CHAPTER XXXVII

_A Pirate Band_

[Sidenote: A Pirate Feast]

The chamber whose costly equipment first told us of the opulence of its masters was set apart for the chief rovers, who were soon seated at a large table in its center, covered with luxury. Flagons of wine were brought from cellars known only to the initiated; fruits piled in silver baskets blushed along the board; plate of the richest workmanship, the plunder of palaces, glittered in every form; tripods loaded with aromatic wood threw a blaze up to the roof; and from the central arch hung a superb Greek lamp, shooting out light from a hundred mouths of serpents twined in all possible ways. The party before me were about thirty[40] as fierce-looking figures as ever toiled through tempest; some splendidly attired, some in the rough costume of the deck; but all jovial, and evidently determined to make the most of their time. Other men had paid for the banquet, and there was probably not a vase on their table that was not the purchase of personal hazard. They sat, conquerors, in the midst of their own trophies; and not the most self-indulgent son of opulence could have luxuriated more in his wealth, nor the most exquisite student of epicurism have discussed his luxuries with more finished and fastidious science. Lounging on couches covered with embroidered draperies, too costly for all but princes, they lectured the cooks without mercy: the venison, pheasants, sturgeon, and a multitude of other dishes were in succession pronounced utterly unfit to be touched, and the wine was tasted, and often dismissed, with the caprice of palates refined to the highest point of delicacy. Yet the sea air was not to be trifled with, and a succession of courses appeared, and were despatched with a diligence that prohibited all language beyond the pithy phrases of delight or disappointment.

[Sidenote: Wine-Tasters]

The wine at length set the conversation flowing, and from the merits of the various vintages the speakers diverged into the general subjects of politics and their profession; on the former of which they visited all parties with tolerably equal ridicule; and on the latter, declared unanimously that the only cause worthy of a man of sense was the cause for which they were assembled round that table. The next stage was the more hazardous one of personal jocularity; yet even this was got over with but a few murmurs from the parties suffering. Songs and toasts to themselves, their loves, and their enterprises in all time to come relieved the drier topics; and all was good fellowship until one unlucky goblet of spoiled wine soured the banquet.

“So, this you call Chian,” exclaimed a broad-built figure, whose yellow hair and blue eyes showed him to be a son of the North; “may I be poisoned,” and he made a hideous grimace, “if more detestable vinegar ever was brewed; let me but meet the merchant, and I shall teach him a lesson that he will remember when next he thinks of murdering men at their meals. Here, baboon, take it; it is fit only for such as you.”

He flung the goblet point-blank at the head of a negro, who escaped it only by bounding to one side with the agility of the ape that he much resembled.

“Bad news, Vladomir, for our winter’s stock, for half of it is Chian,” said a dark-featured and brilliant-eyed Arab, who sat at the head of the table. “Ho! Syphax, fill round from that flagon, and let us hold a council of war upon the delinquent wine.”

The slave dexterously changed the wine; it was poured round, pronounced first-rate, and the German was laughed at remorselessly.

“I suppose I am not to believe my own senses,” remonstrated Vladomir.

“Oh! by all means, as long as you keep them,” said one, laughing.

“Will you tell me that I don’t know the difference between wine and that poison?”

[Sidenote: A Dispute]

“Neither you nor any man, friend Vladomir, can know much upon the subject after his second dozen of goblets,” sneered another at the German’s national propensity.

“You do him injustice,” said a subtle-visaged Chiote at the opposite side of the table. “He is as much in his senses this moment as ever he was. There are brains of that happy constitution which defy alike reason and wine.”

“Well, I shall say no more,” murmured the German sullenly, “than confound the spot on which that wine grew, wherever it lies; the hungriest vineyard on the Rhine would be ashamed to show its equal. By Woden, the very taste will go with me to my grave.”

“Perhaps it may,” said the Chiote, irritated for the honor of his country, and significantly touching his dagger. “But were you ever in the island?”

“No; nor ever shall, with my own consent, if that flagon be from it,” growled the German, with his broad eye glaring on his adversary. “I have seen enough of its produce, alive and dead to-night.”

The wind roared without, and a tremendous thunder-peal checked the angry dialog. There was a general pause.

“Come, comrades, no quarreling,” cried the Arab. “Heavens, how the storm comes on! Nothing can ride out to-night. Here’s the captain’s health, and safe home to him.”

The cups were filled; but the disputants were not to be so easily reconciled.

“Ho! Memnon,” cried the master of the table to a sallow Egyptian richly clothed, whose simitar and dagger sparkled with jewels. He was engaged in close council with the rover at his side. “Lay by business now; you don’t like the wine or the toast?”

The Egyptian, startled from his conference, professed his perfect admiration of both, and sipping, returned to his whisper.

“Memnon will not drink for fear of letting out his secrets; for instance, where he found that simitar, or what has become of the owner,” said a young and handsome Idumean with a smile.

