“You carry the joke admirably, Your Majesty,” I continued. “Had you not been born to rule you would have won fame as an actor. Your mock seriousness would, I fear, cause real seriousness at Madrid if General Prim knew of the extent to which you indulge your capacity for humor.”
When he persisted in his assertion that he was in earnest and did not propose to live up to the contract, I pointed out to him, as discreetly as possible, what the result of such a course would be. “I can only again congratulate you on your art,” I said, “for it would be ridiculous for me to believe you speak seriously. Failure to keep the agreement made by your agent even though, as I now believe, he acted without explicit instructions from you [which I did not believe at all] would destroy your excellent credit, not only with my firm but with all other dealers in revolutionary supplies, and that, of course, is not to be thought of. On the other hand, by paying for this cargo, in compliance with the contract, you will establish your credit more firmly than ever, and I have no doubt you will be able to make your own terms for further shipments. I know that Your Majesty is not only very honest but very wise.”
This argument appeared to convince him and, with a smile as though he really had been only joking, he summoned a venerable Jew, evidently his treasurer, who looked like the original of all pictures of Shylock, and, speaking so rapidly in Spanish that I could hardly understand him, ordered him to pay me twenty-eight thousand pounds, the amount called for by the manifest. The Jew returned in a few minutes with the exact amount, chiefly in Spanish notes of large denomination but with enough gold to make quite a load. While I was waiting for the money he told me he would want thirteen thousand more stands of arms and a million cartridges, which were to be shipped in two cargoes at times and places to be indicated by his agent in London, who would arrange the terms of payment, under specific instructions, to avoid any further misunderstandings. I assured him that they would be sent when and where he wanted them. With the transaction completed Don Carlos dramatically waved me out.
The officer who had piloted us to the camp suggested that we could find our way back to the ship without any trouble, as the trail was clearly defined, and we started back alone. Before we had gone twenty steps Brown asked if I had been paid in cash. I pointed to my bulging pockets and told him I undoubtedly had. He then confessed that he thought we were “in for it.” Six cavalrymen, he said, had started down the trail not long before I left Don Carlos’ tent, and from the action attending their movement he believed that they had been sent out to waylay and rob and probably murder us in the deep canyon into which the ravine from the camp turned. In a flash I recalled the prediction of the gypsy girl and the promise I had given her. I laughed at myself for the spasm of something like fear that came into my mind, yet I was undeniably nervous, for Brown was not a man to form foolish fancies or become unduly alarmed about anything. None of us was armed and if Brown’s suspicion was correct, which I was slow to believe, the troopers would make short work of us.
We had turned a corner that put us out of sight of the camp and were walking slowly along discussing, with deep gravity on the part of Brown and Heather and a partly assumed mock seriousness on my part, the possibilities of the situation and the general cussedness of Spanish character, when I saw a dark face peering at us through the underbrush that matted the trail on both sides. I am not sure, but I think I jumped; anyway, I know I was startled. At the first glance the face looked like nothing but one of the troopers we had been talking about but in an instant I recognized the Gitano girl who had told my fortune and begged me not to go into the mountains. She beckoned to us and we answered her summons, without any unseemly haste, perhaps, but certainly without any delay. Uttering not a word she plunged off at right angles to the trail into deep woods, in which we would have been hopelessly lost in ten minutes, with the three of us following her in Indian file. She led us over a hill and across a wide depression and then over another much higher mountain. There was not so much as a suggestion of a path and it was hard going, yet none of us complained. She brought us out to the trail at the point where we had made our first turn into the foothills. From there it was a straight road to the ship, with open country all around, so there could be no fear of ambuscade or attack.
The tension was relieved and the girl, with tears in her eyes that betrayed her real emotions, threw her arms around my neck and reproached me passionately for violating my promise to her and exposing myself to what she said would have been certain death but for her intervention. It was with difficulty that I released myself from her embrace, while Brown and Heather discreetly and rapidly walked on ahead of us. She said she heard where I had gone when she went to the ship in the morning to see me, and knowing what the plot would be, she had taken the short-cut through the mountains, by which we had returned, to intercept us as we were leaving the camp. The gypsies were loyal to the Carlists through fear of them so she could get no help from her own people, but she had prevailed on her brother to steal up the trail through the canyon to see what happened there, not to verify her suspicions, as she explained, but to prove to us that she was right. An hour after we reached the ship her brother returned and reported to her that six cavalrymen had come down the ravine from the camp and concealed themselves alongside the trail in the canyon just below the turn. After a long wait one of them galloped back toward the camp. He soon returned, after discovering that we had left the trail, and the others went back to camp with him. To Brown and Heather that seemed convincing proof of what would have happened to us but for the gypsy girl; my own notion about it was that what had happened had to happen, and I had not been killed simply because my time had not arrived. Therefore I felt nothing of gratitude; but when I came to analyze my real feeling toward the young woman, whose wondrous black eyes seemed to reflect all of the mystery and witchery of those glorious ages that died with the departure of the Moors, and were silently eloquent of a fine civilization of old centuries, I found that the deep impression her physical charms had made on me had been intensified by her mad affection for me. This made it no easy matter to leave her, but I had no notion of taking her with me, and had to get bluff Bill Heather to half carry her ashore just before the gang plank was pulled in.
Most of the arms had been removed from the ship while we were away and turned over to the guard Don Carlos had sent down. The rest of the cargo was jerked out with all speed and as soon as the last box was on the bank we got under way. We had not gone a quarter of a mile, moving slowly on account of the tortuous channel, when the gypsies came running after us, shouting and waving at us to come back. The cause of their excitement was soon discovered in the presence of my Gitano girl, who had stolen on board at the last minute, while I was below inspecting the engines, and concealed herself until we were under way.
My first impulse was to stop the ship and set her ashore but before I could give the order she came running to me and declared, with an imperious air of authority: “I am going with you, so pay no attention to my foolish people.”
“But, my dear girl, you cannot do that,” I protested. “I shall be accused of having stolen you.”
“You cannot steal what belongs to you,” was her quick reply.