“And into h––, perhaps,” said the doctor, with a hollow voice and a calm cold eye.
“Oh no, my friends, certainly nothing so bad as that. Possibly to heaven! but, quien sabe? no one can tell!
“However,” pursued the captain, “I soon succeeded in allaying 107 her apprehensions, and then I threw myself at her feet, and implored her to risk her father’s displeasure and to marry me at once; that she knew her father was cold, stern, and obdurate, and should he frown upon my suit I should die of despair!”
“Cierto!” murmured Ignaçio, with the grin of a skeleton.
“I used these passionate appeals and many more, until at last the fond girl yielded her consent to my entreaties.
“‘But the priest, querido mio!’ she exclaimed, as she rose and disengaged herself from my arms. I told her that I chanced to have one on board as a passenger, who would perform the ceremony.
“And so I had,” added Captain Brand, “or at least a very near approach to one, for my ugly boatswain, Pedillo, had been bred up––as an acolyte––you comprehend––in the house of a rich old prelate of San Paulo Cathedral in Trinidad, to whom Pedillo, one fine morning, gave about eight inches of his cuchillo!”
“Jesus Maria!” exclaimed Padre Ricardo, starting back with horror, and telling his beads.
“Ay, mi padre! Pedillo assassinated the holy father, and plundered his cash-box besides; and so you see Pedillo was just the man I wanted.”
Don Ignaçio nodded his wicked old head through a cloud of cigar smoke as a sign of approval.