[Sidenote: The Egyptian Questioned]

“I should like to know by what authority you ask me questions on the subject. If it had been in your hands, I should have never thought any necessary,” retorted the scowling Egyptian.

“Aye, of course not, Memnon; my way is well known. Fight rather than steal; plunder rather than cheat; and, after the affair is over, account to captain and crew, rather than glitter in their property,” was the Idumean’s answer, with a glow of indignation reddening his striking features.

“By the by,” said the Arab, in whose eye the gems flashed temptingly, “I think Memnon is always under a lucky star. We come home in rags, but he regularly returns the better for his trip; Ptolemy himself has not a more exquisite tailor. All depends, however, upon a man’s knowledge of navigation in this world.”

“And friend Memnon knows every point of it but plain sailing,” said the contemptuous Idumean.

The Egyptian’s sallow skin grew livid. “I may be coward, or liar, or pilferer,” exclaimed he; “but if I were the whole three, I could stand no chance of being distinguished in the present company.”

“Insult to the whole profession,” laughingly exclaimed the Arab. “And now I insist, in the general name, on your giving a plain account of the proceeds of your last cruise. You can be at no loss for it.”

“No; for he has it by his side, and in the most brilliant arithmetic,” said Hanno, a satirical-visaged son of Carthage.

“I must hear no more on the subject,” bitterly pronounced the Egyptian. “Those diamonds belong to neither captain nor crew. I purchased them fairly, and the seller was, I will undertake to say, the better off of the two.”

“Yes; I will undertake to say,” laughed the Idumean, “that you left him the happiest dog in existence. It is care that makes man miserable, and the less we have to care for the happier we are. I have not a doubt you left the fellow at the summit of earthly rapture!”

“Aye!” added the Arab, “without a sorrow or a shekel in the world.”

[Sidenote: A Quarrel Over Wine]

Boisterous mirth followed the Egyptian, as he started from his couch and left the hall, casting fierce looks in his retreat, like Parthian arrows, on the carousal. The German had, in the mean time, fallen back in a doze, from which he was disturbed by the slave’s refilling his goblet.

“Aye, that tastes like wine,” said he, glancing at the Greek, who had by no means forgotten the controversy.

“Taste what it may, it is the very same wine that you railed at half an hour ago,” returned the Chiote; “the truth is, my good Vladomir, that the wine of Greece is like its language; both are exquisite and unrivaled to those who understand them. But Nature wisely adapts tastes to men, and men to tastes. I am not at all surprised that north of the Danube they prefer beer.”

The German had nothing to give back for the taunt but the frown that gathered on his black brow.

The Chiote pursued his triumph, and with a languid, lover-like gaze on the wine, which sparkled in purple radiance to the brim of its enameled cup, he apostrophized the produce of his fine country.

“Delicious grape!—essence of the sunshine and of the dew!—what vales but the vales of Chios could have produced thee? What tint of heaven is brighter than thy hue? What fragrance of earth richer than thy perfume?”

He lightly sipped a few drops from the edge, like a libation to the deity of taste.

“Exquisite draft!” breathed he; “unequaled but by the rosy lip and melting sigh of beauty! Well spoke the proverb: ‘Chios, whose wines steal every head, and whose women, every heart.’”

“You forget the rest,” gladly interrupted the German—“and whose men steal everything.”

A general laugh followed the retort, such as it was.

“Scythian!” said the Greek across the table, in a voice made low by rage, and preparing to strike.

“Liar!” roared the German, sweeping a blow of his falchion, which the Chiote escaped only by flinging himself on the ground. The blow fell on the table, where it caused wide devastation. All now started up; swords were out on every side, and nothing but forcing the antagonists to their cells prevented the last perils of a difference of palate. The storm bellowed deeper and deeper.

[Sidenote: The Captain]

“Here’s to the luck that sent us back before this north-wester thought of stirring abroad,” said the Arab. “I wish our noble captain were among us now. Where was he last seen?”

“Steering westward, off and on Rhodes, looking out for the galley that carried the procurator’s plate. But this wind must send him in before morning,” was the answer of Hanno.

“Or send him to the bottom, where many as bold a fellow has gone before him,” whispered a tall, haggard-looking Italian to the answerer.

“That would be good news for one of us at least,” said Hanno. “You would have no reckoning to settle. Your crew made a handsome affair of the Alexandrian prize, and the captain might be looking for returns, friend Tertullus.”

“Then let him look to himself. His time may be nearer than he thinks. His haughtiness to men as good as himself may provoke justice before long,” growled the Italian, in memory of some late discipline.

Hanno laughed loudly.

“Justice!—is the man mad? The very sound is high treason in our gallant company. Why, comrade, if justice ever ventured here, where would some of us have been these last six months?”

The sound caught the general ear; the allusion was understood, and the Italian was displeased.

“I hate to be remarkable,” said he; “with the honest it may be proper to be honest; but beside you, my facetious Hanno, a man should cultivate a little of the opposite school in mere compliment to his friend. You had no scruples when you hanged the merchant the other day.”

