Gladsden was groping along when he perceived the thorn thicket changing into a prairie, only slightly interspersed with scrub. At the same time, though underfoot, the scene cleared, the indications of atmospheric perturbation increased in number and in ominous importance. Already the material man triumphed over the romantic one, and our Englishman thought considerably better of a solid refuge from the tempest than to come up with the abductor of the Mexican girl. Spite of its sinister aspect, therefore, his eyes were delighted when he saw, outlined against the northeastern sky, sullenly blackening, a curiously shaped tower. In a civilised country he would have ignobly supposed it a factory shaft.
He knew nothing whatever about this pillar of sunbaked bricks, some fifty feet in altitude, and, we repeat, cared nothing for the monument from any point of view but its qualities as a shelter.
Nevertheless, an archaeologist would have given a fortune to have studied this Nameless Tower, for the aboriginal held it too sacred for mention in common parlance. It was slightly pyramidal; the north side, not quite the true meridian, presented a right angle, presumably to breast and divide the wind of winter prevalent at its erection, while the rest was rounded trimly. The excellence of the work was better shown in the cement, not mud, or ground gypsum, having resisted the weather and particularly the sandy winds themselves, though they had worn thedobies(adobes, sun dried bricks) away deeply in places, without making airholes through. There was nothing like a window or depression save these natural pits, until the view reached the ragged top, where a sort of lantern or cupola, so far as a few vestiges indicated, had once crowned the edifice; there the floor of this disappeared chamber had become the roof, and an orifice, perhaps a loophole enlarged by rot, yawned like a deep set eye beside an arm of metal terminating in a hook. Presumably the column was a priest's watchtower, where a sacred fire was preserved in peace times to imitate the sun. It is known, the ancient Mexicans adored the sun. A beacon, too, in war times, for the fire and smoke signal code of the American Indians is too complete to have been the invention of yesterday. The entrance at the base cut in the rock utilised for nearly all the foundation. Once blocked up, the watcher, remote from lances, slingshots, and bowshots, could count the besiegers on this plain, and telegraph their number to his friends at a distance. The metal arm may have suspended a pulley block and rope by which provisions and even an assistant could be hauled up to him.
The natives avoid the tower and its proximity. The white rovers deem it uncanny, and, having no curiosity to gratify, also leave the spot untroubled.
Gladsden regarded the tall mass with some uneasiness as he approached sufficiently near to measure its dimensions and examine the emblems stained, rather than painted, on the alabaster base stone. A colossal half human, half bovine head, armed with terrible horns, and showing long angular teeth in a ferocious grin, was prominent among these designs.
All was so still that he hesitated to wake the echoes with a more or less tolerable imitation of the wildcat, to which no response came, or if from a distance such was raised, the approaching thunderpeals overcame it.
He boldly plunged into the doorless passage, the way to which had been to a more wary man suspiciously free from brambles.
A smell of smoke, and even of tobacco smoke, he thought, overcame that of damp earth.
The only light was that which the doorway admitted, but several plates of mica, backed rudely with metal, which time and damp had tarnished, made the interior a little less sombre by their dull reflections. A ladder of wood, all the fastenings of rawhide, could be distinguished climbing like a twin snake up the wall; on high a grayish eye seemed to look unwinkingly down: it was the light oozing in at the gap at the top.
There were red streaks on the wall: paintings in red pipe clay partially effaced, or mementoes of slaughter, just as the spectator chose to believe or fancy.
At the moment, the intruder was chiefly interested in the charcoal under his feet, almost warm, certainly so fresh that he concluded that others than he chose it for a refuge under stress of weather, no doubt Master Pepillo's congeners.
Less courageous, he would have shrunk away without pondering over the nature of his predecessors, possibly regular hosts of this lugubrious domicile of owl and vulture.
Convinced that he was, for the time being, the sole tenant, Gladsden resolved, however, to explore the portion unrevealed. To his hands and feet the ladder presented no obstacle, and he ran up the rough rattlings swiftly, spite of fatigue. It brought him into a species of manhole under the roof, close to the gap, and yet shielded from its draft by a jutting piece of wall.
"This will do," thought he, finding it dry and clean; "I will kill a brace of birds frightened into stupidity by the oncoming storm, roast them on that charcoal, and bring them up here for supper. If the robbers surprise me, I will maintain that I was merely killing time before the arrival of lieutenant Ignacio, and claim that gentleman's friendship by reason of my charge from his brother. If I am interrupted, I shall pull up the ladder, in trust that it will come free, and sleep here, safe from prowling beasts and serpents."
Suddenly gloom fell on all the landscape, as if a mighty hand had eclipsed the waning sun. The air was very much more thick and oppressive, and there were innumerable though faint crepitations like feeble snappings of electricity. To take the game he spoke of, before the rainfall drowned them out of their nests, it was needful to hasten. But he had not descended three rounds of the ladder, before he stopped all of a piece. From every side, there was the sound of an arrival of men, both on foot and ahorse. Instinctively he drew himself up, arranged his form on the floor so as to project only his forehead and eyes over the ledge where ended the means of ascension, and stared below.
A number of persons, congratulating themselves on their reunion loudly with the hyperbolic phrases of the Spanish ceremony of greeting, clattered into the tower. Presently a light was struck, and a roaring fire kindled. As the shaft thus became the chimney, Gladsden was forced to cough, though he smothered the sound as much as possible, hoped, as did the man who lighted the damp wood, that it would lose no time in burning up clearly.
When he could protrude his face over the peephole again, he beheld a dozen persons, swarthy, robust, richly clad as the prairie rovers, or cattle thieves, armed to the teeth. Cruel of eye, malignant and ferocious, he judged it highly imprudent to make their acquaintance, unless Ignacio was the introducer.
Before very many sentences were uttered, every syllable of which came to his ears direct, the overhearer was not allowed to cherish any error as to their profession. They were the Gentlemen of the Night, the road robbers, the scourges of Sonora, belonging to the squad (cuadrilla) of Matasiete, "the Slayer of Seven."
The gestures of the Mexicans grew animated as they sat around the fire, or leaned against the wall, which the gleams showed to be painted by the Indians; now and then they clapped their unwashed but jewelled hands to their weapons—at which moments the witness earnestly prayed that they would join in a free fight and kill everyone to the last. They were wrangling over the division of spoil, and perhaps the plunder would have cost additional lives to those of its original proprietors, when the advent of someone in authority caused the dispute to cease. It was their captain.
He was not the heroic figure that Gladsden had imagined fit to rule such desperadoes. He was tall, but lean, don Quixote with Punch's nose and chin, rather the fox than the wolf, and though his features were set stern and his voice was savage, doubts might be conceived as to his own reliance on his bullying mode of government.
"At your differences again," he cried in a sharp voice, which now and then ran up shrill and high, spite of himself, more to the resemblance of the puppet show hero than ever. "¡Caray!Why can't you pull together like honourable gentlemen of the prairie?"
