THE HAUL OF MILLIONS.
Soon a cutter was lowered, in which the Mexican got, with the radiant Ignacio as his coxswain, and four oarsmen, while the moment it started in pursuit, or as matters stood then, for the encounter of Benito's little piragua, doña Maria Josefa de Miranda hoisted herself up the stairs and lumbered to the side of the steamer to gloat over the proceeding.
Gladsden saw that, though he had a boat got ready, the canoe must be met before he could intervene, to say nothing of the probability of a volley from the bow of the Casta Susana checking his attempt in mid career. If, besides, the pearl diver ran himself ashore, encumbered with the young lady, he was almost sure to fall among the mesquite brush under the pistols of the salteador and his lieutenant.
It was no question till the young Mexican and his wife were out of peril, of attacking the formidable steamer.
Benito's red ally, who had whispered to his grandson and drawn a nod of comprehension from the latter, had stripped himself, as did the youth, for diving. All other eves were on the chase. They slipped over the low board unnoticed, opposite the Casta Susana, and as silently took to the water and swam away. It looked as if they deemed the impending combat hopeless, and, like the rat, quitted the surely defeated ship.
In the meantime, poor Benito, recognising with whom he had to deal, was plying the paddle manfully, whilst Dolores, falling on her knees in the canoe, set ardently to praying, her hands clasped, and her eyes on the profound sky. All at once, without giving a warning to the girl, so that she was shaken in her devotions, Benito turned the pirogue somewhat, evaded the Susamalis boat, and went straight to a little rocky islet of some height, well covered with rushes and other vegetation. It would mask him from the Casta Susana's crew, though leaving that vessel between him and his friends. Possibly, he had no other aim than to deposit Dolores thereon, and stand in defence of her against all comers.
The Mexicans began to cheer their captain, whose boat, clumsily turned, resumed the hunt.
Very little could be seen now of the chase from the low-lying goleta, and though Gladsden recklessly climbed up the rigging to get a view over the thronged deck of the steamer, soon the piragua and the cutter were veiled by the islet from all the spectators, friends and foes.
"Every man to the boats!" cried the Englishman. "Arm to the teeth, and, cook, all the matches and tar; we'll board that beast of a smoky tub," appealing to the seamen's hatred of a steamer to fire their energy, "take her or leave her a prey to the flames! Every man, active and idlers, away!"
There was, indeed, a very fair prospect of the Casta Susana being taken by surprise, so enwrapt was the attention of all the people of the Mexican, taking the cue of doña Maria Josefa, with interest and anxiety.
But the coup de main never came off. Halfway to the target, Gladsden was startled to see her, previously riding, doubly secured, so stiffly, nod, and begin to rock, then cant at such an incline whilst settling down slowly, as to cause the Mexicans to catch hold of every near object.
A great outcry arose.
It was repeated with anguish, as the careering continued as if a giant hand was rolling her over. Then the black faces of the stokers and engineer were seen as they came climbing up on deck to add themselves to the no less terrified crew. The steamer's deck was at a slope of forty-five, everybody clinging to the uppermost gunwale, save the unlucky ones who had rolled to the down scuppers, in among the rubbish which a Mexican captain allows to encumber his upper planks. The swaying cannon above threatened to break loose and crush these struggling wretches to marmalade, whilst their vis-à-vis, bursting the port lids, ran out to the carriages and kissed the agitated water. Poor Maria Josefa, grasping a sailor round the body whilst he hung on the taut guy of the reeling smoke pipe, hovered over the knot of writhing, fighting men trying to get a footing on a surface every moment changing its centre of gravity.
At that direful instant the boat of Gladsden was slightly pulled down on the opposite side to the steamer, and two dark heads succeeded two pair of red arms, abruptly seizing the gunwale by chin and hands. In the mouths of both were the formidable navajas, "gapped" by recent rough usage and pointless.
"You, Diego? And young Diego?" cried the captain, assisting them on board.
"Yes; you see um steamer go down, and you see um pirates go up pretty soon dam quick! Old Diego and young Diego play swordfish—we scuttle the steamer, see?"
