“Regardin’ a missis,” returned the other, reflectively, “’tain’t the craft wot crowds the most canvas as makes the best weather, mate, and at my years a man looks less to raking masts an’ a gay figur’-head than to good tonnage and wholesome breadth of beam. Now, look ye here, mates—wot say ye to this here craft?—her with the red ensign at the main, as is layin’ to, like, with her fore-sheet to windward and her helm one turn down?”
While he spoke, he pointed to our old acquaintance, Célandine, who was cheapening fancy articles at a store that spread its goods out under an awning far into the middle of the modest street. The Quadroon was, as usual, gorgeously dressed, wearing the scarlet turban that covered her still black hair majestically, as a queen carries her diadem. Like the coloured race in general, she seemed to have renewed her youth under a tropical sun, and at a short distance, particularly in the eyes of Bottle-Jack, appeared a fine-looking woman, with pretensions to the remains of beauty still.
The three seamen, of course, ranged up alongside for careful criticism, but Célandine’s attention was by no means to be distracted from the delightful business of shopping she had on hand. Shawls, scarfs, fans, gloves, tawdry jewels, and perfumery, lay heaped in dazzling profusion on a shelf before her, and the African blood danced in her veins with childish glee at the tempting sight. The storekeeper, a French Creole, with sharp features, sallow complexion, and restless, down-looking black eyes, taking advantage of her eagerness, asked three times its value for every article he pointed out; but Célandine, though profuse, was not inexperienced, and dearly loved, moreover, the feminine amusement of driving a bargain. Much expostulation therefore, contradiction, wrangling, and confusion of tongues was the result.
The encounter seemed at the warmest, and the French Creole, notwithstanding his villainous countenance and unscrupulous assertions, was decidedly getting the worst of it, when Slap-Jack’s quick eye detected amongst the wares exposed for sale certain silks and other stuffs which had formed part of ‘The Bashful Maid’s’ cargo, and had, indeed, been wrested by the strong hand from a Portuguese trader, after a brisk chase and a running fight, which cost the brigantine a portion of her boltsprit and two of her smartest hands. The chest containing these articles had been started in unloading, so that its contents had sustained much damage from sea-water. It was a breadth of stained satin out of this very consignment that the Creole storekeeper now endeavoured to persuade Célandine she would do well to purchase at an exorbitant valuation.
Slap-Jack, like many of his calling, had picked up a smattering of negro-French, and could understand the subject of dispute sufficiently to interfere, a course from which he was not to be dissuaded by his less impressionable companions.
“Let her be!” growled Smoke-Jack. “Wot call have you now to come athwart-hawse of that there jabbering mounseer, as a man might say, dredging in his own fishing-ground? It’s no use hailing her, I tell ye, mate, I knows the trim on ’em; maybe she’ll lay her foresail aback, and stand off-and-on till sundown, then just when a man least expects it, she’ll up stick, shake out every rag of canvas, and run for port. Bless ye, young and old, fair and foul, black, white, and coloured, nigger, quadroon, and mustee—I knows ’em all, and not one on ’em but carries a weather-helm in a fresh breeze, and steers wild and wilful in a sea-way.”
But Slap-Jack was not to be diverted from his purpose. With considerable impudence, and an impressive sea-bow, he walked up to Célandine under the eyes of his admiring shipmates, and, mustering the best negro-French at his command, warned her in somewhat incomprehensible jargon of the imposition intended to be practised. Now it happened that Port Welcome, and the island in which it was situated, had been occupied in its varying fortunes by French, Spaniards, and English so equally, that these languages, much corrupted by negro pronunciation, were spoken indiscriminately, and often altogether. It was a great relief, therefore, to Slap-Jack that Célandine thanked him politely for his interposition in his native tongue, and when she looked into the young foretopman’s comely brown face, she found herself so fascinated with something she detected there as to continue the conversation in tolerably correct English, for the purpose of improving their acquaintance. The seaman congratulated himself on having made so happy a discovery, while his friends looked on in mute admiration of the celerity with which he had completed his conquest.
“He’s a smart chap, mate,” enunciated Bottle-Jack, with a glance of intense approval at the two figures receding up the sunny street, as Célandine marched their companion off, avowedly for the purpose of refreshing him with cooling drinks in return for his good-nature—“a smart young chap, and can hold his own with the best of ’em as ever hoisted a petticoat, silk or dowlas. See now, that’s the way to do it in these here latitudes! First he hails ’em, speaking up like a man, then he ranges alongside, and gets the grapplers out, and so tows his prize into port in a pig’s whisper. He’s a smart young chap, I tell ye, and a match for the sauciest craft as ever sailed under false colours, and hoisted a red pennant at the main.”
But Smoke-Jack shook his head, and led his shipmate, nothing loth, into a tempting store-house, redolent with the fragrance of limes, tobacco, decaying melons, and Jamaica rum. He said nothing, however, until he had quenched his thirst; then after a vigorous pull at a tall beaker, filled with a fragrant compound in which neither ice nor alcohol had been forgotten, observed, as if the subject still occupied his thoughts—
“I knows the trim on ’em, I tell ye; I knows the trim on ’em. As I says to the young chap now, I never found one yet as would steer kind in a sea-way.”