Two of the brigands began an explanation which their leader cut short by replying to the less ruffianly of the two:
"Silence! I'll not be bothered by a single word!¡Viva Dios!Here you are hugging the fire like herders broiling a steak, without a thought of our common safety. I have had to post sentries myself, and even they grumbled at such important duty, just because there is a barrel of water coming down. I tell you I heard a shot in the thicket, which was not from any of our guns."
Another of the gang spoke up, with whom he judged it meet to argue. It is due to the estimable captain Matasiete to say that the debater in question was picking a fragment of buffalo beef out of a huge hollow grinder, with an unpleasant long knife.
"It is true, Ricardo, that the red men do never approach the Owl Tower; but what is that? Someday our secret haunt will be surprised and the Yaquis will fall on us for profaning the old pile. Where is Ignacio? Where is the lieutenant, I say?"
Neither he nor his brother had arrived, that was the answer, to Mr. Gladsden's chagrin.
"Then will they get their boots choked with rain," remarked the commander of these precious rogues, comfortably installing himself at the fire, in the very manner which he had disapproved of in his men. There was a flash of lightning. The thunder roared round the tower, which bravely met the precursor shower, though it was of a drenching nature to justify the repugnance of the salteadores to standing sentinel in the open, whilst their luckier comrades enjoyed the shelter and the fire.
There was silence within the tower: the bandits, drawing a little aloof from their chief, in respect or lack of sympathy, prepared supper, priced their property with a view of staking it in card play, or, as far as two or three were concerned, lounged at the door, watching the ground smoke after the wetting, and glancing tauntingly at their brothers on guard, who shone with moisture in the chance ray from the glorious fire.
The extreme heat around Gladsden, his fatigue and a dulness engendered by the recent strain on his faculties, forced his eyes to close now and then, and he was about falling into a torpor, when a commotion below aroused him.
A man, clanking his huge spurs to rid them of mud and rotten leaves, drenched almost through his blanket, splashed to the waist, his tough leather breeches scored by wait-a-bit thorns, swearing at the dog's weather, wringing out his hair, for he had lost his hat—this individual, hailed amicably as "our dear Ignacio," but heedless of the welcome in his vexation and a species of alarm, pushed aside his comrades flocking round him, and, saluting the captain, basking in the fire beams, said reproachfully:
"My brother not here? Then ill fares him! There are strangers in the chaparral!"
"Strangers!" all the voices exclaimed, whilst weapons clattered their scabbards.
From only this transient glance at don Ignacio, the Englishman made up his mind that he would not trust him with his life.
"Aye, strangers, and no jokers! But to my tale. Captain, in the first place your Indian hireling has done his work well. He slew the don—the youngster, I opine—and, as for the damsel, why I have had her on my arm this half hour, till the storm forced me tocacheher!"
"Aha! Good!" said the captain, rubbing his hands on his nearly roasted knees. "Albeit, I am sorry that the girl escaped. I'd as lief marry the aunt to obtain the Miranda Hacienda, as wed the lass and be saddled with the old lady."
"Well, she's next to dead. The Apache worried them sore, so that they have had no food."
"And he? Did youpayhim, as I suggested?"
"I followed him up to administer the dose of lead, but I was anticipated. Some strangers, I tell you, are roaming the desert, and blew a tunnel through his head."
"And Pepillo?" questioned Ricardo.
"Either lying perdu till the storm abates, or gratified with the same pill. It is a deuce of a heavy gun to carry a bullet so large and so true."
"An American rifle?" queried the captain, uneasily, whilst Gladsden, patting his gun silently, so conveyed to it the flattering fear with which its prowess had inspired the depredators.
"It is this way," went on Ignacio, who saw that all eyes were bent on him. "I struck the broad trail of the don and the Apache. I heard a shot of an unknown piece, so I alighted, hoppled my mule, and, making a circuit, entered the thicket afoot, going slow because of my spurs."
"Soon I came to a sort of glade, where a big tree stump stands. There the Indian had sent an arrow through don José, and there the unknown had sent a heavy bullet through him. All was quiet. No sign of the young man, their guide. But the señorita, the heiress, lay as one dead at the stump. I felt no pulse. Her eyes were closed. I took her up and made for my mule, but, either I had missed my mark or had strayed. No mule. Then, believing he would come here, since he has a sneaking affection for your horses, captain, I tried to carry the girl on my own way hither. She was light as a feather, but the thorns are a veritable net to catch hummingbirds, and then, again, the storm about to break! Faith, I hid her in a hollow tree, and hastened on. But I was overtaken by the rain, and am as tattered as alepero!"
"And Pepillo?"
"He was never born to be drowned in the deluge upon us," answered lieutenant Ignacio, with no superabundance of fraternal affection, as he sat at the fire, and overhauled the rent raiment. "We will fish for him and the girl, in the day."
"But if she was spent, she will die of starvation," remarked Matasiete, with a spark of humanity or of affection.
"Pshaw! As you say, you can, in the character of don Aníbal de Luna, marry the old lady and so obtain the property; besides, I left my flask ofaguardiente(firewater, or whiskey) in her cold pit, and that's meat and drink, eh, gentlemen?"
A silence ensued, the others having nodded a double tribute to his gallantry and the potency of raw spirits.
"I do not like the young man being out of your view," said Matasiete, who had a small, carping spirit, "If he should not meet Pepillo and Farruco—"
"Crawled off with an arrow in him to die in the bushes," was the reply. "That Apache is one of the poisoners, you know, and nothing that will not cure a rattlesnake bite, will subdue the venom of his wounds. A good riddance whoever perforated his skull! And here's his health," holding up a horn of spirits on high as though he divined the actual whereabouts of the avenger of don José de Miranda.
"There is Farruco still to come in," said the captain, yawning.
"Pah! He's under a stone like an iguana! If he eludes the rain as cleverly as he does the leaden hail when we attack a caravan, methinks he will turn up in the day as dry as the core of a miser's heart."
Meanwhile, the storm, which had but inadequately manifested its power in the heralding blow and pour, now swept across the plain and buffeted the tower. It began to rock, and the sentries, who set discipline at defiance and had come into the shelter, were half afraid that they had not taken the wiser course. Whatever their terror below, that of Gladsden would have been more justifiable, for the loose stones atop were moved at each gust, and some fell, both within and without. The prospect of the lightning bolt flinging him scathed to the death, amid ruins, upon the knot of robbers, was quite within reasonable surmise.
He wrapped his gun up beside him, so that its steel should not attract the flame that seemed, when it played within his nook, to linger upon him, and expected the worst between the two perils.
All at once, splitting the rolling thunder in its higher key, a frightened voice cried out, "The horses! There is a stampede!"