In fact an ominous hissing seemed to indicate that the water rising within the steamer, well on her side now, was menacing a blow up of the boilers. The engineer and his mate fully foresaw this, and were scrambling into a boat, jammed of its fall in the blocks.
"Heaven guard us!" was the shout on the ill-fated steamer. Some forty men were seen preparing to launch the boats, or even leap into the water, when a louder scream, though from one pair of lungs, was audible over the clamour. Doña Maria Josefa, with the sailor on whom she would not relax her grasp, had rolled like a ball across the perpendicular decks, bounded over the bulwarks, now washed by the water, and splashed out of sight.
As if her plunge had been arranged for the eliciting of a salute, pistol shots from the rock islet announced that the pirates and Benito were at firing range.
There was chaos.
The hissing steam, the splitting vessel, the straining yards and masts, the knocking about of everything loose within the half-flooded hull, the exclamations of the men in the water, some of whom mounted on the drift, shouted out "shark!" no pen can do justice to, and to the critical situation which doña Maria was the most prominent object, the centre, the feminine hub of a wheel of frantic men.
The Englishman took the only course, however risky, towards desperadoes who might not appreciate humanity. He rowed to the spot, reached the centre, and after nearly capsizing the boat, dragged the woman safe to the stern sheets. The heavy mass lay there, inert as a stranded porpoise.
Shrieks, and the disappearance of men in the water, of whom no further traces were yielded up but the ruddy bubbles which marked a shark's wake, incited the Burlonilla's crew to greater speed in their rescue. But they would have been swamped by the concourse of frightened men, whom not even the presentation of a cutlass or loaded pistol kept off; luckily the steamer had finished her going down, having attained the level which was her altered draught, while the compressed air buoyed her. The Mexicans, seeing her deck become almost level, climbed upon her in dread of the tintorera. Gladsden left these to count their missing, whilst he conveyed his cargo, as prisoners, to his vessel, where they were secured. He had the swivel trained for precaution on the unfortunate Casta Susana, smokeless, fireless, waterlogged, and retraced his course with a circuit to avoid the disabled foes, so as to bear the too long delayed succour to his young friends.
Benito had run the canoe up a little cleft in the rocks, shoaled her on a stretch of sand, taken out Dolores and placed her in a grotto. Before her he rolled a stone, as a breakwater, gave her his revolver, and stood on guard only with the pearl diver's knife, which, however, he well knew how to swing and thrust, as well as cast—a siring enabling this latter trick to be executed without the knife being lost.
Urged madly on by Matasiete, the noise on the other side of the islet on his ship puzzling him, and giving him an earnest desire to wipe out the present vexation and return to his post, the boat stove itself on the rock. The water was not deep, the men could leap from stone to stone or wade. The waders, two in number, trod on a stingray or an electric fish, for they were heard to groan and seen to fall palsied in their tracks.
The rest confronted Benito. He drew their fire, expressly to prevent a shot being directed at his wife, and then met their charge in a mass. As the mob enveloped him, Dolores fired the revolver twice, more at random than with careful aim. One shot told, for a seaman left the struggle to go on of itself, whilst he reeled aloof, and tumbled off the rock into the water. Two more Benito gave a quantum of steel to Ignacio and his commander were left alone to quell the dangerous young Mexican. So far they had not been able to use their firearms without the hazard of injuring their own. They drew off to fire with deliberation, when the young wife, whose head had cleared after her first shot, and who was made a heroine by seeing that the life of her beloved perhaps rested on the true flight of the little globes of lead in the revolver, let fly at Ignacio, whose backbone was broken by the two shots. As he fell in a heap, the salteador chief, aghast at being so quickly placed solitary before his foeman, wheeled round and fired at the smoke oozing out of the young woman's cave. She screamed, for a fragment of stone, cut off by the bullet, had fallen on her neck, and she believed she was killed, supporting the delusion by swooning away. Receiving no reply, therefore, to his heartrending call, Benito flew at the murderer with so awful a countenance and so menacing a flourish of the blood-smeared knife, that Matasiete did not pause to try to raise his name to Mata-ocho, "the slayer of eight." He backed, and then plunged into the bush.
"¡Hola, cobarde!" cried Benito, but the other made no reply.
