"'Oh, Senor Capitano, mi madre! (My mother!) What detains her? We seem to be going very fast through the water!'

"I gently took the girl's outstretched hands and led her back to the cushioned transom. Then I told her, as kindly as I could, that I did all in my power to save her good mother, but that the crew had mutinied—they had taken possession of the unfortunate ship—great confusion existed—and as I feared, you know, that my own boat would be swamped by remaining longer alongside, I was compelled to leave her to her fate.

"'But my mother, senor!' exclaimed the girl, with anguish; 'she was saved?'

"'No, senorita,' I said, 'she went down with the ship; but the last words she uttered—that is to me—were to invoke a blessing on my head, and to consign all she possessed to my care.' The poor thing swooned away as I uttered these words, and it was a long time before she came to again. When she did, however, regain consciousness, tears came to her relief, and I did all I could to soothe her distress by telling her that, if the wind came fair, she would in the course of a few days be restored to her father."

"But the wind didn't come fair, eh?" broke in Don Ignacio, "and she didn't see—"

"No, amigo, the wind held steady from the opposite quarter, and I thought it better not to beat up with a fished fore-mast, and all that—and a—she did not see her father."

Captain Brand here wet his thin lips with a few sips of wine, said, "Babette, bring coffee!" and resumed his story.

"When the girl became a little more calm I induced her to retire to my stateroom, where I left her to sob herself to sleep. Don't spill that coffee, Babette, and put the liqueurs on the table. There, that will do, old lady.

"Well, senores, the next morning my pretty prize was too ill to leave her room; but, as I handed her a cup of chocolate through the door curtains, she thanked me with much gratitude for what I had done, and knew that her dear father, the judge, would bless me."

"So he will," snarled the one-eyed old rascal, "if he ever catches you, when he draws the black cap over your head."

"Possibly he may, though perhaps it will be some considerable time before he has that pleasure."

"Ah! cuidado hico mio! Take care of yourself, my son," hiccoughed the priest as he crossed himself. The captain gave a light laugh, sipped his coffee, and went on as if a dungeon, scaffold, and noose were the last things he ever thought of.

"I amused myself during the day in looking over the trunks, caskets, and what not we had saved from the sinking trader—presented to me, as you know, by the old lady who was on board. There were, of course, a great quantity of ladies' dresses, and a good many jewels and trinkets; among the latter this fine snuff-box here, which our friend Don Ignacio so much admires, and which I set aside as an especial testimonial of the old lady's regard. Try another pinch, amigo? No? Bueno! I caused what I believed to be the daughter's elegant raiment to be placed in the after cabin. For three days I never even saw my pretty passenger, though I heard her low, sweet voice occasionally when I laid out something for her to eat in the adjoining cabin. She sang, too, some little sad songs with a voice which vibrated upon my ear like the notes of an Aeolian harp sighing in the night wind. Dios! how I regretted then and afterward that I did not have a cabinet piano!"

"Presented to you," suggested the doctor.

"Yes, presented to me, so that she might have touched the keys with those ivory and rose-tipped fingers.

"So the time passed, the schooner flying on under whole sails, the wind about two points free, and the weather as fine as silk. It was the fourth evening, I think, after parting with the Oporto trader that I induced my fair passenger to come on deck and take a little breath of sea-air. You will observe, caballeros, that I did not make this suggestion in the daytime, because the 'Centipede's' crew, you know, were rather numerous, and some of them not so handsome in point of personal looks as ladies at all times care to behold. Besides, there were certain things about the decks—racks of cutlasses, lockers of musketry along the rail, and a long brass twelve-pounder, which is not altogether hidden by the boat, you know, and might have given rise to a little curiosity, or maybe suspicion, even in the mind of a girl, as to our character, pursuits, and so forth, which I should have been puzzled to answer. Therefore I chose a clear starlight night to pay my homage, and accordingly I went below about four bells of the first watch to escort the little lady to the deck. She was dressed, and waiting for me in the cabin; and if I was so struck with her beauty when I first saw her, my heart thumped now against my ribs like a volley of musket-balls against an oak plank. She wore a black silk robe, such as Spanish women wear at early mass, and around the back part of her head—where the hair was gathered in a glossy knot, and secured by a gold bodkin—fell the heavy folds of a black lace mantilla, the lower end fastened sash fashion around her lithe waist. She stepped, too, like a queen on a pair of slim, long, delicate feet, with arched ball and instep, as if she were in command of the schooner.

"By my right arm!" exclaimed Captain Brand, shaking that member aloft in a glorious fit of enthusiasm, "I am quite sure she had conquered me, and that was more than half the battle!

"Well, I led her to the quarter-deck, where some cushions and flags had been placed for her near the weather taffrail, and where she sat down. The schooner was at the time under the two gaff-top-sails, the main boom and sheets eased off a little, those long masts, with the sticks above them running clear away up the sky, almost out of sight, bending like whalebone, and reeling over the long swell when the breeze freshened; and not a sound to be heard save now and then a light creak from the main boom as the broad white sail strained flat and taut over to leeward, or the rush of the water as it came hissing along from her sharp, clean bows, with a noise like a breeze through the leaves of a forest, away off over the counter into luminous sparkles as it swished out into our wake. The 'Centipede' was indeed doing her best, and you all know what that is, when we have been chased many and many a time by some of the fastest cruisers going.

"You remember, Don Ignacio, how the 'Juno' frigate nearly ran us under, and yet never gained a fathom on us in nine hours?"

"Ay, amigo; but, had she not carried away her fore-top-mast, in another hour there would have been nothing left of you afloat but a—hencoop perhaps."

"Quien sabe, compadre? If hads had been shads you would have had fish for your breakfast," rejoined the narrator; and then throwing back the lappels of his green velvet coat with an air of gentlemanly satisfaction, he hooked his thumbs in the arm-holes of his fine waistcoat, and went on.

"Well, senores, the graceful girl beside me never spoke scarcely for half an hour. I divined, however, what her thoughts might have been in dwelling on the painful scenes she had recently witnessed, and I held my peace also; for, you see, I have had considerable experience with women, and I have ever found that a man loses more by talking than by remaining watchful and attentive."

Captain Brand looked, as he gave utterance to this philosophical sentiment, as if he were a thirsty, cold-eyed tiger, lying in wait to spring upon an unwary passer-by.

"Yes, I waited, until at last she spoke.

"'Capitano,' she said, 'what a beautiful vessel you command, and how fast she sails!'

"What I replied, my friends, is neither here nor there; but I sank down on the cushions beside the lovely girl, and poured out a torrent of passionate words—which I really felt, too, at the time—as I don't think I ever uttered before or since. She was a little startled and nervous at first, but after a while I saw her stately head droop to one side till it rested on my shoulder; I stole my arm around her yielding waist and clasped her to my breast."

Here Captain Brand looked as if the tiger had already sprung upon the passer-by, and was sucking the blood, with his claws buried deep into the carcass.

"'Senor,' she murmured, in the low, sweet, plaintive note of a nightingale, 'I am a young and inexperienced girl, of an old and noble family; you have saved my life; my mother is gone, and I have no one to advise with, and, if my dear father smiles upon my choice, I will marry you; but do not, I implore you, deceive me!'"

"And you did not deceive her, I hope?" broke in the doctor, with a shiver of light from his determined eyes that was almost painful to see, so earnest and terrible it was, as he leaned forward with both of his clenched hands quivering nervously on the table.

Captain Brand looked at the doctor with rather a suspicious stare, and letting his thumbs drop from his armpits till they rested on the flaps of his waistcoat pockets, he replied, in a careless tone,

"Oh no, monsieur, I never deceived—a—that is to say, intentionally deceived a woman in all my life!"

"Let us hear more, my son," said the priest, thickly, who had now woke up from a short nap.

"Bueno, caballeros!" continued the narrator, as he tossed off a thimbleful of maraschino from a wicker-bound square bottle after his coffee. "Well, gentlemen, the young Portuguese damsel, Senorita Lucia, and I sat there under the weather rail till the first faint streaks of early dawn in the tropics began to announce the coming of the gray morning. Then she arose, and, leaning with a soft pressure on my arm, I took her to her cabin, kissed her sweet hands, and bade her good-night."

At this stage of the narrative Captain Brand threw himself triumphantly back in his large Manilla chair, and ran his white muscular hands through his dry light hair. Ay! the tiger had clutched his prey. An unprotected, young, and lovely girl had been won and lost, and her palpitating heart was soon to be torn from her tender body.



CHAPTER XVI.

NUPTIALS OF THE GIRL WITH DARK EYES.

"With a pint and a quarter of holy water He made the sacred sign, And he dashed the whole on the only daughter Of old Plantagenet's line!"