Notwithstanding the pouring rain, half a dozen of the bandits rushed out. But almost instantly returning, they gladly reported that the agitation among the horses was caused, not so much by their fright at the lightning, as by the mad gambols of Ignacio's mule, which, running into the group tethered on the leeward of the tower, was plying tooth and hoof in order to range himself near the horse to which he had taken one of those devoted fancies not uncommon among the hybrids. Instead of their forming a mass, rounded in shape, their tails outward, to meet the rain, they half encircled the tower, accommodating themselves to the wind, which was shifting to the southeast.
"The old tower holds firm," said Ignacio, his mouth full of beef, as he plied a needle and fine deer's sinew for thread in the reparation of his leggings.
"Only the gale shakes out a tooth of the old hag's head," said his neighbour, on whom sundry fragments of the crumble had fallen.
"Ha!" ejaculated don Matasiete, abruptly, as he clapped his long hand to his head, and then clutched the object which had struck him there, and then rolled into the ashes. He had pulled it forth with amazing alacrity. "Since when has this tower been built with cartridges?"
"What!" was the general cry, as all, like the speaker, looked upward.
"I tell you that this fell on my head. If it rains more of the like we must dash out the fire, or we'll be blown higher than the eagle flies!"
Every man had drawn a weapon. Their ignorance of meteorology might be great or little, but cartridges do not come with Mexican rain often enough to be calmly accepted without an inquisition.
"The strangers!" cried the captain, prudently backing towards the wall at the point furthest from the ladder's end. "Have they come in among us?"
"Stuff! What man in his lightness of heart would leap thus into the wolf's throat?"
"That's all very well put, Ricardo," rejoined the leader. "But they may have preceded you, and not known that this is our lair. Just climb up and see if, by any chance, we are receiving uninvited guests."
Ricardo, who was singled out, was a burly rogue, but he did not accept this order. On the contrary he made a wry face and thrust his cheek out with his tongue, which signified "go and do it yourself." This incipient mutiny was clearly contagious, for all the bandits returned their commander's interrogative look with another, defiant, stupid, or complacent, pursuant to their natures.
Any child could have drawn the inference that the quarter whence cartridges were showered might logically be expected to furnish a gun or two. The figurative language of the western man ranking a packet of lead and ball, or arrows, as the case varies of its being a white or a red man who sends the message, as an equivalent for a challenge to mortal combat—each bandit so interpreted the accident.
"Poltroons!" cried Matasiete. "Is there room, save on the platform itself, for a troop of men? And would one man stand amid the lightning on this rocking tower top! I tell you, if there is a man there it will be in the nook where the ladder is suspended. One man! Well, where are my brave fighting cocks now?"
One man, armed with such a gun as that cartridge of unusual calibre promised, could very easily defend even that despicable nook against a whole coop of gamecocks. So the hesitation to climb the ladder rather augmented than diminished.
"Poltroons, eh?" observed Ignacio, to whom the incident perhaps came in harmony with some project of his own. "If it is nothing uncommon to go and see what owl has alighted in the tower top—an owl whose eggs are cartridges, by the way—why don't you show your superior courage? Show your hardly-too-often-distinguished daring, Captain, by going up and wringing the neck of the fowl of evil omen yourself."
"G—go myself?" repeated Matasiete, whilst the robbers grinned more or less audibly.
"Yes, go yourself," returned the impudent lieutenant, "the more particularly as now that you have no impediment to seize the property of don José de Miranda, you are going to marry richly and settle down as a farming gentleman, and will have no more opportunities of exhibiting your gallantry. Yes, go yourself! And, moreover, be quick about it, or the strangers, whoever they may be, may come down in impatience at your neglect of your duty of host and demand an account of your reluctant hospitality, face to beard, themselves."
Matasiete did not number that defect among his of the sanguine dog who perpetually lets go the substance to snap at the shadow. Whatever the brilliancy of the prospect of obtaining the estate of Miranda, at present that of losing the command of the salteadores was more at hand. Besides, best knowing what valuables were sewn up in the hem of his dress, or contained in his money belt, in case, by robbers' law, judged a coward, and kicked out from their punctilious midst, stripped to the skin, this property would be lost to him, the captain made an effort.
"Then I will show you that I never set a command which I would not have executed myself!" spoken with a tremor, but loudly, to daunt the object aimed at above. "I will mount, and not a cartridge, but the corpse of anyone who has ventured to pry into our secrets, will shortly come hustling down among ye!"
He made one bound to the ladder, put his knife between his teeth, to prevent them chattering as much as to have the blade handy, and ascended briskly with his long legs at the start.
It would be unjust to say that Gladsden, who had heard all this scene, without caring to lean over and witness it lest the gleam of his eyes, reflecting the fire rays, should betray him and draw a pistol shot, was daunted by either the words of the redoubtable robber or his approach. Any one man, or two or three, come to that, caused him no apprehension, for he had all the advantages of position. But, after repulsing them, how could he hope to hold out a long time without food or drink?
An idea of subterfuge had struck him, which was only feasible to a seaman.
We observed that Matasiete had mounted the ladder briskly "at the start." It is true. But, when he had some twenty feet yet of the ascent to make, his action grew less commendable. He even framed an address, in appeal, to be uttered in a whisper only loud enough for the unknown occupant of the turret niche, full of promises or threats if he would only keep quiet, and allow the investigator to return uninjured and state there was an absence of ground for the alarm he had himself unfortunately originated.
In the meantime the Englishman, attributing the slowness of this upcomer's movement to his cowardice, believed he would be only too glad to find no occasion for his long stay at the top of the ladder.
So he thrust his head out of the gap before mentioned, and examined the metal arm socketed in the wall. It was not iron, but bronze, full three feet long to the hook, a little thicker than the thumb. It was planted solidly in a horizontal direction.
Without further reflection, hearing the respiration of captain Matasiete, who had been goaded on by the whisperings ascending of his men beginning to criticise his halt, Gladsden noiselessly pushed his legs out, bent forward, seized the bronze bar with both hands with that grip which enables the sailor to defy the squall to dislodge him from the yard, and hung stiffly at arm's length over the void.
If the Mexican saw him in looking out of the window by one of the less frequent electrical flashes, he intended to kick him under the jaw, reenter, convert the body into a rampart, and fight whilst there was a shot in the barrel, or till he had a chance to claim Ignacio's safeguard. The lieutenant could but be grateful to a man who removed his superior in his favour, and, moreover, brought him a fortune.
He had no more than assumed this trying position, being drenched to the skin at the very first instant of exposure, before Matasiete at last, with many misgivings pulling at his toes, lifted his head above the flooring, and, with indescribable joy, saw there was no one there.
"Well, Captain?" was the half-ironical inquiry from below.
"There is no one, you asses!" was the polite reply, in a gleeful tone.
Gladsden sighed in relief as deep as the captain's.
"Stand from under!" added the latter, putting his knife in its sheath. "I am coming down."
The Englishman was saved!