There was a crashing of the bush wood, a splash, and all was silence. The young Mexican heard his name behind him in a faint voice, and renouncing vengeance at the appeal of love, went quickly to his wife. Dame Dolores required nothing but his presence as a proof of his safety to be recovered of her fright.
After making certain that the assailants were incapable of mischief, the two who had been stunned by the fish surrendering with as much alacrity as their confused senses permitted, the couple had the satisfaction of being hailed from the boat of Gladsden.
It is regrettable to say that the latter, in his concentration of thoughts upon the rescue of his friends, was deaf to his oarsmen beguiling the time as they shot by the wreck, by supplying the words to the notes of the key bugle in the hands of their shipkeeper. He was playing a song popular at the period of the outbreak of the Gold Fever in California, of which the chorus runs someway thus—applicably, the singers fancied, to the situation:
"Oh, oh, Susannah! don't you cry for me. I'm going to Califomy with my washbowl on my knee."
The young couple were gaily taken off the islet, though the two Mexicans were left there to regain their clearness of wits, whilst a prolonged search was made all around it for the lost leader. The islet did not contain him, there was little likelihood that he had gained the mainland, though a sanguinary streak gave reason to the supposition that he had at least essayed to do so. No doubt of it, he had been devoured by a tintorera, unscrupulous about entombing the pretended scion of three of the great conquerors of Spanish America. It must be confessed that this tragic end caused no chagrin to the crew and extra force of Guaymas riffraff who acted as marines on board the Casta Susana. They blamed him for the whole of the disaster, and it was a good thing for his consort in the expedition, doña Maria Josefa de Miranda, that she was remote from the crew, exceedingly spiteful since they had escaped a watery or a shagreen bound grave.
That lady had been completely changed in character by her bath in the Gulf, a magic wrought by Pacific water which may recommend it in the future to the lovers of peaceful married life vexed by an irritating aunt. She showed herself quite kind towards the pair, and blamed the late don Aníbal for all her persecution.
Ignacio and his master having kept to themselves and carried away with them the secret lure which had decoyed the Casta Susana to lay her ribs on the knots of the logline reef, the Mexicans displayed no desire to linger. They filled their boats with provisions, loaded a raft to be towed with other articles, and, the weather being fine, started off to Whale Channel, intending to cross and coast along till picked up. The peninsula was too sterile to afford so large a party any hope of successful land marches to reach inhabitants. To have done with them: they had to cut the raft adrift off Tiburón, and, parting company, the three boats separately reached the port whence they sailed—having had to live on tortoise and even cayman—en route.
Long before their arrival, Gladsden's vessel had transported Dolores, her husband, and their aunt, fully reconciled, to Guaymas, where—as their marriage had been so informally and unceremoniously performed by a friendly priest—Father Serafino—they received the grand nuptial benediction in the presence of a numerous assembly of the best society, among whom Captain Gladsden had the honour of signing his name as witness. It is needless to say that don Stefano Garcia, in considerable trepidation—walking like a cat on hot cinders, as the proverb goes—did not attend the ceremony.
Before the wrecked men of the Casta Susana came to port the treasure of pearls had been divided. There were other valuable stones, notably emeralds, but the pearls were worthy all of Pepillo's eulogy; there were perfect ones for shape and other qualities—the pears, the globes, the flatcrown (tympani, or kettledrum shaped, as the ancient said), in short, the choicest specimens imaginable of "the Pinnic stone."
Don Benito agreed to maintain the family of Pepillo and a sweetheart of Ignacio out of his half share, amounting, as valued by Mr. Lyons (who had his racial genius for estimating precious stones), to £150,000, well overrunning Pepillo's rough casting up. Both he and Gladsden placed a large sum in the bishop's hands for almsgiving; they contributed towards the breakwater and so on, and then separated, each in his own way to enjoy the filibuster's hoard, originally accumulated to revolutionise Lower California as a preliminary to annexing it to the United States.
Captain Gladsden sailed to San Francisco, where he disposed of the Little Joker, and of some of the pearls, and travelled overland to take steamship for England.
Don Benito accompanied his wife back to her paternal estate, which was to be their happy home.