Some of the groups were irresistibly droll: here was an old lady, with a yellow-and-red handkerchief round her head, snoring away, while a negro wench waved a plaintan-bough to and fro to keep off the mosquitoes, which thronged the spot from the inducement of a little glimmering lamp to the Virgin over the bed. There was a thin, lantern-jawed old fellow sipping his chocolate before he resigned himself to sleep. Now and then there would be a faint scream and a muttered apology as some one, feeling his way to his nest, had fallen over the couch of a sleeper. Mothers were nursing babies, nurses were singing others to rest; social spirits were recalling the last strains of recent convivialities; while others, less genially given, were uttering their “Carambas” in all the vindictive anger of broken slumber. Now and then a devotional attitude might be detected, and even some little glimpses caught of some fair form making her toilet for the night, and throwing back her dishevelled hair to peer at the passing strangers.
Such were the scenes that even a brief transit presented; a longer sojourn and a little more light had doubtless discovered still more singular ones.
We halted at the gate of a large, gloomy-looking building which the Friar informed me was the “Venta Nazionale,” the chief inn of the town; and by dint of much knocking, and various interlocutions between Fra Miguel and a black, four stories high, the gates were at length opened. Faint, hungry, and tired, I had hoped that we should have supped in company, and thus recompensed me for my share of the successful issue of the journey; but the Fra, giving his orders hastily, wished me an abrupt “good night,” and led his niece up the narrow stairs, leaving me and my mare in the gloomy entrance, like things whose services were no longer needed.
“This may be Texan gratitude, Fra Miguel,” said I to myself, “but certainly you never brought it from your own country.” Meanwhile the negro, after lighting the others upstairs, returned to where I was, and perhaps not impressed by any high notions of my quality, or too sleepy to think much about the matter, sat down on a stone bench, and looked very much as if about to compose himself to another doze. I was in no mood of gentleness, and so, bestowing a hearty kick upon my black “brother,” I told him to show me the way to the stable at once. The answer to this somewhat rude summons was a strange one,—he gave a kind of grin that showed all his teeth, and made a species of hissing noise, like “Cheet, cheet,” said rapidly,—a performance I had never witnessed before, nor, for certain reasons, have I any fancy to witness again.
“Do you hear me, black fellow?” cried I, tapping his bullet-head with the end of my heavy whip pretty much as one does a tavern-table to summon the waiter.
“Cheet, cheet, cheet,” cried he again, but with redoubled energy.
“Confound your jargon,” said I, angrily; “get up out of that, and lead the way to the stable.” This speech I accompanied by another admonition from my foot, given, I am free to own, with all the irritable impatience of a thirty hours' fast.
The words had scarcely passed my lips, ere the fellow sprang to his legs, and, with a cry like the scream of an infuriated beast, dashed at me. I threw out my arm as a guard, but, stooping beneath it, he plunged a knife into my side, and fled. I heard the heavy bang of the great door resound as he rushed out, and then fell to the ground, weltering in my blood!
I made a great effort to cry out, but my voice failed me; the blood ran fast from my wound, and a chill, sickening sensation crept over me, that I thought must be “death.” “'T is hard to die thus,” was the thought that crossed me, and it was the last effort of consciousness, ere I swooned into insensibility.