He prepared to return within his nook. The imminent danger was over. The rain was unpleasant, and the uneasiness of horses beneath him, which he heard whinnying as if they scented him, as was probable, offered the chance of exciting the curiosity of a Mexican, who would infallibly descry him if he looked up outside. So he wished to cut short the feeling of fatigue which already attacked his wrists and shoulders. But, at the first movement, what he believed a mere fancy was confirmed as fact: the bar was set with an unalterable firmness which spoke volumes for the mason of old, but the metal, in which too much copper had been alloyed, or deteriorated by the weather, was slowly bending, arching over the abyss!
No time was there to spare. He began by shifting his grip, moving one hand inwards and bringing the outer up to it, to overcome the curve in the rod. He looked to the socket to make sure that it still held, when his anxious eyes met another pair in the very gap. They were the Mexican robber's!
Matasiete had smelt the powder, at least, he had, in a final and idle sweeping round of the visual ray, perceived the gun of the Englishman, which he had, nevertheless, concealed with unusual and creditable care in the angle of floor and wall.
Now, Matasiete placidly leaning on the sill of the window, so to call it, fixed his ferocious eyes on Gladsden, gleaming with delight at having so complete a chance to avenge on another his companions' taunts of cowardice.
"The owl!" he said ironically.
"You devil!" returned Gladsden, in English, for in such critical moments a man does not display his linguistical acquirements.
Devil, indeed! Matasiete drew his knife and slowly leaned outward in order to slash the poor wretch's fingers to anticipate their relaxing the grasp on the overdrooping bar.
The other made an offer to let go with one hand in the hope to get at a pistol to blow out the fiend's brains at a snap shot, but the impossibility of the feat was immediately so impressed upon him, that he grasped with a double hold once more in deeper desperation.
"Oh! Any death but this waking nightmare!" he ejaculated, as a kind of prayer.
Before his fingers should be pinched by his own weight, between the metal and the brickwork, he thought, by a final spurt of strength, to leap up and seize the grinning demon.
"No, you don't!" cried the captain, guessing his aim, and leaning well out over him, gleaming steel in hand, "Thou shalt die like a dog."
He lifted his arm to strike. Gladsden shuddered in his anguish—his grasp did not relax, rather was it cramped, but he was thrust by his body coming sidewise to the wall, from that direction, and slid thus perforce to the end of the bar downwards. He closed his eyes not to see the knife and fiendish eyes, not to hear the devilish laugh, when a sharp shot resounded below, a bullet shrieked beside his tingling ear, and louder than the cry which the feeling of falling through space wrung from the brave man, seemed the shriek of captain Matasiete, "creased" through the prominent nose.
Gladsden descended, like a rock loosened from a sierra summit, upon the plain below. Instead of the solid earth, however, he fell upon a warm yielding substance—the backs of a couple of horses. Clutching the mane of one at random—not the one on which he had landed, and of which he all but broke the back and so left paralysed—he was instantly carried away by the frightened steed.
Behind him, as he was borne helter-skelter over the prairie, converted into a shallow lake, he heard the clamour of the Mexicans startled by the shot, and later by a stampede in reality of their horses. It seemed to him, stunned in a measure though he was, that in the thick of the swarm of quadrupeds madly in flight like his own, but in another direction, there was a figure, black and bowing its head between its steed's ears, with a white object across the saddlebow.
But it was a mere glimpse! A new Mazeppa, he went careering on an unchained thunderbolt over the prairie, whilst the old Tower quivered in a fresh onset of the tempest.
There rode a charming little sailing vessel in Guaymas Port. It flew the Chilian flag, was about a hundred and twenty tons register, and was namedLa Burlonilla, or "Little Joker," which might be interpreted innocently, or as a tacit allusion to the pea used in "thimblerig." She was so coquettish, so fine of run, so light and buoyant, and yet carried a good spread of sail, that the experienced Gladsden reckoned she would do her twelve knots an hour without shipping enough water to drown the purser's cat. But there seemed to be some mystery attending the ownership. The shipkeeper allowed no one to inspect her closely, far less to board her, even threatening our Englishman with a blunderbuss. He heard at the Heaven-and-Liberty Tavern that she was consigned to don Stefano Garcia, kinsman of the general Garcia, mixed up with the intrigues of Santa Anna, a rich merchant-banker, and hide dealer. It was easy to make his acquaintance by constituting him his banker, for a remittance of a goodly amount which came on,viaNew York and Mexico, just when he most wanted funds to enable him to ascertain what truth dwelt in Pepillo's story.
Besides, as an old resident of Sonora, he was just the man to help him to find the relict of thebandoleroof captain Matasiete, though the reason for this search he took care not to impart to señor Garcia.
With an affability which was even noticeably extreme, don Stefano accepted the double trust, and begged his new client to come out to his villa soon and dine with him—a pleasant habitude with bankers all the world over.
Gladsden accepted the invitation. During the dinner—not bad for the place—the guest learnt that the goleta commanded a fancy price, say, twenty thousand dollars, and then would only be sold—not hired—if the owner, a capricious Chilian, rejoicing in the numerous and sonorous appellatives of don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Almagro de Cortes, had not changed his intention of living upland on an estate which would shortly become his through a marital alliance.
After the repast, five or six friends of the host came in, and among them the bearer of the long titles, just taxing our pen again.
In token of pretensions to be regarded as an unofficial, but all the more important representative of Chili, this dignitary wore a rich costume trimmed with gold, an immense cocked hat, after the style borne by Nelson's enemies who were admirals at Trafalgar, bullion epaulettes that covered his upper arms, high boots coming up over the knee, not to mention a colossal sabre. Under this accoutrement, nevertheless, Gladsden thought no stranger was displayed; and, in fact, before he spoke, he recognised the individual who had grinned at him, like Quasimodo at Claude Frollo, dangling from the cathedral turret, out of the gaplike window of the Indian tower. The master of theLittle Joker, the Chilian agent, was the captain of the Upper Sonora ravagers—Matasiete himself. The crease across his nose was an additional token.
Spite of his emotion, the Englishman hoped he had not betrayed the act of quick identification, all the more as don Aníbal, etc., making no sign of recognition, turned to chatting with the others without paying the foreigner any more heed. From a glance which he intercepted between the banker and the pretended Chilian, Gladsden was soon of the impression that there was a complete understanding there. He even jumped to the conclusion that the stranger in the Heaven-and-Liberty Tavern had been instructed to volunteer the hint that had caused our ever imprudent Briton to form acquaintance with the robber's banker.
"They are a deeper set than I imagined," thought he. "The rogue is a pirate on land and sea. When there is no revolution in Mexico, and the authorities attend a little to police matters, our salteador takes a summersault aboard his dainty craft, and goes slaving, pirating, or, at the least, pearl fishing. If these guests are out of the same cask, by George! I am going to pass a pleasant evening!"
