"Tally on the braces! Heave and haul in time!
Four and twenty niggers and all of them was prime!
Old King Mungo's daughters, they bought our lasses rings.
Heave now! Pull now! They never married kings."
They sang on and on to the strumming of the guitar, while all the rest stood around and watched them; and when they had finished the song, which told how King Mungo, when he had sold his family as well as his subjects, made a raid upon his neighbors and was captured in his turn and, very justly, was himself sold as a slave, Cornelius Gleazen cried loudly, "Encore! Encore!" and clapped his hands, until the carpenter, with a droll look in his direction, again began to strum his guitar and sang the song all over.
As I have said, at the time I attributed little significance to Cornelius Gleazen's enthusiasm for the song or to the look that the carpenter gave him. But when I saw Captain North staring from one to the other and realized that he had seen and heard only what I had, I wondered why he wore so queer an expression, and why, for some time to come, he was so grave and stiff in his dealings with both Gleazen and Uncle Seth. Nor did it further enlighten me to see that Arnold Lamont and Captain North exchanged significant glances.
So at last we came to the mouth of Havana harbor, and you can be sure that when, after lying off the castle all night, we set our Jack at the main as signal for a pilot, and passed through the narrow strait between Moro Castle and the great battery of La Punta, and came to anchor in the vast and beautiful port where a thousand ships of war might have lain, I was all eyes for my first near view of a foreign city.
On every side were small boats plying back and forth, some laden with freight of every description, from fresh fruit to nondescript, dingy bales, others carrying only one or two passengers or a single oarsman. There were scores of ships, some full of stir and activity getting up anchor and making sail, others seeming half asleep as they lay with only a drowsy anchor watch. On shore, besides the grand buildings and green avenues and long fortifications, I could catch here and there glimpses of curious two-wheeled vehicles, of men and women with bundles on their heads, of countless negroes lolling about on one errand or another, and, here and there, of men on horseback. I longed to hurry ashore, and when I saw Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen deep in conversation, I had great hopes that I should accomplish my desire. But something at that moment put an end for the time being to all such thoughts.
Among the boats that were plying back and forth I saw one that attracted my attention by her peculiar manœuvres. A negro was rowing her at the command of a big dark man, who leaned back in the stern and looked sharply about from one side to the other. Now he had gone beyond us, but instead of continuing, he came about and drew nearer.
He wore his hair in a pig-tail, an old fashion that not many men continued to observe, and on several fingers he wore broad gold rings. His face was seamed and scarred. There were deep cuts on cheek and chin, which might have been either scars or natural wrinkles, and across his forehead and down one cheek were two white lines that must have been torn in the first place by some weapon or missile. His hands were big and broad and powerful, and there was a grimly determined air in the set of his head and the thin line of his mouth that made me think of him as a man I should not like to meet alone in the dark.