"But the count he felt the nervous work No more than any polygamous Turk, Or bold piratical skipper, Who, during his buccaneering search, Would as soon engage a 'hand' at church As a hand on board his clipper."

The captain got up from his chair, stepped to the settee, and, pulling the signal-cord on the wall, held a short dialogue with the man at the station; then, saying in a low, sharp whisper through the tube, "A bright look-out, Pedro!" he resumed his place at the table. The doctor had, in the mean while, got up and gone to the veranda, where, swinging in a Yucatan grass hammock, shielded from the night wind, lay his little patient sleeping soundly. Carefully closing the curtains again around him, he returned to his place. The padre was now all awake again, with his thick lips open, waiting for the captain to go on with his story. As for Don Ignacio, he never stirred body or limb, but his eye traveled about perpetually, and he observed the movements of his companions all at the same time. Still the hoarse roar of the pirates in their carouse arose from the covered sheds in the calm night, and the two solitary lights from each mast-head of the felucca and schooner twinkled above the basin of the inlet.

"And now, amigos," began again Captain Brand, after he had assured himself that all was going on as he could wish without, "I shall inform you of the sequel of my adventure with the Senorita Lucia. The evening after the night on which I had declared my passion, we were seated at dinner in the after cabin. Such a choice little dinner, too, as only our late friend, Lascar Joe, could prepare! Poor fellow, he'll never make another of those famous curries, though, no doubt, he'll find fire and pepper enough where he is, if the devil chooses to employ him. What a neat hand he was, too, with that spiral-bladed Malay creese of his! Ah! well—we were sitting over the dessert, and I was relating to my pretty passenger some account of my early days, and of my lady mother and my old squire of a father, omitting, perhaps, some few uninteresting details—"

Here the old commander of the felucca cackled, and his black, beady eye glittered as the thought flashed through his head as to what details his villainous compeer had omitted. How he forged his old father's name, which brought down his gray hairs in sorrow and disgrace to the grave; and how his poor mother, too, died of grief, together with other bitter memories, all of which Captain Brand, the pirate, omitted to mention.

"Yes, I related likewise some of my early privateering adventures, when all the broad Atlantic was alive with the fleets of France, England, and Spain; how I was captured by a Spanish brigantine"—omitting again to state that he got up a mutiny with the crew of that brigantine, poniarded the captain and mate in their sleep, and, assuming command of the vessel, changed her colors for a black flag, and began his career as a pirate in the Caribbean Sea—"and how I escaped. To all this she listened with great interest, her large eyes dilating, and her bosom swelling with sympathy as I proceeded, when suddenly the cabin door opened, and my ugly friend Pedillo put his head in, and gave me a warning nod.

"'What is it?' I said, rather sharply, to Pedillo; 'and how dare you intrude inside my cabin?' I fear, too, that I came very near doing a mischief to my boatswain; for I am rather impulsive at times, and by the merest accident I happened to have a small pistol in my pocket."

Don Ignacio twitched his sleeve, and looked as if he believed such accidents as pistols being found in the narrator's pockets happened quite often.

"'Senor,' said Pedillo, 'there are two sail standing out from the lee of Culebra Island, and one of them appears to be a large—'

"I stopped any farther particulars from the lips of my subordinate by a motion of my finger, and then, kissing the hands of the girl, who was somewhat surprised at what had transpired, I left the cabin and jumped on deck.

"The schooner was now running down through the Virgin's Passage between St. Thomas and Porto Rico, with a fine breeze on the quarter, and the sun was just sinking behind the last-named island. I snatched a spy-glass from the rail, and looked ahead. There, sure enough, was a sixteen-gun brig on the starboard tack heading across our track, and a large frigate under single-reefed top-sails stretching away over to the opposite shores of Culebra, while they were telegraphing bunting one with another as fast as the bright-colored flags could talk. And, as luck would have it, as I swept the glass round, what should I see but a long rakish corvette in company with a huge whale of a line-of-battle ship, with her double tier of ports glimmering away in the slanting rays of the sun, both on the wind, and coming out from under the lee of Culebra Point, just a mile or two astern of us. By the blood of Barabbas, caballeros, we were in a trap for wolves, and the hounds were in full cry! I immediately, however, luffed the schooner up, and steered boldly for the frigate; and, as a puff of smoke spouted out from the lee bow of the admiral to windward, and before the boom of the gun's report reached us, I hoisted American colors. Seeing this, the brig hove in stays, and, perhaps being ordered to board me, came staggering along on the other tack across our forefoot, while the frigate went round too, and held her wind toward her consorts to windward. Now this was just the disposition which I wanted of the vessels, and it could not have been done better for my plans had I been the admiral of the squadron. In less than a quarter of an hour, the brig—and no great things she was, with a contemptible battery, as I could see, of short carronades—hove aback a little on the bow of the schooner, and gave us a warning of a twenty-four pound shot across our forefoot, to heave to also, at the same time hoisting the English ensign.

"So ho!" ejaculated Captain Brand, as he twisted the point of his nose, accompanied by a malevolent scowl, "senores, I at once hauled flat aft the fore-sail, dropped the main peak, and put the helm up, as if to round to under the brig's stern; whereupon my man-of-war friend dropped a cutter into the water, and she had just shoved off in readiness to board me, when, before you could light a paper cigar, I ran up the main peak, got a pull of the sheets, and the 'Centipede' was off again like a shark with his fin above water, heading for the narrow passage between Culebra and Crab Islands. It was at least five minutes before that stupid brig could believe his eyes, and ten more before he got hold of the boat again, when she filled away and began to pop gun after gun at me as fast as he could bring his battery to bear! There was only one shot that skipped on board us, and that only smashed both legs of a negro, and then hopped off through the fore-sail to windward.

"Had I not had a good dinner that day and pleasant society on board"—how peculiarly the speaker smiled—"I should perhaps have taught that brig such a lesson that he would not have cared to report it to his admiral. But as I knew I had the heels of him, and as the rest of the squadron were now crowding all sail and keeping off in chase of me, I ordered Pedillo, just by way of touching my hat and saying 'Adios,' to clear away the long gun and return the brig's salute. The shot struck him just forward the night-heads by the bowsprit, and by the way the splinters flew and his jib and head-sails came down, I knew I had crippled him for an hour at least. At the same time, to prevent any mistakes as to our quality, and to satisfy the admiral's curiosity, we hauled down the Yankee colors and set our swallow-tailed flag!"

"Rather dark bunting! no?" edged in Don Ignacio.

"Ay, amigo! as black as that eye of thine, though not half so murderous," retorted the pirate as he continued his narrative.

"Bueno, there came the whole of the squadron down after us, spitting out from their bridle ports mouthfuls of cold iron, which all went to the bottom of the Virgin's Passage, for not one came within a mile of the schooner; and then I led them such a dance through that intricate cluster of reefs and islets, that soon after dark they gave up the game, and I said 'Buenos noches' to them all!"

Here Captain Brand paused, made a careful selection of a beautifully turned trabuco cigar from the box, shouted to Babette to produce some old Santa Cruz rum, sugar, lemons, and hot water—screeching hot, he said—at which the padre crossed himself; and then throwing his fine legs, incased in the lustrous silk stockings, on a chair beside him, and while his eyes gazed fondly on the brilliants sparkling in the buckles of his shoes, he resumed his tale.

"When I went below again, after every thing had become quiet on deck, I found my stag-eyed sweetheart waiting to receive me! How superbly she looked as she made a movement from the cushions where she had been reclining, and exclaimed,

"'Oh, senor, what has happened, and what was the cause of all that noise of guns, and those cries of agony I heard above?'

"'Querida Lucia, dearest,' I replied, 'we have been where there are—a—pirates, but fortunately have escaped, and the cries you heard were from one of my poor crew who got slightly wounded by a shot!'

"'Ah, malditos piratos! cursed pirates!' exclaimed the charming beauty, as she put both her hands in mine, 'and how thankful am I that you are not hurt! But, querido mio! dear one!' she went on, 'when shall we get to Porto Rico and our dear father? We must be near, for I heard one of your sailors shout to you the name of the island!'

"In reply, I told her that we had been near Porto Rico, but that—a—circumstances were such, on account of the dangerous pirates who infested those seas, that I felt obliged, for her safety—you understand—to run along by way of Hispaniola—she not having a very clear idea of the position and geography of those parts—and that our cruise might probably be prolonged for a few days more."

"And into h——, perhaps," said the doctor, with a hollow voice and a calm cold eye.

"Oh no, my friends, certainly nothing so bad as that. Possibly to heaven! but, quien sabe? no one can tell!

"However," pursued the captain, "I soon succeeded in allaying her apprehensions, and then I threw myself at her feet, and implored her to risk her father's displeasure and to marry me at once; that she knew her father was cold, stern, and obdurate, and should he frown upon my suit I should die of despair!"