But there arose no question of the sale of theBurlonilla, or of anything connected with business. That was put off till the morrow, after the Spanish-American custom.
But there did come up a topic of general interest—gaming. The American-Hispanics are inveterate gamblers; it is their dominant passion. After having chatted and drank, amid the consumption of innumerable cigars, someone proposed amonte, a suggestion thrown out only to be caught at a bound with enthusiasm.
Other friends of don Stefano had dropped in, so that the Englishman found more than a corporal's guard arrayed against him. The collection now was composed of upwards of a score.
A table happened to have the orthodox green cloth upon it, where the social "tiger" is prone to roam: new cards, sealed, of course, were brought in, and the sport began.
Without being positively a player, Mr. Gladsden had the blood in his veins of his grandfather, who was a noted card player, a contemporary of Fox and Selwyn. Besides, he understood that he might offend if he stood aloof.
The stakes were, at the outset, moderate, but gradually swelling, they soon attained staggering proportions, some of the points running up to a hundred and even a hundred and fifty ounces. The consequence was that in less than a couple of hours almost all the tilters were cleaned out, and had to become mere lookers-on. At midnight chance—if it were chance—arranged it that only two players were facing each other: don Aníbal of the Cortes Family, as he called himself at present, and Mr. Gladsden. The gallery, as the surrounding bystanders of a game are styled, cooped the pair in so that the European could not easily have withdrawn. All the time the master of the goleta had been a loser, and the Englishman having been luck favoured, was on the contrary supplied with considerable funds, which elicited many a covetous glance.
"Why!" ejaculated the pretended Chilian, with admirably feigned surprise, "We two are left facing one another."
"So we are!" returned Mr. Gladsden, thinking, with all the possible mischances, he was more agreeably placed herevis-à-viswith the gentleman of the night, than clinging on a bar outside the top of a tower fifty feet high.
"Shall we two go it alone, Captain?"
"I was just going to ask the favour, Captain."
The other "captain" nodded and grinned under his long hook nose, to the banker and others at hand, as much as to say, "Now I have my gentleman precisely in the corner I have been driving him to."
It was the Englishman's turn to cut.
"How's the play?" he inquired.
"Will you venture all?" the highwayman leader returned in a mocking way.
"Why should I not? You have so far afforded me so much hearty entertainment that I am entirely at your disposal."
Don Aníbal made a grimace not unlike that when the marvellous shot had allowed the last speaker to drop out of the swing of hisnavaja.
"Even in case I risk the whole heap?" resumed Matasiete, laying his long fingers out on the pillar of gold coin before him.
"As your lordship desires, though it is a mistake."
"How so?"
"Because I am in luck's way lately," returned Mr. Gladsden, significantly. "You always lose pitted against me."
"Do you really think that run will last?"
"I am willing to wager on it," was the reply, in the determined tone of an Englishman to whom, indeed, a bet is theultima ratio.
"¡Caray!" exclaimed the arch-bandit, piqued, "Your remark decides me, all goes on thedos de espadas, two of spades. Is it a go?"
The Spanish-Americans are fine players, they lose or gain ever so large sums without wincing. As the spectators uttered a cry of admiration for him who was more or less their lion, Gladsden resolved to prove that he could gamble as well as the best of them.
"Señor Don Aníbal, you'll excuse the rest," he said, impudently, like a man who pretty well knew that he had not a friend in the crowd, as he presented his adversary, in all senses of the word, with the cards; "do you mind shuffling them yourself?"
"What for, Señor?" holding his hands away.
"Oh, it is not merely because I believe yougood at shuffling, but because things are getting serious, and it is important after all that has taken place between us that you should be convinced that I play fair, and that nothing but my better fortune thwarts you."
Don Stefano turned pale; several of the guests whispered to one another, probably seeing that twenty to one on a ground of their own choosing was rather contrary to the character of a blue-blooded caballero. One of them even lifted up his voice, saying:
"He acts like a perfect gentleman."
Gladsden bowed to him, though he fully believed he recognised in him the suggester on a memorable occasion that the author of the death of the late Pepillo Santa Maria should be roasted alive.
Captain de Luna also bowed, but to his opponent, took the cards, shuffled them, and presented them with grace. Gladsden laid the cards on the board, and turning to no one in particular, said:
"Do me the honour to cut them, Señor."
Someone obeyed the request, and the English player began to deal. A deathlike stillness reigned at once as by enchantment in the drawing room so well peopled. Spite of their villainy, the spectators of the coolness of the Englishman alone in the tiger's lair were impressed by it in his favour, and, though the most of them, such as appertained directly to Matasiete's band, at least, would have fallen on him without reluctance on the road back to Guaymas, here they registered a vow to let him have a good show of fun for his money without interference.
Don Aníbal had staked on the two of spades; the other sought to produce the five of clubs (cinco de Bastos) to win; in other words, that card ought to come out of the pack to him before his adversary received the one he called to appear. But after quite twenty of the parallelograms of pasteboard had been thrown on the table one after another, neither of the two cards designated had appeared; but everyone felt they were on the nick.
At the moment when Gladsden was about to show the face of a card between his fingers, the captain of banditti, and of the so-called Chilian cutter, checked his action, saying—
"Stay half a minute, please."
"What's your pleasure?"
"Perhaps to give you one. Did not I hear don Stefano say something about your looking out to buy a pleasure vessel?"
"I even thought that I might make a yacht of—"
"Of the goleta in the port, of theBurlonilla—of my vessel?"
"There is no other worth a biscuit, certainly! Why the question now?" inquired the European with some surprise.
"I tell you what; if you will consent, I will add theLittle Joker, all standing, to my pile, against twenty-five thousand dollars. What do you say to that proposition?"
"What do I say to that offer?" returned Gladsden; "That it is a queer one, not to say a mad one! Señor, I am morally certain that you would lose your ship."
"You mean, you refuse," triumphantly, whilst the auditors smiled flatteringly on their leader for having "bluffed" the foreigner.
"Oh, no, since you insist on it," replied the latter, coldly, though he felt his heart contract within him; "but since I have set out to show I can play cards, I'll sell you the present turn up for ten thousand!"
"Don't! Don't do anything of the sort!" interrupted the host, turning pale. "I'll give you fifteen thousand for it myself!"
"Thank you; but now, since an outsider has intervened, I must stick to it myself."
"You are very right," remarked Captain Matasiete, with a scowl and an angry glance at the banker; "for it is the right one."
Gladsden had tossed the card down without looking at it.
"Cinco de Basto!" exclaimed all the lookers-on in the one voice. "Prodigious! What a splendid game!"
"You were right, right along, about your luck—at cards!" observed don Aníbal, with the most genial smile he could beam with. "TheLittle Jokeris yours."
