And Captain Brand dreamed, too––of the old laird, his father, in prison; his mother weeping over forged notes; the sleeping, unsuspecting people he had treacherously murdered; the pillages he had committed; the men he had slain in open conflict; those he had executed with his own private cord; the poor woman who had died in worse torments, when, indeed, even knife or pistol, rope or poison, would have been a mercy; the agony and sufferings of those who survived them; with all the concomitant horrors which make the blood run cold to think of, and which made the pirate’s almost freeze in his veins––living years in minutes––did Captain Brand, as he lay there on the chill sand in his troubled nightmare of a sleep.
“Ah! Dios! Dios!” chattered the Señora Banana Pancha, at the other outlet to the inlet, rolling over on the ledge of the rocks at the Tiger’s Trap.
“What has become of my Ig––Ig––naçio––the one-eyed old villain who has persecuted me for forty years? Why did I cut the old launch adrift before I got in myself? And here I am alone and desolate 290 on this cursed island, and my Ig––Ig––naçio––bless his spark of an eye––not come back to me! Ah! Dios! Dios! what has become of the little man? He will kill me, cierto, when he comes back and finds the boat gone with all the money, which nearly broke his thin back to bring here; but, Dios! Dios! I am dying of thirst, and not a shred of dried fish or jerked beef has gone into my old mouth––”
Yes there has, Doña Pancha, for just then a piece of hawser-laid rope––rather dry, perhaps, for mastication––was placed across your crying mouth that you might bite upon, if you would only stop your old tongue.
For while you were screaming on the rocks, and yelling for your Ig––Ig––naçio, who went back for the last bag of gold that wasn’t there, a light gig glided in like a blackfish, and a bigger blackfish jumped up and stopped your old mouth, Pancha, with that bit of hide rope. But if you will keep quiet, Pancha, and not exorcise Banou for the Evil One, that old nigger will give you a cup of liquid not known in the devil’s dominions, and treat you also to some white biscuit to nibble upon.
Ah! you will, eh? and tell all about that thin curl of smoke, which you believe to have been made by that coal-eyed Ig––Ig––naçio, away up there by the inlet? Now keep quiet again, old Lady Banana; and while your screaming mouth is gagged, don’t cut this small gig away, or else she may navigate herself out to sea, as did your Ig’s launch, and you be left desolate again.
The tropical night was still; the lizards wheetled, the breakers roared on the outer ledge, the ripples washed musically on the shelly shores, the alligators flapped about on the surface of the lagoon, the insects buzzed around the mangrove thickets; and as the gray dawn of morning appeared, and the rain began to fall, a steaming hot mist arose, through which the sea-birds flapped their wings and sailed away in search of their morning’s meal. The sharks and the deep-sea fish, however, lay still and motionless low down by the base of the reefs, and watched with their cold, round eyes. Captain Brand, too, arose, and, opening his green-bluish eyes, smoothing his moulting feathers, and splashing his fins in the wet sand, took an observation.
This was the rainy day for which Captain Brand had laid by all that money to spend it in!
It was a Monday morning––Black Monday for Captain Brand––when, after divesting his leg of the clove-hitch, he secured old Miguel’s boat to a large stone, and then, according to his own ancient practice, he clambered with difficulty up to the venerable crag. Captain Brand had no spy-glass, and there was a good deal of rain falling, but yet he thought he saw a large ship, a brig, and a small schooner in the offing.