had passed since that time had been a dream.

We beat in with the breeze ahead. The light of another day was rapidly _descending_ from the summit of the peak, and already that green girdle, named the Region of Laurels, was shining in the sunbeams; so ere long we saw the windows of the custom-house, which stands above the long mole, and all the shaded lattices of the terraced streets of Santa Cruz, glittering in gold and purple sheen.

The anchors were ready to be let go; the chain-cables were ranged upon deck in long coils that ran fore and aft; we tacked repeatedly; and each time the tacks became shorter and more frequent.

"Ready about! Presto! down with the helm,--let fly the head-sheets!" were the orders heard incessantly from Estremera and Manuel Gautier.

The yards slewed round sharply, and the canvas flapped with a sound like the cracking of musketry; at last, the anchor was let go about a half-mile from the shore in thirty fathoms water and the ship swung round head to wind as her courses were brailed up, and the men hurried aloft to hand the topsails and topgallant-sails; so she was soon denuded of her canvas.

When the anchor plunged into the frothy water, making a thousand concentric ripples run from the ship; and when I felt, by the instant strain upon the cable, that she had firm hold of the ground, my heart swelled with unalloyed happiness; for to be in Teneriffe was to be far on the watery high road to my home.

Santa Cruz, being the capital of these isles, is the residence of the Captain-General of the Canaries, the seat of the supreme court of law, and of all the consuls and commissaries of foreign powers, whose various flags, when displayed upon their houses, make the handsome streets as gay in aspect as the harbor, which is always crowded by the shipping of every nation.

A custom-house boat, with the Spanish ensign floating at the stern, came promptly off with an official, a dandified Creole in uniform, with a sombrero on his curly head, a sabre at his side, and a cigar in his mouth. To him Captain Estremera made a full report of the mutiny which had broken out in his ship when off the African coast, and the stern mode of its suppression.

Hence, in two hours after, we had the satisfaction of seeing Antonio el Cubano, Benito Ojeda, the old tindal of the Lascars, and eight other rascals, taken off to the Castle of Santa Cruz, in a large open boat, guarded by twelve Spanish soldiers, in charge of a lieutenant, Don Luiz Pineda.

I can still recall the glance of impotent and baffled malignity that Antonio bestowed on us as he went down the ship's side. It combined all the worst emotions of his angry heart, and somewhat reminded me of his face in that terrible moment when he swung at the end of the studdingsail-boom, with despair in his clutch and death at his heart.

We watched the boat till it reached the long stone mole, and then we saw the fixed bayonets of the escort flashing, as the whole party ascended the great stair toward the custom-house, and surrounded by a mob of those nautical idlers who usually make a pier their lounge, disappear in the interior of the town, as they marched toward the castle.

Two episodes more will close the story of Antonio,--his trial and punishment.