A murmur arose in the hall.

[Sidenote: The Philosophy of Robbers]

“Comrades,” said Hanno, with the air of an orator, “hear me too on that subject: three words will settle the question to men of sense. The merchant was a regular trader. Will any man who knows the world, and has brains an atom clearer than those with which fate has gifted my virtuous friend, believe that I, a regular liver by the merchant, would extinguish that by which I live? Sensible physicians never kill a patient while he can pay; sensible kings never exterminate a province when it can produce anything in the shape of a tax; sensible women never pray for the extinction of our sex until they despair of getting husbands; sensible husbands never wish their wives out of the world while they can get anything by their living: so, sensible men of our profession will never put a merchant under water until they can make nothing by his remaining above it. I have, for instance, raised contributions on that same trader every summer these five years; and, by the blessing of fortune, hope to have the same thing to say for five times as many years to come. No, I would not see any man touch a hair of his head. In six months he will have a cargo again, and I shall meet him with as much pleasure as ever.”

The Carthaginian was highly applauded.

“Malek, you don’t drink,” cried the Arab to a gigantic Ethiopian toward the end of the table. “Here, I pledge you in the very wine that was marked for the Emperor’s cellar.”

Malek tasted it, and sent back a cup in return.

“The Emperor’s wine may be good enough for him,” was the message; “but I prefer the wine yonder, marked for the Emperor’s butler.”

The verdict was fully in favor of the Ethiopian.

“In all matters of this kind,” said Malek, with an air of supreme taste, “I look first to the stores of the regular professors—the science of life is in the masters of the kitchen and the cellar. Your emperors and procurators, of course, must be content with what they can get. But the man who wishes to have the first-rate wine should be on good terms with the butler. I caught this sample on my last voyage after the imperial fleet. Nero never had such wine on his table.”

He indulged himself in a long draft of this exclusive luxury, and sank on his couch, with his hand clasping the superbly embossed flagon—a part of his prize.

[Sidenote: The Ethiopian’s Taint]

“The black churl,” said a little shriveled Syrian, “never shares; he keeps his wine as he keeps his money.”

“Aye, he keeps everything but his character,” whispered Hanno.

“There you wrong him,” observed the Syrian; “no man keeps his character more steadily. By Beelzebub! it is like his skin; neither will be blacker the longest day he has to live.”

A roar of laughter rose round the hall.

“Black or not black,” exclaimed the Ethiopian, with a sullen grin, that showed his teeth like the fangs of a wild beast, “my blood’s as red as yours.”

“Possibly,” retorted the little Syrian; “but as I must take your word on the subject till I shall have seen a drop of it spilt in fair fight, I only hope I may live and be happy till then; and I can not put up a better prayer for a merry old age.”

“There is no chance of your ever seeing it,” growled the Ethiopian; “you love the baggage and the hold too well to leave them to accident, be the fight fair or foul.”

The laugh was easily raised, and it was turned against the Syrian, who started up and declaimed with a fury of gesture that made the ridicule still louder.

“I appeal to all,” cried the fiery orator; “I appeal to every man of honor among us, whether by night or day, on land or water, I have ever been backward.”

“Never at an escape,” interrupted the Ethiopian.

“Whether I have ever broken faith with the band?”

“Likely enough; where nobody trusts, we may defy treason.”

“Whether my character and services are not known and valued by our captain?” still louder exclaimed the irritated Syrian.

“Aye, just as little as they deserve.”

[Sidenote: The Appearance of Salathiel]

“Silence, brute!” screamed the diminutive adversary, casting his keen eyes, that doubly blazed with rage, on the Ethiopian, who still lay embracing the flagon at his ease. “With heroes of your complexion I disdain all contest. If I must fight, it shall be with human beings; not with savages—not with monsters.”

The Ethiopian’s black cheek absolutely grew red; this taunt was the sting. At one prodigious bound he sprang across the table, and darted upon the Syrian’s throat with the roar and the fury of a tiger. All was instant confusion; lamps, flagons, fruits, were trampled on; the table was overthrown; swords and poniards flashed in all hands. The little Syrian yelled, strangling in the grasp of the black giant, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be rescued. The Arab, a fine athletic fellow, achieved this object, and bade him run for his life—a command with which he complied unhesitatingly, followed by a cheer from Hanno, who swore that if all trades failed, he would make his fortune by his heels at the Olympic games.

Our share in the scene was come. The fugitive, naturally bold enough, but startled by the savage ferocity of his antagonist, made his way toward our place of refuge. The black got loose and pursued. I disdained to be dragged forth as a lurking culprit, and flinging open the door stood before the crowd. The effect was marvelous. The tumult was hushed at once. Our haggered forms, seen by that half-intoxication which bewilders the brain before it enfeebles the senses, were completely fitted to startle the superstition that lurks in the bosom of every son of the sea; and for the moment they evidently took us for something better, or worse, than man.