"Cierto!" murmured Ignacio, with the grin of a skeleton.

"I used these passionate appeals and many more, until at last the fond girl yielded her consent to my entreaties.

"'But the priest, querido mio!' she exclaimed, as she rose and disengaged herself from my arms. I told her that I chanced to have one on board as a passenger, who would perform the ceremony.

"And so I had," added Captain Brand, "or at least a very near approach to one, for my ugly boatswain, Pedillo, had been bred up—as an acolyte—you comprehend—in the house of a rich old prelate of San Paulo Cathedral in Trinidad, to whom Pedillo, one fine morning, gave about eight inches of his cuchillo!"

"Jesus Maria!" exclaimed Padre Ricardo, starting back with horror, and telling his beads.

"Ay, mi padre! Pedillo assassinated the holy father, and plundered his cash-box besides; and so you see Pedillo was just the man I wanted."

Don Ignacio nodded his wicked old head through a cloud of cigar smoke as a sign of approval.

"Accordingly, senores, the next day I made the trusty Pedillo cut off all the bushy beard about his ugly face, and had the crown of his head shaved besides—quite like that round, oily spot there on the top of good Ricardo's poll—and then he rigged himself out in a clerical gown, to which the trunks of my bride's old mother contributed, and, take my word for it, he was as proper and rascally a looking priest as could be found on the island of Cuba. He performed the ceremony, too, by way of practice, on Lascar Joe and the second cook beforehand, with as much decorum and solemnity, and gave as pious a benediction, as his old Trinidad uncle, the prelate, ever did. Well, that evening we were married."

"How many times has the capitano been married?" grunted out Don Ignacio.

"Why, let me reflect," as he threw his cold, icy look at the frame of miniatures on the opposite wall. "You mean, compadre, how often the ceremony has been performed. Ah! I think on eleven occasions. No, it was only ten. Madame Mathilde had two husbands living when I made love to her, and declined to take a third. But then, you know, I have an affectionate disposition, and I can not set my heart against the fascinations of the sex."

He gave vent to these moral sentiments as if he really meant them to be believed and generally adopted by his audience.

"Well, that same evening I was married to the beautiful Senorita Lucia Lavarona, though I am sorry to say that Pedillo did not perform his part of the business as well as I had expected of him, from his practice in the morning. He stammered a good deal, and when he raised the crucifix to the lips of the young girl, her innocent looks and maidenly majesty of deportment so struck my coadjutor with confusion that he let the crucifix fall to the deck at her dainty feet. This little incident caused me some displeasure; but, reflecting that the poet tells us

'A tiger, 'tis said, will turn and flee From a maid in the pride of her purity,'

I said nothing to the abashed Pedillo as I gave him back the emblem; but I favored him with a look, with my right hand in my pocket—this fashion."

Here the cold-blooded scoundrel dipped his thumb and fore finger into the flap of his waistcoat, while the commander of the "Guarda Costa" waved his brown digit before him, as if he knew what was there all the time.

"Ah! that restored my new-made priest to his senses, and he then got through the ceremony entirely to my satisfaction.

"However," said Captain Brand, turning with lazy indifference toward Padre Ricardo, "ever after this I resolved not to take the risk of such another chance of failure, and this is the reason why I first sought your services."

"Gracias a Dios! Thanks be to heaven, my son, that you found me!" said the sacrilegious wretch, as he bowed to his superior and sipped a glass of rum punch. "Vamonos! let us hear more."

"At the conclusion of our nuptials, while I held my sweet Lucia to my heart, and kissed her pale brow, and while tears of crystal drops, half in rapture and half in sorrow, dimmed her large, sparkling black eyes, she withdrew this royal sapphire from her slender finger, and gently placing the gem on mine—where you see it, amigos—she said,

"'My dear and only love, this is the talisman of my race. It has been for ages in my family, and it has been the guardian of our hope and honor. Receive it, friend of my heart, and be the protector of the young girl who yielded up to you her very soul!'"

The doctor started as if he had been stung by a scorpion; but Captain Brand, heedless or inattentive to the movement, went on:

"Yes, caballeros, those were her very words; murmured, too, in her low contralto tones with a pure, lisping Castilian accent, as she laid her stately head on my shoulder.

"Ay, those were rapturous moments; and it was in some degree—yes, I may say in truth—entirely her own fault that they did not last.

"Well, for some days—eight or ten, perhaps—with light baffling winds, we crept stealthily along the south side of St. Domingo; but the weather was delightful, and the time passed on the wings of a zephyr. In the warm, soft evenings, with the moon or stars shedding their pearly gleams over the sea, she sat beside me on the deck of the schooner, watching with girlish interest the white sails above her head, or singing to me the sweet little sequidillas of her native land. And again, starting up from my arms, she would peep over the counter, trace the foam as it flashed and bubbled in our wake, or point to the track of a dolphin as he leaped above the luminous waves and went like a bullet to windward.

"I flatter myself, caballeros, that there have been periods in my career on the high seas, or on land, and may be again, for aught I know," continued the elegant pirate, as he crossed his legs and threw back the lappels of his velvet coat, so as to expose the magnificence of his waistcoat, and the frills on his broad, muscular chest, "when men of high birth and breeding, and lovely women too of noble lineage, have not thought it beneath them to dine with or to receive the homage of—a—Captain Brand.

"And, por Dios!"—the narrator did not consider it unbecoming his cloth and profession to swear in a foreign language—"por Dios! senores, I have known the time, too, when I have played whist with a French prince of the blood and two knights of the Golden Fleece."

"And you fleeced them? No?" muttered Don Ignacio, with an envious glimmer from his greedy eye, as if no one had a right to rob the community but himself.

"And not only that," continued the captain, rapidly, "but the daughter of an English peer of the realm once proposed to run away with me. Ho! ho! yes, she actually proposed to elope with me; but as she was verging on fifty years, and only weighed fifty pounds, with never a pound in her pocket, I sighed my regrets. Ay, great compliment it was, but I declined the honor. You yourself, compadre, must remember how I was received by the people on the Buena Vista villa at Principe; how the obispo blessed me, the old general embraced me, and the beautiful marquesa, with the hour-glass waist, smiled on me."

"Cierto!" That astute old Spaniard never forgot any thing, particularly a debt due to him; and he remembered, moreover, to have heard that when the noble Mi Lord Inglez left the villa one dark night, a good deal of plate, jewels, doubloons, and other valuable property disappeared with him. Ay, the sly old fellow had a faint recollection as well of seeing a heavily-armed schooner running the gauntlet through the forts before daylight, and that she left a certain bag of gold ounces for him—Don Ignacio Sanchez—somewhere in a secret hole beneath a well-known rock inside the harbor. Oh, a wonderful memory for matters of this nature had our rapacious one-eyed acquaintance!

"Yes," went on his partner in many a scene of pillage and crime, "I have every reason to know that I won the hearts, and purses too, sometimes, of some of the fine people I met in refined society. But yet there have been occasions when the game has gone against me—"

Don Ignacio's tenacious memory came again into play, and he looked back to the time when he himself had cleaned his profuse friend out of all his gains at the card-table, even to the buttons off his coat; but he gave no sign of remembrance of those days, and only blew a dense cloud of smoke from his thin yellow nostrils as the captain spoke.

"—Though those occasions have not been of frequent recurrence."

The good Padre Ricardo at this juncture hoped that, by Saint Barnabas, luck might, in all time to come, befriend his son and patron; croaking, too, with a goblet of punch to his unctuous lips, "Vamonos! Tell us more of the adorable Dona Lucia!"

Captain Brand rapped his snuff-box, opened the diamond-crusted lid, took a dainty pinch, laid his cambric handkerchief over his kerseymere breeches, and resumed his narrative.

"So passed the days, caballeros; and when, one morning, the high mountains back of Port Guantamano were reported to me, I felt a presentiment that my dream of bliss was drawing to a close. Indeed, I might probably have remained at sea a week or two longer, but the men were getting a little impatient, and I thought it better to sacrifice my own pleasure to theirs. That day we caught a cracking breeze out of the Windward Passage, and toward midnight we came up with this little sandy island here.

"The preparations for going into port excited the curiosity of my bride; for, poor thing! she believed we were bound into Porto Rico, and I had some trouble in inducing her to go below before we crossed the reef. Bueno! the coast was clear, the signals were all right, and an hour later the schooner had her anchor down and sails furled pretty much in the spot where she now lies moored.

"While, however, we were sweeping up the inlet, I sent a boat ahead, with directions for my tidy old housekeeper, Babette, to have every thing prepared to receive her new mistress. Just then one of those terrible thunder-storms came up; heavy masses of clouds obscured the sky, followed by such double-barrel shocks and intensely vivid lightning as is only beheld in the tropics preceding the equinox. The rain, too, came along in horizontal sheets, driven by a squall which burst in fury over the island, and it seemed to me that all the devils from hell were howling and shrieking in the air.

