“Por Dios, padre! there was a scene which would have drawn tears from a––”
“Pirate,” suggested the doctor.
The padre blubbered outright, and his round, tipsy eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“Ay, monsieur, even from mine! But to go back a little. When I had got all snug on board the schooner, I went below, and moved softly on tiptoe along the passage to the door of my beautiful cabin.
“You remember, amigo,” said the narrator, turning toward Don Ignaçio, “how that cabin was fitted, and how much it cost to do it. I think you paid the bill for me? No?”
Oh yes, Captain Brand was quite right. Don Ignaçio remembered 98 it well, and the bill was a thousand gold ounces, sixteen thousand hard silver dollars; and by no means dear at that, for the Don never allowed any body to cheat him.
“Cheats himself, though, sometimes. Don’t charge more than the usual commission.”
The one-eyed usurer looked wicked at this remark, but he said nothing, being occupied at the moment rolling up a paper cigar with one hand, and wetting the brown fore finger of the other.
“Well, caballeros, I peeped through the lattice-work of the cabin door, and there reclined my pretty prize––I recall her as if it were yesterday––on one of the large blue satin damask lounges of the after transoms. Her head rested on one of her round ivory arms, half hidden in the luxurious pillows; her shawl, too, was thrown back; and with a somewhat disordered dress, and a mass of glossy hair clustering in ringlets about her neck and white shoulders, I thought then, as I do now, that she was a paragon of loveliness. I saw her, as she thus reclined, by the light of a large shaded crystal lamp, which hung by silver chains from the cabin beams, and shed a rose-tinted effulgence over the whole apartment. When I first approached the door the girl was looking out of her own large liquid lamps, so superbly framed in a heavy fringe of dark lashes, in evident curiosity around the elegant cabin. Her looks wandered from the Turkey carpet on the floor to the beautiful silk hangings, that exquisite set of inlaid pearl ebony furniture, the display of knickknacks, and Dresden porcelain panels of the sides, and, in fact, nothing seemed to escape her; and the good taste of the fittings evidently met her approbation. At times, too, she would turn her gaze out of the narrow little window of the stern, and peer anxiously over the vessel’s wake, which by this time was skimming along like a wild duck, and leaving countless bubbles behind her. At the first sound I made, however, in opening the door, she started up and stepped forward to meet me.
“‘Oh, Señor Capitano, mi madre! (My mother!) What detains her? We seem to be going very fast through the water!’