boyhood been familiar with low life and smugglers, I had learned many songs and some slang. And so, with a crowd of dark, fierce, astonished faces round me of men eagerly listening, I sang a smuggler’s song—
“Yo que soy contrabandista,
Y campo a me rispeto,
A todos mi desafio,
Quien me compra hilo negro?
Ay jaleo!
Muchachas jaleo!
Quien me compra hilo negro!”
Great was the amazement and thundering the applause from my auditors. Let the reader imagine a nun of fourteen years asked to sing, and bursting out with “Go it while you’re young!” Then I sang the Tragala, which coincided with the political views of my friends. But my grand coup was in reserve. I had learned from Borrow’s “Gypsies in Spain” a long string of Gitano or Gypsy verses, such as—
“El eray guillabela,
El eray obusno;
Que avella romanella,
No avella obusno!”“Loud sang the gorgio to his fair,
And thus his ditty ran:—
‘Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come,
And not the Gypsy man!’”
And yet again—
“Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad,
A smuggling he would ride;
So stole his father’s ambling prad,
And therefore to the galleys sad
Coruncho now I guide.”
This was a final coup. How the diabolo I, such an innocent stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish Gypsy—the least knowledge of which in Spain implies unfathomable iniquity
and fastness—was beyond all comprehension. So I departed full of honour amid thunders of applause.
From the first day our room was the resort of all the American ship-captains in Marseilles. We kept a kind of social hall or exchange, with wine and cigars on the side-table, all of which dropping in and out rather reminded me of Princeton. My friend the actor had pitched upon a young English Jew, who seemed to me to be a doubtful character. He sang very well, and was full of local news and gossip. He, too, was at home among us. One evening our captain told us how he every day smuggled ashore fifty cigars in his hat. At hearing this, I saw a gleam in the eyes of the young man, which was a revelation to me. When he had gone, I said to the captain, “You had better not smuggle any cigars to-morrow. That fellow is a spy of the police.”
The next day Captain Jack on leaving his ship was accosted by the douaniers, who politely requested him to take off his hat. He refused, and was then told that he must go before the préfet. There the request was renewed. He complied; but “forewarned, forearmed”—there was nothing in it.