"Shielded from the storm by a large boat-cloak, I carried my beautiful bride, with her face nestling on my breast, to the cove, and then I bore her into this fine saloon.

"I shall never forget the sweet words she whispered, and the loving caresses she gave me on that little journey, even while the tempest almost dashed me to the ground, and the sharp flashes of lightning nearly blinded me. They were the last she ever lavished upon me."

No sigh escaped the lips of this cold-blooded monster as he uttered these words; no sign of feeling for the ruin of a gentle girl whom he had betrayed to his piratical den of infamy and crime—whose dream of life was destroyed like a crushed rose-leaf, and all her hope gone from that moment.



CHAPTER XVII.

DOOM OF DONA LUCIA.

"I went into the storm, And mocked the billows of the tossing sea; I said to Fate, What wilt thou do to me? I have not harmed a worm!

"Thy dim eyes tell a tale— A piteous tale of vigils; and the trace Of bitter tears is on thy beauteous face; Beauteous, and yet so pale!"

"Thus it ever is, caballeros, and ever will be," went on Captain Brand, in rather a reflecting strain. "There is a point to begin and stop, and an end to joy as well as grief. We should, however, take the world as it comes and as it goes. I do, and so do you, compadre!"—pitching a cigar spear fashion at Don Ignacio to attract his attention—"and, therefore, we should never look too far ahead, and live only for the present.

"Indulging then in this train of thought, as I set down my lovely burden here, and the cloak fell from her shoulders, I was prepared for any thing which might happen. I wore a slightly different costume at the time than that she had been accustomed to see me in, as I always do when I think there might be a chance of a surprise or trap laid for us in entering the inlet. So, instead of fine linen and velvet, I had on a red flannel shirt, canvas trowsers, with a cutlass slung to my side, and a pair of pistols in my belt. I don't think I appear handsome in that rig, but the fellows at my back somehow think it is becoming to me, especially when we are engaged in a hand-to-hand fight! What say you, compadre?"

The Don said nothing, and merely waved his fore finger, as if dress was not a matter to which he devoted much attention. He thought, however, that sleeves should be cut loose for knives when the pockets were not too small for pistols; but he uttered no word.

"Bueno! There I stood"—pointing to the corner of the room as he spoke—"drenched with rain, and there stood my tall and lovely wife!

"The saloon was brilliantly lighted; a profusion of plants and flowers were clustered here, there, and every where, on cabinets and tables, in striking contrast to the display exhibited yonder in that armory, where pikes, muskets, and knives were gleaming through the open door.

"Quick as the lightning which was piercing deep into the inmost crevices of the rocks and lighting up the crag without, Lucia's dark eyes flashed around the apartment from floor to ceiling, from flower to blade, resting an instant on the frame of miniatures there—hers was not among the collection then; it is the one in the middle, doctor—"

There were no knives on the table, or else, from the deadly look the doctor gave, he might have perhaps sprinkled the narrator's heart's blood on the floor.

"—Until at last her gaze of terror rested on me! No one, I fancy, can tell the power of Spanish girls, who has never seen them when the whole passion of their souls, either in love or hate, comes pouring in a black blaze of jet from their gleaming eyes.

"Advancing a step toward me, with her white hands clasped together, she said, in a hurried, beseeching voice—and low as was the sound, I heard it distinctly during the crashing thunder which shook the rocks of the crag to their foundations—

"'Senor! where am I? My father! Who—who—in the name of the Blessed Virgin, art thou?'

"Again giving a look of the utmost horror around the room, she pressed her hands to her eyes, and said, in the same low, distinct tone,

"'Speak, senor! For the love of our holy Savior, speak!'

"I felt that the girl had saved me, by her own instinctive perception, a world of painful explanations, and I replied,

"'Lucia! I divine that all farther concealments are useless; you are in the haunt of the most noted pirate of these seas, and that man stands before you.'

"Caballeros!" continued Captain Brand, "had my pretty prize swooned away, or fallen down in a fit, or gone into hysterics and torn her hair out by the roots, I should not have been greatly surprised; but she did none of those things. On the contrary, she became as calm as marble—frightfully so, in fact—and pushing back the bands of her magnificent tresses from her pale forehead, she raised her round white arm aloft, with her slender fore finger quivering like the tongue of a viper in mid air, and then poured forth such a torrent of awfully impressive words that I quailed before her.

"Yes, senores, I am no coward, take me when you will; but on this occasion I must honestly admit that I stood powerless before the gaze and gesture of that slight, delicately-formed woman.

"'Pirate—wretch—monster! may the curses of hell be heaped upon thee! Murderer—betrayer! may thy heart be burned, and thy soul blasted forever!'

"I need not pain you, senores, by reciting the cruel words that came hissing through her closed teeth, nor yet farther describe the terrible concentrated gaze of hate and fury which streamed from those gleaming eyes. Suffice it to say, that though often afterward I was treated in the same manner, yet, on the occasion alluded to, I cut short the interview by summoning Babette to see her mistress to her chamber, and then, glad to escape, I went out of the house and attended to the duties which required my presence."

The padre, with his flat lips half open, eagerly drinking in—with his Santa Cruz punch—the words of his patron; the doctor, calm, unmoved now, and thoughtful; the one-eyed old rascal, still puffing his cigarettes and allowing no rest to his uneasy, suspicious optic, all sat listening, with each an interest peculiarly his own, to the fate of Dona Lucia. The narrator leisurely arose and held his hourly confab with the man at the signal-station, and then returning to his place, proceeded with his discourse:

"I shall pass rapidly over, my friends, many little incidents of a rather unpleasant nature which occurred here, in this my rocky retreat, for some months after the interview which I have described. I tried every argument and persuasion I was master of to bring my proud bride to reason, but to all my entreaties she turned a cold and chilling stare of obdurate hate. Day by day the intensity of her detestation grew stronger and stronger, and seemed to have become a part of her nature. Yes; the gentle, yielding girl I had won on board the 'Centipede' had now become as stern and unbending as a rock, and my controlling power over her mind and love was gone. I left her entirely to herself for some weeks, until one day I thought her passion might have subsided, and once more, attired in a rich and splendid suit, I came in here, as she sat like a marble statue at table. She never looked up at my entrance, but her eyes shone like stars as she mechanically went through the forms of the dinner laid before her.

"'Lucia!' I said, gayly. No answer by word or look. 'Lucia! querida mia!' I repeated, and, sinking on one knee beside her, attempted to take her hand.

"By all the saints, senores, that came near—very near—being the last time that I ever should kneel to a woman; for with a movement so sudden that I had barely time to leap aside, she snatched a long pointed carving-knife from the table and lunged full at my throat! The blade just grazed my jugular artery, inflicting a slight wound. But she never turned round to see the extent of her effort, and again sat calm and rigid at the table.

"This was my last visit save one. I had long before abandoned these comfortable quarters entirely, and occupied the rooms you do, mi padre, out there among the men. In fact, my stern young bride was in entire command of the island; and even my good Babette here stood in such awe of her that she always crossed herself when called to approach her mistress.

"Month by month matters went on in this way, until the rainy season had gone, and I was preparing for another cruise in the schooner; but hour by hour the consuming passion which flamed in the veins of Lucia was doing its work. I sometimes beheld her standing out on the veranda, tall and stately as ever; and when the moon was at the full, it threw its light upon her wan and sunken cheeks, and thin, wasted frame. Ay, there she stood, like an almost transparent statue of alabaster, with her dark eyes shining with an unearthly light, turned in one long tearless gaze upon the ledge and combing breakers to seaward. It was singular, too, the effect she produced even upon the horde of these brave fellows of mine, for no persuasion could induce a man of them to come within pistol-shot of that part of the house while she was thus keeping her nightly vigils. And as for Pedillo, he acquired such a superstitious dread of the girl he had married, and lived in such a state of abject terror, that I had serious thoughts of shooting him through the head to avoid the contaminating influence he exercised over his comrades.

"Well, caballeros, late one Saturday night, while the men were carousing and drinking success to the coming cruise—we were to sail on the following Monday—and while I was returning from my usual stroll to the Tiger's Trap to see the battery in order and the look-outs wide awake, I met Babette toddling along, nearly out of breath.

"'What is it, old lady?' You know, amigos, that Babette never spoke a word in her life, but she made signs to let me know that I was wanted at the crag, and that there was no time to be lost. I quickened my pace, and, preceded by Babette, I once more darkened my own threshold. The curtains and hangings were all closely drawn in the saloon here, and it was dark as a tomb; but there was a light burning yonder in the passage leading to the chamber, and I made my way to the door.

