Had, however, the mate presented that cold eel his knife for a moment before he jumped overboard and squirmed to the shore, that cuchillo would have found a redder sheath than the crimson sash which usually held it. Fortunately perhaps for the mate, he was not of a generous disposition, save with kicks and ropes’-ends, or else he might have regretted his philanthropy.
So soon as the icy-blue man had congealed, as it were, in the sun until he was quite dry and frozen again, he slunk away to the ditch of the old fort, where he thawed till nightfall, and then entered the town; hanging round the pulperias, smacking and cracking his parched lips for a measure of aguardiente, only two centavos a cup, and not caring for that fine, generous, pale, amber-colored old Port sent to him by the good Archbishop of Oporto! But, not having the copper centavos––though his own coppers stood so much in need of moisture––he continued to skulk on.
Presently, coming to the wide streets and to the outskirts of the town, he spied a large mule, ready caparisoned for the road, hitched to the door of a house, waiting for his owner to mount him. The icy green-eyed individual, disgusted for the time with blue salt water, 279 and being, as we know, a capital cavalry-man––in dashing charges among the patriots, and caprioling also up the Blue Mountains to Escondido––thought he would take another gallop on the dry ground, just to keep his hand and little finger in; so he quietly cast off the mule’s painter, and flung his canvas legs over the beast as if he belonged to him. And so he did; for he told the man at whose place he passed an hour or two that night, and who thought he knew the master to whom the mule had once belonged, that it had been presented to him by an old friend, whose name––as had the mule’s––escaped him.
All this time the one-eyed man, with his banana woman, Pancha, were creeping along the water part of the land––with the Peak of Tarquina in sight––toward Cape Cruz, bound round that peninsula, and so on to the Doçe Léguas Cays; while the man on the mule navigated by the Sierras del Cobre of St. Jago, steering by bridle for Manzanillo, and then to take water again for the same secret destination.
The cargo that both expected to take in there was about ten thousand pounds sterling in mildewed coin of various realms and denominations; but it was there, and would pass current any where.
So they sailed and navigated. It was tedious work, though; and it took a week for the old launch with the torn sail to get into the Tiger’s Trap––fine weather, and no sea––and there make fast to the rocks. At the same evening hour the mule with his passenger planted his fore feet, like a pair of kedges over his bows, in the fishing village near Manzanillo, and foundered bodily, going down with his freight slap-dash in the mud. The passenger, however, escaped, and skulled along by the shore, where he fell in with a poor fisherman who was about to shove off in his trim, wholesome bark for professional recreation on the Esperanza bank.
Glad was old Miguel Tortuga to have a strong man to assist him for the privilege of joining in a sip of aguardiente and catching a red snapper or two; so they jumped on board and spread the sail.
Had old Miguel, however, seen the sharklike eyes of his assistant in the sunlight, or dreamed what a snapper was about to catch him, he would not have gone fishing that night, and it would have saved him much tribulation at daylight the next morning, when he was picked off a small rock by a fisher acquaintance of his from Manzanillo.
But we have nothing to do with old Miguel; and need only say, to console him, that his stanch boat went safely through the blue gateway of the roaring ledge of white breakers, and late Sunday night lay calmly in the inlet abreast Captain Brand’s former dwelling.
To go back again for a week, the “Monongahela”––double-banked leviathan as she was––came plunging out to sea from Kingston, every 280 man and boy, from Jack Smith on her forecastle to Bill Pump in the spirit-room, and from Richard Hardy to Tiny Mouse, knowing from the first plunge the frigate made what they all sailed for.