“Ave, purissima!” said the padre, with a hiccough; “I shall be a bishop myself one of these days. Ora pro nobis!”
“You’ll be a cardinal,” gibed in the doctor, “if swilling wine will do it.”
Captain Brand went on with his narrative:
“Where was I? Oh! ah! We were waiting alongside the ship, with her lower chain-plates not a foot above water, for the donna to be hoisted over the rail, since she would not permit any of her attendants to precede her––though Heaven knows they were anxious enough to do so. By this time, too, after my men had left the deck of the ship, the crew had somehow got hold of a barrel of wine, and, letting the pumps work themselves, were guzzling away in grand style. I began to lose patience at last, and shouted to the old lady to come at once, or I should be compelled to leave her. She merely leaned over the rail, however, and chattered forth that all she had in the world was at my service––of course, figuratively she meant––but she must stay another minute to find a jar of preserved ginger, which was her only cure for the cholic.”
“You didn’t take the offer of the old lady as a figure of speech, I presume?” asked the doctor.
“No!” muttered the one-eyed old wretch, with a sneer. “And that jar of ginger spared her any more attacks of cholic!”
“Caballeros, you are both right. I did accept the gift of her worldly goods in the frank spirit in which it was offered, without any reservation; and, to my almost certain knowledge, the Señora Lavarona was never more troubled with illness of any kind.
“The fact was, that, finding the ship fast sinking, and her crew becoming boisterous and rebellious as the imminent danger burst upon them, they proposed, since their own boats were stove, to take possession of mine! That was a joke, to be sure! A dozen drunken swabs, with naked hands, to capture ten of the old ‘Centipede’s’ picked men, with a pistol and knife each under their shirts; and”––here the speaker laughed heartily––“and Captain Brand beside them! Diavolo! what silly people there are in this world!”
The good padre joined his superior in this ebullition of feeling, and seemed to enjoy the joke immensely, rolling his goggle eyes and head from side to side, kissing his crucifix, and exclaiming, with devotion,
“Que hombre es eso!”––“What a man he is!”