Gladsden had truly won, for there was the requisite card before him. He had been inwardly persuaded when he vaunted so boldly that he was bound to lose, and had only accepted his mortal enemy's challenge out of recklessness. The emotion he experienced in payment of his false glory was so deep for a couple of moments that he was like one stunned, and stared, still, with no possibility to get out a word.
In that brief interval the banker had conferred with the bandit-gambler, and to some purpose, moreover, for the latter loudly set to felicitating the Englishman on his continued good fortune; and, as at the end of his speech don Stefano put before him the corner of a sheet of paper, on which he had hastily written some lines, he went on to say:
"Gaming debts must be settled in four-and-twenty hours. Here is the transfer of my property in the Chilian goleta, theLittle Joker, as she floats at this moment, with all she holds, in consideration of the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, which I hereby acknowledge, before all this honourable company, to have received!"
As Gladsden, from the tone and the railing glances of more than one hearer of this pretty little presentation speech, conceived no doubt whatever that he would never be let set foot on the deck of theBurlonilla, even if he reached Guaymas intact, he made no to-do about accepting the paper, and merely faltered a simple remonstrance at what he had said being taken too seriously.
"Oh, don't be scrupulous," said don Stefano, with a kind of pride in his friend, "the sum which our Chilian gentleman has lost against you, though apparently no joking matter, is nothing to him in reality. I know something of his pecuniary standing, and I assure you, if he will pardon the breach of banking confidence, that don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Almagro y Pizarro de Cortes has not suffered the least injury in purse!"
He hardly had the title pat himself, but nobody noticed the error, or cared to correct it.
It was, perhaps, pardonable in the loser, after all the fine words, to be glum, but a mournfulness infested the entire assembly, and the few gentlemen whom Gladsden charitably looked upon as innocent neighbours, merchants, or planters, oozed away gradually. Then the remainder, in more probability the allies or sworn adherents of the salteador leader, went forth in a mass.
The banker offered to house the English guest till morning, and he pretended to accept the offer, which had the result of precipitating the farewell of don Aníbal,aliasMatasiete. Thereupon, alone with don Stefano, the Englishman refused a nightcap of French brandy, and as his servant, a man engaged at Guaymas, had entered to receive his orders for the night, he seemed suddenly to have gone right round to the other point of the compass, and said resolutely:
"Ruben, we are going at once back to town. While I come down and wait at the gate, bring the mules!"
Don Stefano began a courteous remonstrance, but the Englishman, after having stood undaunted among a score of bandits, was not going to be prevailed on by one single opponent. So he smiled knowingly, and replied,
"I never sleep in the house of a friend, or in a strange bed. I have infallibly the nightmare—one of those bad sleeps, my dear banker, when a man fires off his revolver, and lays about him with the leg of a table so as to inflict damages that would make your quickest accountant sit up overnight to reckon. You had better let me go."
Don Stefano still mumbled something.
"Perhaps I shall overtake our dear don Aníbal on the road, and if we do meet the chances are that the time will be short for the rest of the way to him, for I want to make myself very agreeable to your honourable friend."
There was a mighty muster of servants, though it was better than three in the morning, at the door, and Gladsden who saw that the two mules were coming round in the courtyard, in charge of his faithful man, seriously contemplated seizing don Stefano by the collar and holding him as a buckler, whilst he cowed the domestics with his revolver and rushed for the saddle. But his host made no sign, and so the Englishman mounted and rode out into the road without any bar.
He reasoned, therefore, that he would be attacked on the highway by the bandits on their return to cut his throat in the villa, since don Stefano's servitors were above the business.
Hence he was rather relieved than startled, about an hour before sunrise, when he heard a couple of gunshots not far ahead of him and his man. The latter was so frightened, or so much of an accomplice in the ambush, that he belabored his mule, turned and vanished in the darkness, increasing his speed with a shout of terror as there rushed after him a horseman who had just passed Gladsden with the dizzy rapidity of a meteor, screaming, "Muerte, hombre—murder ahead man!"
Pretty well on the alert, and his eyes quite accustomed to the darkness, to say nothing of the night breeze off the sea having blown away the last trace of the long stay in the heated room, Gladsden divined that the fugitive had been mistaken for himself, and had been fired upon by his own chosen assassins.
There was a clump of trees ahead, from around which the fleeing cavalier had come. On the instant, Gladsden imagined a trick. He flung himself off his mule, to whose flank he applied a stroke of his whip, which started it off not leisurely, and lay down, half across the road. He had his revolver ready in his hand. There was a yellow stripe in his riding cloak, which made him tolerably distinguishable in the gloom.
Way layers have good eyes. Two men, advancing on foot, speedily spied this stumbling block, and were so flattered by that evidence, as they conceived it, to the goodness of their aim, that they forbore to delay to recharge their guns which they carried easily "at the trail." One of them was more eager than the other to examine the prey, and threw himself before the second. Gladsden judged this an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one bullet, on the expectation of the missile perforating the foremost and then burying itself in his comrade. He waited only long enough to see his teeth gleaming in a savage and gleeful smile, and pulled the trigger.
The robber uttered a scream of pain and surprise, and fell back upon his mate, who instinctively pushed him aside so that he measured his length in the deep water cart furrows. The other, paralysed with fear, was not at all disenchanted by seeing the supposed victim of their double shots rise and present the revolver of which one chamber had furnished a quietus to his friend, whilst he said, having seen the man's face in the flash—
"Good morning, Master Ignacio, otherwise the lieutenant of our dear acquaintance, don String of names, chief of the bandoleros, and skipper of theLittle Joker. If you will just give me the address of your sister, so that I can deliver your last dying message, and that of your dear brother, Pepillo, I shall require nothing further before I rid me of your company!"
Ignacio gave a howl of rage which exemplified the reason for his nickname of "the Mountain Cat," at facing the avowed witness of his brother's decease, the probable slayer, but the revolver daunted him, and the allusion to his sister riveted him to the spot, so that he did not budge, even so much as an eye, to look at his companion who gave a last groan in the rut.
As Mr. Gladsden had no notion of ever again bestowing so much of his time on this nocturnal cavalier, he now designed to inform him about the inheritance of his brother bandit. With a quick transition of feeling, the hearer ejaculated a prayer, luckily short, and springing on the speaker dragged him into the thicket at the roadside.
"Oh, gentleman!" he cried, "You must not be seen by the others. They line the road to the town. You will surely be killed even running the gauntlet, though we believed you would be stifled in your own bedroom at don Stefano's, but you shall not be harmed now! I swear it!" he added vehemently. "You are under the charge of the Saints; your escape from our bullets showed that!"
Gladsden did not trouble just then to undeceive him in his conceit about the horseman who had drawn the fire of the ambuscade.
"Come! You are not so bad a fellow, I grant!"
"And you are a brave heart, Señor. I watched you close while you played the captain disguised."
"Oh, were you there? Now well, I won't say fraternal love would make you help me, but there is a prospect of a bushel of pearls, for your sister, the orphans, and yourself, and, in faith—as you would say—I honestly believe you had better be my safe guide to the port! What say you?"