"I shall never forget what I saw, though I should like to, as it comes to me sometimes in the night, or when I am left much alone by myself."

The pirate passed his hands over his eyes as if he saw something while he spoke, and then, letting his voice drop to an almost sepulchral pitch, he went on hurriedly:

"I stood at the door, caballeros, and looked in. On the bed, which was drawn to the middle of the chamber to get the air through the narrow loopholed windows, with the gauze curtains falling square on all sides, lay Lucia. Her attenuated frame scarcely presented an uneven surface beneath the snowy sheet which covered it. Her superb hair was spread in great black masses on the pillow, and her pale marble face reposed there like an ivory picture in an ebony setting. Her eyes were wide open, large and luminous, and her thin delicate hands were clasped around a silver and pearl crucifix, which rested on her hollow breast. A single taper in a silver lamp threw a lurid, flickering ray about the room, and beside it was Babette on her knees quivering with terror, while from one of the loopholed windows a broad white band of moonlight streamed directly across the pillow and face of the dying girl."

Captain Brand's face assumed a deathly pallor, and, with his icy blue eyes fixed on vacancy, and his voice sunk to a hoarse whisper, he went on:

"As I appeared in the portals of the door, Lucia slowly raised her fore finger, and beckoned me to approach. I could no more have resisted the summons than if a chain cable to a frigate's anchor had caught me in its iron coils, and was dragging me to the bottom of the sea. I moved to the foot of the bed.

"'Pirato!' came from her slightly-parted lips, in her old low and distinct tones. 'Pirato, behold your cruel work! Destroyer of mother and child—of soul and body—may the curses of a dying woman and her unborn child haunt you by day and by night!' I was dumb, and my pulse stopped beating.

"'Ave Maria purissima!' were the last words that came in a sweet, pure whisper from her parted lips; she clasped the crucifix tighter, and the spirit departed. I tore aside the gauze net to lay my hand on her heart, when, on my soul! her right hand slowly relaxed its death-grasp on the crucifix, and, rising to a vertical line, with the fore finger pointing upward, quivered in the light of the waning moon, like, as it was, a supernatural warning! Yes, that finger—"



"Mamma! mamma!" came in a weak, plaintive voice from the piazza, while the villain, with his hands before him as if to shut out a frightful vision, and eyeballs starting from their sockets, was hoarsely whispering to his horror-stricken audience the last warning of the dead Lucia.

As the low moaning cry in the stillness which reigned around the saloon struck his ear, he sprang with a bound to his feet, and, quick as thought, with a pistol in each hand, he shouted, "Who's there?"

"It is the little sick boy, senor. Do him no harm at your peril!" and the doctor stood towering before the pirate's leveled weapons.

"Maldito on the brat! Pshaw!" said Captain Brand, quieting down, and returning the pistols to his pockets. "How nervous I am! Excuse me, caballeros. I was thinking of something else."



CHAPTER XVIII.

END OF THE BANQUET.

"There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, As he stalked away with his iron box. Oh, ho! oh, ho! The cock doth crow, It is time for the fisher to rise and go. Fair luck to the abbot, fair luck to the shrine! He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line; Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the south, The pirate will carry my hook in his mouth."

In the pause which followed the dreadful episode just recounted by Captain Brand, the padre was occupied in pattering a prayer, counting his beads, and elevating his crucifix as if he was mumbling high mass at the altar. Don Ignacio slowly waved his brown fore finger, and his single spark of glowing eye glared fiercely and fixedly at his host. A clammy sweat burst out on the pallid brow of the doctor, and his hands were clutched before him on the table like the jaws of a steel vice. And still the drunken shrieks and cheers of the piratical crew at the sheds arose wild and shrill in the calm night, making a gloomy echo for the banquet. The doctor was the first to break the awkward silence which pervaded the saloon.

"Capitano!" said he, in his habitual calm, deep voice, "with respect to what you said in the early part of the evening, of breaking up this establishment, what, may I ask, are your plans for the future?"

"Gracias! amigo doctor! Thank you, my friend, for changing the conversation. My plans! eh! ah! Well, they are these—"

Here Captain Brand's face assumed its usual expression; and entirely himself again, he went on to state, in a precise, business-like way, the views he had resolved upon for future action.

"—To-morrow, gentlemen, is Sunday. Those boisterous fellows out there, after mass, will need rest all the day. On Monday, however, I shall begin to change the rig of the schooner, fill up with provisions for a long cruise, take on board all the loose odds and ends we have stowed here, of course," he added, as he remarked an inquiring and a rather alarmed mercenary look from the Tuerto's glim—"of course, after having squared up all claims of our compadre there!"

"Hum!" croaked that sharp rascal, with a nod of satisfaction quite like an old raven.

"Then, senores, I shall burn or destroy the old sheds, and bury the cannon and heavy articles we can not find room for in the 'Centipede;' when, if nothing happens, we shall trip anchor and spread our sails for sea!

"Babette! Babette! Really I believe that dear old negress has fallen asleep. Babette! ah! there you are, my beauty! See if you can't give us a bowl of okra gumbo before we break up here!"

Babette had not been asleep. Oh no! She had her ear to the door of the saloon, and was listening to the sad history of Dona Lucia, and when her master came to the final scene the old woman fell on her knees and shivered all over, where she remained until the sound of the captain's voice again called her to her duties.

"And when we have left these quiet waters, my son!" broke in the padre, "what then?"

The fact was, that the carnivorous and vinous Father Ricardo knew that his stomach was not suited for high winds and rough oceans, and was hoping that some scheme might be devised to allow him to remain tranquilly on the island.

"Why, holy padre, I propose to steer clear of the West Indies by some unfrequented track, and, striking the broad Atlantic, stretch down the coast of Brazil. Perhaps we may double Cape Horn, and see what those miserable patriots are fighting for in Chili and Peru; then maybe across the Pacific, to the lovely islands and maidens of Polynesia; so on to the China Seas, where we may fall in with an outward-bound Canton trader, or a galleon with a ton or two of silver on board—who knows?—there is plenty of blue water and fine ships every where; so we must be content."

Padre Ricardo made the sign of the cross, kissed his thumb and fore finger, and, reaching his dirty paw over to the captain, shook hands with him.

"Ay, amigos!" continued the leader, without minding the friendly interruption; "yes, my friends, we shall, I trust, give the hounds in search of us the slip; and even should they scent out this retired little spot, they will have their trouble for their chase, and find nothing but a few stones and heaps of rubbish above ground."

"They may find some little matters below, though," chimed in the commander of the felucca.

"If they do," retorted the pirate, with a meaning scowl, "I'll put the spy who betrays it to such a torture as that he'll wish himself below ground when I come back here."

"Cierto, amigo! no fear of that!" muttered the Tuerto, with some little trepidation of manner. "My papers are white."

"Captain Brand," said the doctor, "my contract with you is nearly up, and since I only agreed—as you know—to enlist my professional services here on shore, I presume you will have no objections to permit me to depart with Don Ignacio in the felucca."

It would be difficult to say what caused the flush of passion which overspread the leader's face as he listened to this simple request, but it was full a minute before he replied, and then, having weighed the matter carefully in his mind, he said, in a precise and determined tone, in French,

"Monsieur le Docteur! the compacts that I have made with all those that have taken service with me have never been broken except by death. I can not, therefore, consider your request, and I shall expect you to sail with me in the schooner."

Then he added, quickly, as he noticed a certain haughty expression in his subordinate's face, "Pardon me, monsieur; we had better not discuss this question now. Suppose you see me on the morrow."

"Willingly, senor, and you will find my resolution unchangeable." Rising as he spoke, he bowed to his companions at table, and saying "Buenas noches! (good-night!)" he passed from the saloon to the piazza. There he paused a moment, as if communing with himself, and then approaching the grass hammock where the sick boy was sleeping, he gently took the little fellow up in his arms. The child murmured "Mamma, mamma!" and was borne away.

Captain Brand followed the doctor with his searching, sharklike eyes until he had left the apartment, and there was something that denoted danger in the look; but he uttered no sound, and, placing a finger on his lip, he nodded meaningly to the padre.

A moment after Babette brought in the steaming gumbo soup, and the pirate's feast was nearly ended. Don Ignacio waited until his companions had swallowed a goodly portion of the grateful mess, when he too refreshed himself. Then making his salutations in his usual observant manner, he departed. He declined, however, the offer of his host's society to his boat, saying he had, he knew, half a dozen of the felucca's crew outside the building to guard his footsteps, and he would not put the capitano to the trouble.

When the padre rose to give his benediction to his patron, the captain took him impressively by the rope which girded his cassock about the loins, and giving it a sharp jerk or two, he said,

"My holy father, I think we shall have a sad duty to perform to-morrow. Our old friend Gibbs has behaved badly, and I shall punish him. He is now in the Capella dungeon. After early mass go and console him."

