Chapter Eighteen.
A double tragedy.
I had been up and about for a full week, and had during that period observed in Lemaitre’s manner toward me not only a steadily decreasing solicitude for my welfare—which was perhaps only natural, now that my health was rapidly improving—but also a growing disposition to sneer and gibe at me, covert at first but more pronounced and unmistakable with every recurring day, that strongly tended to confirm the singular suspicion I have endeavoured to bring home to the mind of the reader in the preceding chapter. Then one night an incident occurred that in a moment explained everything, and revealed to me the unpleasant fact that, so far as my enemy Morillo was concerned, I was still in as great danger as when on board the felucca, although in the present case the danger was perhaps a trifle more remote.
I have already mentioned Lemaitre’s habit of drinking himself into a state of intoxication every night. This habit, and the obscene language that the man seemed to revel in when in such a condition, was so disgusting to me that not the least-prized advantage afforded by my convalescence was the ability to remain on deck until the nightly saturnalia was at an end and Lemaitre and his companion had retired to their cabins. On the particular night, however, of which I am about to speak, a slight recurrent touch of fever caused me to slip quietly below and turn in before the orgy began; not that I expected to get to sleep, but simply because I believed the warmth and dryness of my bunk would be better for me than the damp night air on deck.
Punctually at nine o’clock Lemaitre and his chief mate came noisily clattering down the companion ladder, glasses and a bottle of rum were produced, and the carouse began. It had not progressed very far before it became apparent to me, as I lay there in my hot bunk, tossing restlessly, that Lemaitre was in an unusually excited and quarrelsome condition, and that François, the chief mate, was rapidly approaching a similar condition as he gulped down tumbler after tumbler of liquor. They were always argumentative and contradictory when drinking together, but to-night they were unusually so. At length François made some remark as to the extraordinary good fortune they had met with on this particular voyage, in having come so far without falling in with a British cruiser; at which Lemaitre laughed scornfully declaring that there was not a British cruiser afloat that could catch La belle Jeannette; and that, even if it were otherwise, he should have no fear of them this voyage. “For,” said he, “have we not a guarantee of safety in the presence of that simple fool Courtenay on board? Have we not saved his life by rescuing him from the raft? And do you suppose they would reward our humanity, ha, ha! by making a prize of the schooner? Not they! If there is one thing those asses of British pride themselves upon more than another it is their chivalrous sense of honour—a sentiment, my child, that they would not outrage for the value of fifty such schooners as this. All the same,” he added, with an inflection of deep cunning in his voice, “I do not want to meet with a British cruiser at close enough quarters to be compelled to hand the dear Courtenay over to his countrymen; oh no!”
“Why not?” demanded François; “what advantage is it to you to keep him on board? Is it because you are so fond of his company? Pah! if you had eyes in your head, you would see that, despite his gratitude to you for saving his life, he despises you. What do you mean to do with him? Are you going to turn him adrift among the negroes when we arrive upon the coast? I never could understand why you insisted upon saving him at all.”
“No?” queried Lemaitre, with a sneering laugh. “Ah, that is because you are a fool, François, mon enfant, a more arrant fool even than the dear Courtenay himself. Do you suppose I did it out of pity for his condition, or because I love the British? No. I will tell you why, idiot. It is because he will fetch a good five hundred dollars at least in the slave-market at Havana.”
“So that is what you intend to do with him, is it?” retorted François. “Well, Lemaitre, I always knew you for an ass, but, unless you had told me so with your own lips, I would never have believed you to be such an ass as to sell a man for five hundred dollars when you can just as easily get a thousand for him. Yet you call me fool and idiot! Pah, you sicken me!”
“Oh, I sicken you, do I?” growled Lemaitre, by this time well advanced toward intoxication. “Take care what you are saying, my friend, or I shall be apt to sicken you so thoroughly that you will be fit for nothing but a toss over the lee bulwarks. No doubt it is I who am the fool, and you who are the clever one; but I should like to hear by what means you would propose to get a thousand dollars for the fellow. True, he is young and stalwart, and will be in prime condition by the time that we get back to Havana,—I will see to that,—but I have known better men than he sold for less than five hundred dollars; ay, white men too, not negroes.”