"It's a bargain, Señor. Besides—" (here he could not help laughing heartily, though in a low tone) "with me you can trick that humbug, the captain, lovely!"
"In what way? Will he not burst with vexation if I slip past his dogs unhurt?"
"He will with disappointment when you sail away in theBurlonilla."
"I believe that."
"And that you may do, with my help, if we are on the alert! I am the chief officer of that barque."
"Which is no more Chilian than you are an honest man."
"Pardon me, Señor! I am honest on occasion, and I will deliver you up the ship if I may still retain my post aboard."
"It strikes me, man, that it is you who are making conditions."
But the Englishman, who realised all the danger of his situation, had not used an angry tone. The bold and merry rogue accordingly proceeded.
"¡Caramba! What is there strange in that? I save your life; you safeguard my neck! Besides, on land, here, I am not afraid of our judges; but on the sea, if the American naval officers catch us, I have always counted it as certain that I should hang!"
"I am with you there!"
"Let me go with you, there, Señor! I will not only pilot you to the town, but do so on the cutter, and take you to the pearl store, surely, steadfastly, under your honour's direction!"
"Your cool impudence is much to my taste. See, day is peeping. Lead on! And if we reach the town without having to burn powder or take the edge off a knife, you have excellent hopes of being my lieutenant on the cocky little craft."
"She's a beauty! But, silence! They come, and will tread on poor Ricardo; so, away!"
However placid our adventurous Englishman might seem to be, he was a man, like another, to be dazzled by the play of his fancy, rendering almost palpable to his mind all the jewelled dreams ofThe Arabian Nights, where pearls and other sea gems play so brilliant a part, and are measured out in bushels by the heroes of those prodigious tales.
Now that he owned a fleet vessel, nothing seemed easier than to realise all these visions, and to succeed in obtaining the treasure indicated by Pepillo, so that, like another Aladdin, his fortune would enable him to eclipse even the dons of the European stock exchanges.
The first thing had been to obtain indisputable command of the ship. So he went to the port governor, a military man, who was incorruptible, and would, he could see, stand no nonsense from the robber chief and his more or less public allies; Colonel Fontoro stamped the transfer paper of the late owner of theBurlonilla, and authorised captain Gladsden to defend his property against all illegal claimants.
There were a score of American or English sailors knocking about at the port. Gladsden selected eight, added a North American Negro as a colour line, a Chinaman for cook, a Karnak to help in the diving, and a Valparaisan boy for the cabin. Ignacio he allowed to be his lieutenant "on trial," but protected himself by giving the second mate, Jem Holdfast, a Bristol man, a sealed order to take command in event of his absence for twenty-four hours without notice, or the American acting suspiciously.
There was a lack of the most important desideratum in his peculiar quest, pearl divers; Ignacio did not pretend to be expert, like his brother-in-law had been, spite of overmuch assurance in most pretensions, and the Karnak was doubtful.
As those waters were wont to have furnished a bountiful harvest of pearls to Spain—up to 1530 from the conquest, a million dollars worth had been sent home officially, heaven only knowing what supplement the tyrants had smuggled to the Jews of Barcelona, Cadiz, Lisbon, and Oporto—Gladsden cherished the hope that he would pick up some Indian, versed by innate inheritance, skilful and strong, if not any too honest. Though the pearl fishery on the West Coast was practically exhausted in the seventeenth century, still a few essay it "for their own hand." It is not impossible that notable pearls are still picked up, and secretly disposed of, as only the other day (1883, to be exact) one was found in the Bay of Panama, so large as to rank among the few celebrated gems of historical note.
The search for a diver was fruitless to Gladsden. The Indians, no doubt, scented a little coolie catching in the wind, where so rakish a vessel was concerned, and had no inclination to be carried to Ceylon and set to work at coffee planting during an engagement of 99 years.
Besides, with so ugly an enemy, the captain ofbandoleroshatching a scheme to recover his property, with which don Jorge Federico was more and more delighted, so that he wondered it had ever been valued at only twenty thousand dollars, he ought already to have sailed. He determined to weigh, therefore, spite of his unsupplied want, obeying the rude alternative.
On the eve, while the men were putting the finishing touches to the seagoing trim, while captain Gladsden was in the cabin, lolling back in a Windsor (Connecticut) chair, smoking and seeing Gladsden Hall rising in a vast estate of new purchase like Chatsworth itself, the South American page came to the doorsill, and announced the arrival alongside of a strange gentleman, with the last provisions of fresh vegetables and water.
Gladsden was in no good humour at the interruption, especially as he conjectured that the newcomer was an emissary of the ex-skipper of the pretty cotter. He was, therefore, about to rejoin that the cabin boy and the uninvited caller might go to Hades in company, when the party mentioned, probably of an impatient temperament, or too pressed by the urgency of his case to stand on ceremony, caught the boy by the waist belt, tossed him aside, and, leaping into the cabin, said as easily as one could imagine and with a winning smile:—
"Be good enough to overlook the manner of my arrival, sir Captain, but Imustspeak with you."
Without any invitation he sat himself down on a locker, and pulling out tobacco and paper from his sash at the waist, proceeded to roll up a cigarette.
Rather taken aback by this abrupt intrusion, the Englishman took a long stare at the speaker, who did not show in the least that the attention was burdensome. Then he smiled, with a reflection which he did not care just then to express. When the cigarette was made and lit, the stranger, half hiding his handsome young face in a cloud of smoke, leant towards his compulsory host with a somewhat mocking air, and began:—
"Señor Capitán, I am of the opinion that, though you should reckon me up by the hour together in the comprehensive style you are doing, that would in no way enlighten you as to who I am."
"That is just where you are out, my friend," returned Gladsden, with some Triumph. "It is I who know more about you than you do of me, or rather it is you who are more in my debt than ever I hope I shall be in yours."
It was the turn for the young Mexican to evince surprise, but he bore the shock very well.
"There is an error, sir," he responded, after reflecting, whilst he regarded the frank, hardy features over against him, repaying his mocking air with a derisive expression which was full of fun, though. "I have never seen you before."
"That is true, perhaps. At the time when we were face to face there was the ugly head of a red Indian thrust between, a head, by the way, in which I lodged a bullet, thanks to which your hair remains on yours."
"Oh!" exclaimed Benito Bustamente, in a gush of joy and amazement. "Was it you whose shot rang in my ear like the voice of a delivering archangel when that murderous savage's knife was hovering over my heart in order to precipitate the death which his envenomed darts had failed to inflict? How can I thank you?"
He sprang forward, let the cigar fly from his fine teeth, and seizing the Englishman's hand, carried it effusively to his lips.