The padre returned a meaning smile, crossed himself, and slowly left the pirate alone in his saloon.



CHAPTER XIX.

FANDANGO ON ONE LEG.

"God! 'tis a fearsome thing to see That pale wan man's mute agony— Those pinioned arms, those hands that ne'er Shall be lifted again—not even in prayer! That heaving chest! Enough; 'tis done! The bolt has fallen! the spirit is gone."

Day dawned in the east. The early spikes of morning shot up in rosy bands from behind the lofty hills of Cuba and announced the coming of the sun. The inlet and basin, framed in by their rocky walls, were still clothed in the gloom of night, and dimly reflecting the fading stars on the calm unruffled surface where the schooner and felucca were moored. Away off in the distance a dense white misty vapor hung flat and low over the lagoon and thickets of mangroves, with not a breath of air to disturb the noxious fog or quiver a leaf in the silent groves. The revels, too, of the drunken sailors had long since ceased; the sentinels, with their cutlasses in the sheaths, paced slowly to and fro before the doors of the sheds, and the look-outs at the signal-stations and battery peered through the early dawn to seaward; else not a sound or moving thing, save a teal or two fluttering with a sharp cry up and down the lagoon; the music of the tiny ripples lapping on the shelly beach; and the low roar, in a deep bass, breaking and moaning over the ledge beyond the island. Such was the appearance of things where our scene is laid in the Twelve League Group of Keys, on a Sunday morning, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and five.

Half a mile, perhaps, inland from the sheds where the sailors lived, and beneath the steep face of the ridge-like crag which split the island in two parts, stood a low chapel, built of loose stones nicely fitted together and roofed with tiles. A rough iron cross was fastened over the doorless entrance, and at the other end was a stone balustrade, with a rude painting of the Virgin over the altar, on which stood four or five tall brass candlesticks and a lighted taper. Outside the building was a narrow and secluded inclosure, surrounded by a low wall of coral rocks, with a few head-stones marked with black crosses—the graves of the pirates whose bones reposed beneath. At one end of this burial-place was still another subdivision, where stood ten upright flat white stones, on whose faces were rudely carved initial letters, with the years in which the eternal sleepers had been laid beneath the sand. Far and near sprang up close and almost impenetrable thickets of cactus, whose sharp and pointed needle-shoots defied the passage of any thing more bulky than land-crabs and lizards. One or two narrow pathways had been cut out here and there, but they were overgrown again by the stubborn, hardy vegetation; and only with the risk of losing one's trowsers, and having one's legs cut in gashes, could a human being struggle through it.

Within the chapel kneeled a dozen or more of the "Centipede's" crew, the coarse and sodden faces and uncombed locks, from their night's debauch, in striking contrast to the place and the apparent devoutness of manner in which they crossed themselves while the rites of the Church were going on. Before the altar stood Padre Ricardo, with his breviary on the chancel beneath the taper, and chanting forth from his deep lungs the services of the mass. In a few minutes the unholy hands and lips which performed the solemn ceremony ceased word and gesture, and with a sonorous benediction at the elevation of the Host, and a tinkle of a bell, the sailors arose from their knees and again staggered back to the sheds, to slumber through the day. When all had gone, the padre clasped his missal, tucked it into his bosom, and making the sign of the cross with a genuflexion before the Virgin, the sacrilegious wretch turned and left the chapel.

Pursuing the winding path which led to his own habitation for a certain distance, he then turned to the left, and carefully picking his way through the sharp cactus and Spanish bayonets along the face of the crag, he stopped at a yawning fissure which gaped open in the rock. Here, too, the same wiry vegetation had crept, and it was with great difficulty, and many an "Ave!" and "Santa Maria!" that the padre succeeded in passing into the dark, rugged mouth of the cavern.

"By the ashes of San Lorenzo!" he muttered, "there are serpents and venomous insects in this pit of purgatory. Oh, misericordia! what has pierced my leg? Why should my son drag me through this hole? Ah! blessed Saint Barnabas! a slimy reptile has crossed my instep!"

Feeling with his outspread hands in his fright, as he gradually made his way into the dripping cavern, getting narrower and lower as he proceeded, he at last, after stumbling prayerfully along for about a hundred and fifty yards, came to a loose pile of stones. Here opened another low narrow fissure on the left, and, in some doubt, he was about to enter; but the noise he made by stepping on a stone was answered by the hissing warning of a serpent, and the scared padre fell back at his full length in a pool of stagnant slimy water.

"O Madre di Dios! I am stung by a cobra! Holy Virgin! my new cassock ruined too! Ave Maria! light me out of this abode of the devil!"

Slowly recovering, however, from his fright, he once more regained his feet, and, after a few steps, which he was obliged to accomplish by scraping his crown against the jagged rocks above, his outstretched hands touched an iron-bound door.

"Gracias a Dios! Thanks be to all the saints, I am here at last; but, alas! curses on me, I shall be obliged to return by the same path unless my son allows me to escape by the casa."

Cautiously searching with his fingers as he muttered these words, he touched a bolt, and, grasping it with both hands, drew it partly out like the knob of a bell. Then, placing his ear to the door, he presently heard a rattling, creaking noise, as if a beam of timber, with pulley and chain, was being raised from behind the entrance. When the sound ceased the door yielded to the padre's sturdy shoulder, and there was just room to admit his portly body. Here the passage was wider, the rock evidently chiseled away by the hands of man, and on one side was an artificial chamber, blasted out of the solid rock, with a narrow door with heavy iron bolts on the outside. At this opening the padre paused and listened. No sound caught his ear at first, but as he clutched the bolt and it grated back in its bands, he was saluted by such a volley of frightful curses as to make him start back and cross his ample breast. It was the voice of Master Gibbs, lying there on a low iron settle in the noisome dungeon, with not a ray of light to cheer him, and only a jug of water and some weevily biscuit to save him from starvation. All through the day and during the long, long hours of the awful night, in pain and suffering from his lopped-off limb and bruises, had he lain on his hard bed with clenched hands, blaspheming and impotently raging in his agony and despair. No prayer, however, dawned in his ruthless heart, or was breathed from his brutal lips; but curses upon curses came thick and fast, till his tongue refused to give them utterance, and he fell back in utter exhaustion. As the noise, however, of the bolt struck his ear, he clutched the stone water-jug from the floor, and hurled it, with a yell of execrations, toward the door, where the fragments fell with a clattering crash on the stone pavement.

Grinding his teeth in his frightful passion, he howled,

"Let me but once put these hands on your bloodstained carcass, and if the mother that bore ye will know her spawn again, my name's not Bill Gibbs! Ha! you miserable swab, with your soft words and white hands! when I get out of this hole I'll blow you and your infarnal hounds to ——! Give me fair play, and, even on one of my legs, I'll cut the cowardly heart out of you, Captain Brand! Come in, will ye? ye son of the devil, and I'll bite the tongue out of your mouth by the roots!"



Here the hoarse and panting wretch again ceased his roarings, and the padre timidly opened the door.

"Ha! who's that? Babette?"

"No, my son, it is your good Padre Ricardo, come to console you."

What the maimed villain replied to the priest, and what means the holy father took to allay the passion and assuage the sorrows of the man lying helpless in the dungeon, or whether successful in his mission, is not important to state in detail. An hour later, however, the priest seemed relieved in body and spirit as he retired from the loathsome hole, and shooting the bolt as he closed the door, cautiously felt his way along the dark and narrow passage. Presently, as he turned an angle, a ray of light from the loopholes of the great stone vault beneath the pirate's dwelling lighted his pathway; and a moment after, with a hearty sigh of satisfaction, he seized a cord above his head and gave it a jerk. A bell sounded above, and then a large, square-hinged trap-hatch fell down, swinging gently to and fro from the beams above. At the same time the padre put his arms about a square wooden stanchion which supported the floor of the saloon, and then painfully sticking his toes in some deep-cut notches at the sides, he slowly began to mount upward. When, however, his oily shaved crown appeared nearly at the level of the floor, a vigorous grasp was laid on his shoulders, and he was pulled up like a flapping lobster and rolled into the apartment. It was Captain Brand who kindly assisted the holy father, and it was the captain's hollow laugh which saluted him in his torn and soiled raiment, as, with difficulty, he regained his perpendicular.

"Laugh not, hijo mio, at my sorrowful plight," said the bruised Ricardo, with some asperity; "I have met with dangers of venomous serpents, and been stabbed cruelly by those villainous cactus."

"But I raised the beam, my padre, the moment you made the signal."

"You did, my son; but what I suffered in the cavern was as nothing to what I endured when I entered the dungeon of the English Gibbs. Jesus Maria, what an infidel he is!"

"You did not find his spirit subdued, then, by bread and water?"

