When the party had become fairly seated around the board, and while the host was bailing out the soup from an enormous silver tureen with a tea-cup––for it did not appear that he had ever been presented in the usual way with a ladle––fishing out the floating morsels of rich callipee, with the delicate frills of his sleeves turned back, he began the conversation in the Castilian language:
“Well, amigos, we are taking our last feast together, I fear, on this little cluster of rocks, for a long time to come.”
“How!” exclaimed the padre, as he stuffed a wedge of turtle fat in his oily mouth, and opened his round black eyes to their fullest extent in manifest surprise.
“Como, mi hico!” he repeated, as he passed a dirty paw over his smooth chin, and looked inquiringly.
“Yes, holy father, our good friend Don Ignaçio here has brought us somewhat startling intelligence. Capital soup, this. I shall give Babette a dollar. Yes, the eagles and vultures are after us; all the West India fleet; the Lord only knows how many ships, and brigs, and gun-boats. Glass of Madeira with you, doctor?” wiping his thin lips with a corner of the damask table-cloth as he spoke; “and they have tampered, too, with my old friends the custom-house people. Take away the tureen, Babette––and, in point of fact, I shouldn’t be the least surprised to see a swarm of those navy gentlemen off the reef here at any moment. A sharp knife, Babette, for these teal––a duck should be cut, not torn. Try that Moselle, Don Ignaçio; I know your fancy for light wines. This was given me by a Captain––’pon my soul, I forget his name; he had such a pretty wife, Madame Matilde,” glancing at the frame of miniatures on the wall; “sweet creature she was; took quite a fancy for me, I believe, and might have been sitting here at this moment, but a––really I forget her other name. However, it makes no difference: the wine is called Moselle.”
Now be it here observed that Don Ignaçio drank very little wine or stimulants of any sort, and never by any chance a drop from any vessel which, with his single bright eye, he did not see his host first indulge in. This self-imposed sacrifice may have been owing to his diffidence, or modesty, or deference to Captain Brand, or, perhaps, other and private reasons of his own; but yet he never broke through 88 that rule of politeness and abstemiousness. Sometimes, indeed, he carried his principles so far as to refuse a meat or the fruits which his host had not partaken of, and always with a slow shake of his brown fore finger, as if he did not like even to smell the dish presented to him.
“What! not even a sip of that nectar, compadre mio?”
The compadre shook his digit, and observed that drinking nectar sometimes made people sick.
The captain laughed gayly, and said, “Bah! learning to drink does the harm, and not the art, when properly acquired.”
During all the foregoing interlude the doctor remained in his grave, calm humor, and only when the captain alluded to the lady whose husband’s name escaped him did he show signs of interest. Then his eye followed the look toward the miniature, and his jaws came together with a slight grating spasm.