"Well, there, have done, do stop it, my good fellow!" said the other, embarrassed, "I am heartily glad I saved the life of so graceful a caballero, and more. I cannot say now, particularly, if your present errand has anything to do with the occurrence which culminated in placing you, mighty pale and 'gone' looking, at the mercy of that scalping fiend."
"Something to do with it? All, all!" cried Benito.
They exchanged stories. When the Mexican explained how his despair had goaded him into taking up the trail of Dolores, though ill fitted to combat a horde of ruffians, the Englishman stayed him.
"I was on the same track," said he, "how singular! We might have fallen foul of one another, and had a pretty mincing and slashing duet in the thicket, that stormy night. Well, such a fatal blunder was not in the books."
"Thank heaven! To proceed," went on Benito; "I found Dolores sheltered from the rain in a hollow tree. She was like the dead, speechless, inflexible, cold; but fortunately I carried the means of resuscitating her. When she had been so revivified, I left her to await my return with the steed I proposed stealing from a frightened herd which could be seen by the lightning glare around the base of that Mound Tower. The robbers were within the pile, I could move bodily; to my amazement, I spied, on looking up, a man suspended as by a thread from the top of the cylinder of brick. There, in another part, I recognised another visage, hideous, demoniacally grinning, hovering over this doomed wretch. A knife soon glittered in the hand of the cruel scoundrel. I knew the peculiar profile, the thin lips, the chin and hooknose nearly meeting. It was don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna, as he called himself, the visitor at don José's, suspected then to be affiliated to the salteador. I hesitated not a moment. I could not stay your fall, Señor, but I was bound to revenge it, I fired with the untried gun, which handsomely did its work, and the scream of don Aníbal, whose beauty I had marred, was my reward and an alarm to his gang. But I had time to select a horse, stampede the others, gallop to Dolores' refuge, place her on the saddlebow, and flee round the terrified animals over the prairie. When our flight became slower by fatigue, I lassoed a second horse for Dolores, and we two rode easily on to Guaymas."
"Whilst I was carried away, heaven knows how far, luckily I fell in with a couple of decent fellows, professional protectors of the cattle from vermin, and they conducted me to the post, also whither they were bearing their pelts. What a strange meeting! So your idea of humanity was to shoot close to the ear of a man suspended fifty feet on high, so as to startle him into the drop!" laughing. "Well, shake hands again," continued Gladsden, extending his hand.
"But you are alive?"
"I agree with you there. But if I had not fallen on something so soft as a couple of horses, one of which obligingly bolted and took me out of the robbers' camp, I should have been a pancake. All this thanks to yourhumanity!"
Benito hardly understood this kind of jesting; but the ways of the Anglo-Saxon are often incomprehensible to the Southern American, and he did not stop to require an elucidation.
"We are quits, then; that is manifest!" said he.
"Which means we are both, with the very natural proneness of each man, to overrate his vital value infinitely, under ceaseless obligation to one another. What can I do for you?"
"Captain, you have been beating up Guaymas for a pearl fisher—a diver of the rare old sort, who could go deeper and stay under longer than the degenerate descendants of that almost forgotten man-fish Miguelillo, of Tehuantepec, who, in 1620 or so, dived an incredible number of fathoms, and brought up the 'Queen of the Gulf,' which precious pearl, worthy of being called a 'Cleopatrina,' and dissolved in an Imperator's cup, was, up to a few years ago, the largest gem in the coronet of Our Lady in Saragossa Cathedral!"
"My learned friend, I want a diver, indeed. Only I mean to fish in bulk; that is, draw up at one scoop a mass of pearls!"
"Did you never hear the men about the port mention one Benito Vázquez, of the Upper Gulf?" went on the Mexican, without reference to this announcement.
"Well, several did say that the person you name was the very man I was feeling for. But no one had seen him for some time back."
"Benito Vázquez is Benito de Bustamente! Fond of the seas, acquainted with an old Indian, one of the many who assert a descent from the early kings, I know almost every inch of water, far below the surface, too, from the mouth of the Gila to Cape Palmo. I am that diver!"
"Famous diver," said Gladsden. "My dear fellow, you will make my expedition a short and surely successful one. You are the very man I want. I won't say now, engage with me at a sum; but come, point out the spot I seek, help me to drag up the sunken treasure, and as I live, I shall turn my head whilst you dip with your cap into the chest."
"Are you speaking seriously, Captain?" demanded Benito, not surprised at the sudden friendship he had excited, that not being an unexampled event.
"Most seriously."
"Then our bargain is made. The conditions lie thus: ask me whatsoever you will, my Englishman, and I will do my best to gratify it. On your part, let me be accompanied on the voyage by my wife, doña Dolores de Miranda."
"Is that all! Delighted to turn myself out of my cabin for the young lady."
"Afterwards you will land me and her where I indicate."
"Right, but about your remuneration?"
"Not a seed of a pearl. I shall consider myself sufficiently rewarded, if you loyally keep this arrangement, on which depends the happiness of all my life."
"Señor Benito Vázquez de Bustamente," said Gladsden, rising and gravely holding out his hand. "I read in some old newspaper which beguiled the dreary watch, that your father, in resigning the Presidency of these Mexican States, said: He retired with nothing but his family, whom he would rear to be like himself, content with the grand but simple ambition to begood Mexicans. You are worthy your father, who must have been a fine gentleman! And I tell you, one such Mexican suffices to make me reckon very little in the opposing balance a thousand mongrels like that don Aníbal, the robber chief, and his citizen allies. Bring the young lady aboard—she shall be the Queen of the Sea here, my very sister!"
"By my soul!" cried the young Mexican: "You have a gallant heart, and I anticipated little less from a seaman and an Englishman! So, the lady is alongside at this very moment, in the dugout that I paddled out in, awaiting the result of my pleading."
"Enough, the young lady shall have a stateroom, and even a sitting room apart, for the carpenter can soon knock up a partition here. No one but you and I, if I may be considered a guest now and then, may enter there, and I never without you. It is needless to say that Madam Bustamente shall be treated on my ship with all the respectful consideration which is her due."
"Then the sooner we are off soundings the better. Both of us have active enemies ashore."
"Not while my flag covers you. The fiery flag of England is one that grasping fingers have been burnt again afore now, Señor. Now let's bless the ship with the presence within her bulwarks of your life companion, let's have her here."
Benito shook the generous foreigner's hand cordially, ran up the companionway and vanished for a short moment, after which he returned, preceding Dolores. She had even sooner and more completely than her young mate recovered from the privations of the desert, and grief at the loss of her only parent. Her beauty was exhilarating, and Gladsden was really enchanted at her salutation, so fraught with modesty and grace. Her soft, harmonious voice fluttered faintly in her answer to his welcoming address, but she was soon encouraged to the top of her heart, and even laughed at having been fearful up to then.
To think they were in some sort old friends; that this indolent captain had been on the trail of her abductor, and had besides visited with condign punishment the assassin of her father. It was as good as her brightest dreams.