"Far from it, my friend. He rages like a wild beast. He consigns your body and soul to everlasting torments! But, what is more impious still," went on the padre, as he crossed himself, "he damned your holy father, and hoped I would roast in hell!"

"But he confessed, Ricardo, and you gave him absolution?"

"If calling me thief and assassin, and hurling his stone water-jug at my head, be confession and forgiveness of sins, the ceremony has been performed. Ah! my son, he needs no more mercy in this world!"

"Of course not, my padre; and we will give him a short shrift and a long rope."

"Babette!" continued Captain Brand. "Ah! my Baba, you have not forgotten to feed our jolly Gibbs there below? No? I thought not. Well, then, it is Sunday, you know; give him a pint of pure rum for his morning's draught. And, Baba, my beauty, slip a pair of iron ruffles over his wrists, and then pass a cloth over those bloodshot eyes of his, and lug him here beneath this hatch. Go down by your own ladder, and be quick, my Baba, as I wish my breakfast presently!"

All this was said in a cool and rather an affectionate tone, as Captain Brand sipped a spoonful or two of chocolate from a cup of Dresden china. Then turning to the padre, he said,

"You would perhaps like a cordial, my father, to take the chill off your stomach? Yes. You will find some capital Curacoa in that stand of bottles there."

The padre, forgetful of the dignity of his calling, shuffled with indecent haste to the spot indicated, and, without going through the form of filling one of the diminutive thimble-shaped glasses in the stand, he boldly raised the silver-netted flask to his lips, and sucked away until it was nearly empty. Then seating himself on the settee, he lugged out his illuminated missal and pored over its contents. Captain Brand occupied himself with opening the loop of the silk rope which fell from the ceiling, and securing the end firmly on the stout cleat at the wall.

So passed the time until a noise beneath the room of a voice in anger, and a body bumped and dragged along, once more attracted the attention of those in the saloon.

"Oh ho! is that you, Master Gibbs?" exclaimed Captain Brand, in a cheerful voice. "You have risen early; but stop that profane language, my friend, or you will never see daylight again!"

The maimed ruffian only muttered, "Your friend, eh? blindfolded and manacled!" And then, apparently abashed by the cool, commanding tone of his superior, he held his peace.

"Well, you are quiet, my lad. Now we'll see if we can't hoist you up here in the saloon."

"Thank ye, sir!" said Gibbs, aloud; and then he muttered to himself, "Let me jest get one grip of ye, and I'll show ye how quiet I'll be."

"Do you think we shall need assistance, my son?" whispered the padre into the ear of his patron.

"Diavolo! No. I never wanted help in these little affairs, except in the case of that violent Yankee whaler, who gave us much trouble, you know, and we were obliged to call Pedillo," replied the captain, in the same low tone. Then, raising his voice, he said,

"Hark ye, Master Gibbs! Babette will lift you off the stones, and the padre and I will raise you up to the room here. You don't weigh so much as you did before you had your leg hacked off with a hand-saw—ho! and I dare say you are as light now as a dried stockfish! Up with him, Baba! There—steady! all right—here you are!"

Saying this, Captain Brand, with the assistance of the stout negress and the padre, raised the once burly ruffian, with a vigorous hoist that made him groan, to the floor of the saloon, where they laid him out at full length on his back.

"Wait a moment, my hearty, till the hatch is raised, and then we will raise you. Unpleasant position, no doubt," continued Captain Brand, as the trap came up and was secured by a spring; "but then, you know, you would have that pin of yours cut off, and somehow you have been so careless as to dispose of the nice leg you had the other day, made out of the spruce fore-top-mast of the 'Centipede'—a very tough bit of a spar it was."

Here Master Gibbs grated his teeth and grinned hideously.

The captain smiled like a demon, and, approaching the prostrate cripple, said cheerfully—ay, in a frank and hearty tone—

"Now, my padre, place a comfortable chair for Master Gibbs, and we will help him to a seat."

The considerate Ricardo placed a large, roomy Manilla chair on the fatal trap, and then aided his chief in lifting their victim to the position assigned him. As they performed this operation, the captain, with the gentleness of a tiger before he strikes his prey, and with a wink to the padre, lightly passed the noose of the silk rope over the ruffian's hairy throat, where it lay like a snake with its slack coil squirming at the back of the chair.

"Now, Master Gibbs, I am about to remove this bandage from your beautiful red eyes," said Captain Brand, in his cold, chilling, deliberate manner, "and if you so much as move when daylight shines before you, I'll blow your brains out."

Here the pirate leisurely cocked a pistol close to his subordinate's ear, removed the bandage, and laid the weapon on the table within reach.

"No noise either, Master Gibbs!" continued Captain Brand, as he stirred up the remains of his chocolate and gulped it down; "for it is Sunday morning, and we must respect the feelings of our padre. You were unkind to him, he tells me, just now, and even said some disrespectful things of me. What have I done to vex you?"

The manacled wretch tried to raise his horny hands to his face when the cloth was removed from his eyes, and rub those organs, while he glared suspiciously around; but the captain pointed with his white finger in a threatening way to the cocked pistol, and Master Gibbs let his hands fall again.

"Well, Captain Brand, I s'pose now you're going to treat me as a faithful man who has sarved under you ought to be treated; and I'm willin' to forgive what has passed."

There was no look of forgiveness, however, in those brutal bloodshot eyes, nor much signs of repentance in those grinding teeth and compressed lips.

"Why, no, my Gibbs, I am not going to treat you as a faithful man, but I tell you what I will do"—here the captain moved his chair nearer till his straw slipper touched the spring of the trap—"I will drink a glass of grog with you in forgetfulness of the past and forgiveness for the future."

"Thank ye, Captain Brand; I do feel dry. That stuff Babette gave me a while ago didn't touch the right spot, and I'll be glad to jine you."

"Ah! bueno, my old friend; you shall drink something that will touch the right spot! What shall it be? you have only to name it."

"I'll take a toss of that old brandy you gave me the other day, if it's the same to you, sir."

"Oh, Master Gibbs, it's all the same to me. Delighted I am to oblige you! Padre mio! a glass of old Cognac for our friend—a tumblerful; a wine-glass will do for me."

The padre poured out the brandy as he was desired, handed the lesser glass to the captain, and the tumbler he placed in the locked hands of the victim. Slowly and painfully the subdued ruffian raised the glass to his mouth, careful not to spill a drop; then, before draining it, he cleared his throat, while at the same time the captain rose to his feet, his right foot resting a little on the heel, and held the wine-glass before him.

"Now, then, Master Gibbs, for a toss that will touch the right spot."

"Ay, ay, captain!" said Gibbs; "and here's forgiveness for the future."

Scarcely had the words been uttered, and the liquor began to gurgle down the hairy throat of the manacled wretch, than the pirate before him pressed his foot with a quick, nervous action on the spring.

Like a flash the trap fell, carrying chair and man with it. The hinges of the hatch creaked, the wicker-work chair fell with a bound on the stone floor below, the heavy beam overhead gave a jarring quiver as the strong silk rope brought up with a shuddering surge on the cleat where it was belayed at the wall, and with a gasping, choking cry of pain mingled with the ring of the shattered tumbler on the pavement, the ruffian of a hundred crimes fell full three feet, and hung struggling in the death agony. With almost superhuman force he raised his clenched hands and struck his forehead till the manacles were twisted like wire by the effort, spinning around too by the lopsided weight of his body, while the beam above yielded slightly to the strain, and the deadly cord, no longer squirming, but taut as a bar of iron, held the wretch in its knotted embrace, clasped tight around the throat. In a minute or two the hands ceased beating the inflamed face and head, and fell with a clank before the body; the legs gave a few convulsive twitches, a last and violent spasm shook the frame, and there Master Gibbs hung, a warm dead lump of clay.

While this murderous business was going on, and the poor crippled wretch was struggling in the jaws of death, the padre was chanting with his profane tongue from his open breviary the Salve Domine, and his patron coolly took down a telescope and swept it over the blue water to seaward. When, however, after a quarter of an hour had elapsed, and the body of their victim gave no more signs of life, the captain laid down the telescope as the padre closed his missal, and remarked quietly, while glancing critically down at the suspended body,

"He did not go off so easy as I had anticipated; his bull-neck is not broken, though the knot was perfectly well placed. However, he is stone dead, and we will lower him down. You, my padre, will bury him!"

"Hijo mio! son of mine! spare me that troublesome duty. Would you have me drag such a carcass through the cavern and consign him to consecrated earth, when he refused the last holy offers of salvation?"

"Bueno, my padre, I respect your feelings! You need not put him under the sand; take him merely to his late dungeon, and lay him decently on his bed."

"Thank you, my son; your orders shall be obeyed!"

