The negress gave a deep grunt of assent, and, seizing the senseless body lying on the floor, she dragged it out of the room. Returning a few moments after, she wiped up the blood with a cloth dipped in hot water, and finally disappeared.
CHAPTER X.
AN OLD SPANIARD WITH ONE EYE.
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“I fear thee, Ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! For thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand.” |
“The ‘Panchita’ has passed Mangrove Point,” came in the hoarse whisper from the signal-man. “You can see her now from below, sir.”
Captain Brand put on a fine Panama hat, and stepped out on the veranda, where, with a cigar in his mouth, he leaned over the balustrade, and kept sharp watch on every thing that was going on below him. In a few minutes a long pointed brown bowsprit protruded itself beyond the wall of rocks, followed by a great triangular lateen sail, bent to a yard a mile long, and tapering away like a fly-fishing-rod, where, at the end, was a short bit of yellow and red pennant. As her bows came into view they showed above a curved prow falling inboard, with a huge bunch of sheepskin for a chafing-mat on the knob, and a thin red streak along the wales, on a lead-colored ground, above her bottom, which was painted green. As more of her proportions came into the picture, you saw a stout stump of a mast, raking forward, with short black ropes of purchases for hoisting the single yard, and heavy square blocks close down to the foot of the mast. When this great sail had come out from the screen of rocks, another light stick of a mast stood up over the taffrail, with another lateen sail and whip-stalk of a yard, to which was bent the Spanish Colonial Guarda Costa flag. In fact, she was a Spanish felucca all over, from stem to stern, and truck to water-line. A few dingy hammocks were stowed about halfway along her rail, and there were a good many men moving about her decks in getting the cable clear, and a lot more clinging like so many lizards along the bending yard, and all in some attempt at uniform dress, in readiness to roll up the sail when the anchor was down. There was a long brass gun, too, burnished like gold, on a pivot slide, with all its equipment, trained muzzle forward in front of the main-mast. No sooner had she sagged into the open basin, with her immense sail hanging flat and heavy in the light air, than a boat from the schooner boarded her, and presently she let go an anchor. There were a few coarse compliments and greetings 62 exchanged between the crews of the two vessels, and some rough jokes made, as the last comer veered out the cable, rolled up his sails, and set taut his running gear in quite a tidy and man-of-war style.
“Go on board the felucca, José, and give my compliments to Don Ignaçio, and say I shall be happy to see him,” cried Captain Brand from the piazza to a man at the cove; “and tell him,” continued he, “that I should have called in person, but I can’t bear the hot sun since I caught the fever. Take my gig.”
This was said in Spanish, and when he had finished speaking he shaded his face behind the curtain and scowled.
“You’re a bird of ill omen, my one-eyed friend; but one of these days I’ll wipe out old scores, and new ones too, perhaps,” Captain Brand muttered to himself; and, from his murderous expression of face, he seemed just the man to carry out his threat. Meanwhile, a light whale-boat of a gig, manned by four men and a coxswain, pushed off from the shore, and in three strokes of the oars she was alongside the felucca. The coxswain stepped over the low rail, and, walking aft, turned down a cuddy of a cabin, took off his hat, and delivered his message. A minute later he again got into the boat, and pulled to the cove, where he said to the captain,