Glad, apparently, to be relieved from farther exertion, though with manifest symptoms of disgust, the priest, more infamous even than the scoundrel he had assisted in hanging, clumsily descended the hatchway by the way he came up, and awaited the movements of his chief. The captain stepped to the wall, and, casting off the turns from the cleat, he slowly lowered the body down till it rested on the pavement.

"Unbend the rope from his neck, my padre, and hitch it on to that Manilla chair. There—all right! you may return this way and breakfast with me."

Saying this, Captain Brand rounded up the chair, detached the silk rope, hung the loop in its accustomed place, and then waited the reappearance of his confederate. Not many minutes elapsed before the padre, having performed the last rites, again ascended the stanchion, and was assisted above the floor by his chief. Then both together got hold of a ring-bolt in the trap, drew it up and secured the spring, placing square bits of mahogany over the countersunk apertures, so as to prevent accidental falls or hangings of themselves. Even while performing these mechanical operations, the priest puffed out an account of his proceedings below: how he had dragged the body to the dungeon; how, when there, he had inadvertently stumbled and fallen on the top of it; and that his lips—maldito!—came in contact with the open mouth of the late Master Gibbs; but when he had recovered from the horror of this frightful caress, he had said a short prayer and bolted the door.

"You have done well, my padre; and now let us break our fast. Babette, a couple of broiled snappers and a cold duck! Be lively, old lady, for I have business to attend to after breakfast. Hola, mi padre, will you wash your hands in water before sitting down? No! bueno! I will myself take a dip all over."

No, the oily Ricardo never washed his hands, save wetting the tips of his fingers in holy water in the chapel; and, indeed, he rarely touched water in any quantity either outside or in; and it was with a look of surprise, not unmingled with contempt, that he beheld his patron retire for a bath.



CHAPTER XX.

BUSINESS.

"He had rolled in money like pigs in mud, Till it seemed to have entered into his blood By some occult projection; And his cheeks, instead of a healthy hue, As yellow as any guinea grew, Making the common phrase seem true About a rich complexion."

The business which Captain Brand alluded to when he was about to partake of breakfast with his friend the padre was, in the first instance, to arrange some matters in the way of payment of debts to his compadre, Don Ignacio Sanchez, commander of the Colonial Guarda Costa felucca "Panchita."

Accordingly, when he rose from table, and after a whispered dialogue and reports as to the state of affairs in and around the den and island from the men at the signal-stations, he summoned Pedillo. When that worthy appeared below the veranda—for be it remembered that Captain Brand never permitted the inferior officials of his band to pollute his apartments, unless, perhaps, as in the case of his deceased subordinate, Master Gibbs, it was on urgent business—Captain Brand ordered his gig manned.

Pedillo threw up his hand in token of assent, and walked down to the brink of the basin to execute the command. Then, after a few minutes, Captain Brand lit a cigar, dismissed the padre, put on his fine white Panama straw hat, unlocked a strong cabinet with a secret drawer, glanced over a paper before him, and, making a rapid calculation, he caught up a heavy bag of doubloons, and left the house in charge of Babette. The captain always told his guests that his fellows had such love and respect for him that he rarely locked up his property, and never placed a guard at his door. The truth was, that his fellows—scoundrels, miscreants, and villains as they were—stood in such fear and dread of their leader, that they were glad to keep out of his way. Moreover, he never boasted or made any display before them, living on shipboard, as on shore, by himself, but always ready and terrible when the moment came for action; treating his crew, too, with the most rigid impartiality, adhering strictly to his promises and compacts with them, and never overlooking an offense.

So Captain Brand left his dwelling in charge of his dumb housekeeper Babette, and tripping down the rope ladder from the piazza in a clean suit of brown linen and straw slippers, his beardless face shaded by his broad-brimmed hat from the sun, and the bag of gold on his arm, he jauntily walked toward the cove.

"Ah! good morning, my doctor! Glad to meet you! How are the sick? Doing well, I hope!"

"Quite well, sir; but I was about to call upon you in relation to the conversation we had last evening, and—"

"Pardon me, Monsieur le Docteur, but I have been very busy this morning, and am now going to see Don Ignacio on matters of importance"—here the elegant pirate took the cigar from his thin lips and held it daintily between his thumb and fore finger in the air—"and really, monsieur, I am very sorry to miss your visit. But," he added, with one of his usual smiles, "I shall be at leisure this afternoon, and in the cool of the evening we can take a stroll. What say you?"

The doctor nodded.

"Apropos, docteur, suppose we have a little game of monte afterward at your quarters. I never permit gaming in mine, you know. The padre will not object; and I am confident our compadre, the Tuerto, will be delighted."

"As you please, captain," replied the medico, with a cold, indifferent air and averted face. "I will join you in the promenade, and I shall be ready to receive you in the evening."

"Hasta huego, amigo!" said Captain Brand, as he again stuck his cigar between his teeth, waved his hand in adieu, and walked to his boat.

"You don't love me, doctor," thought the pirate. "I don't fear you, captain," thought the doctor.

It was a touch of high art the way this notorious pirate pitched the bag of gold toward his coxswain, crying, "Catch that, Pedillo!" and then the almost girlish manner in which he pattered about the beach and held up his trowsers, so that he might not even get his slippers damp. Had that salt water been red blood, he would not have cared if his feet had been soaked in it. And then, too, the little exclamation of joy when he finally stepped into the stern-sheets, and sat down beneath the awning, while he stretched his smooth brown linen legs out on the cushions. Oh, it was certainly a touch of high piratical art!

"The old 'Centipede' is looking a little rusty after her late cruise, Pedillo!" throwing his head back to evade a curl of smoke, and casting his cold eyes like a rattle of icy hail at the coxswain. "But I am glad Pedro took your place"—puff, puff—"that knife-stab prevented you, of course"—puff—"and we shall have her all tight and trig again in a day or two."

"Si, senor!" said Pedillo, respectfully; "and how goes Senor Gibbs, capitano?"

The capitano rolled his icy eyes again at the coxswain, and replied, carelessly, "Why, Pedillo, our friend Gibbs came to see me when the 'Centipede' anchored, but almost before"—puff—"he had given me an account of his unfortunate cruise he fell down in a fit. The fact is, however"—puff, puff—"that, what with hard drinking and inflammation which set in on the stump of his lost leg, he has been in a very bad way"—puff—"quite in a dangerous condition indeed, requiring all my old Babette's care and attention"—puff—"but this morning the good padre went to see him, and he told me a while ago that he left him without fever, and altogether tranquil."

Pedillo's wiry mustaches twirled of themselves.

Meanwhile the boat skimmed lightly over the basin, and as the captain ceased speaking she ran alongside of the felucca. Don Ignacio, with his bright single eye in full burning power, and a cigarette between his wrinkled lips, was on the deck of the vessel to receive his visitor; and as he saw the coxswain follow his superior with a weighty bag under his arm, his glimmering orb became brighter, if possible—as if it was piercing through the thick canvas of the bag, and counting, ounce by ounce, the contents—and putting out his fore finger, it was grasped cordially by the white hand of Captain Brand.

"Como se va? How goes it with my compadre? Stomach and head all clear after our long dinner of yesterday?"

The compadre said that his head was particularly clear that morning, and as for his stomach he had not yet inquired; but if the capitano had any doubts as to the former proposition, he had better step below and decide for himself.

In accordance with this ambiguous invitation, the visitor and commander disappeared down the small cuddy in the afterpart of the felucca, where was a low, stifling hole of a cabin, dank with stale tobacco-smoke, and smelling awfully of rats and roaches. There was a little round table in the middle, and on one side was a single berth, with some dirty bedding, which had not been cleaned, apparently, since the vessel was built. Light was shed from a skylight above.

Captain Brand gave a sniff of disgust as he entered this floating sanctum of Don Ignacio, but, without remark, seated himself on a canvas stool, and waved a perfumed cambric kerchief before his nose.

Commander Sanchez, catching the inspiration, merely observed that it was a little close certainly, and not so spacious as the superb cabin of the schooner, and that sometimes, when lying in a calm off the lee side of Cuba, it was hot enough to melt the tail off a brass monkey; but yet it was his duty, and he did not particularly mind it.

Hereupon Captain Brand requested Don Ignacio to produce his papers, and they were presently laid upon the table. For a few minutes the pirate was absorbed in running his cold eyes over the accounts—making pencil-notes on the margins, and comparing them with a memorandum he took from his pocket; but at last he threw himself back and exclaimed,

"Compadre, the account of old Moreno, at the Havana, is correct to a real—three hundred and twelve doubloons and eight hard dollars. Yours, however, has some few inaccuracies—double commissions charged here and there; all losses and sales charged to me, and all profits credited to you."

Don Ignacio spread out the palms of both his hands toward his companion, as if to exorcise such unjust charges from the brain of his confederate.