“But I am going to a strange land where there are none of your people and where your language is a strange tongue. You will be lonely and die.”
“I never shall be lonely where you are,” she exclaimed with all the passion of her romantic soul, “and I shall not die unless they kill me here. If you go on I go with you; if I go ashore you go with me.”
Never before having encountered such affection I was content to let her have her way. Her tribesmen followed us, and called down all manner of curious curses on our heads, until they were convinced we had no thought of stopping, when two of them galloped on ahead of us toward Bilbao. They went to the fort, evidently, and told the officer in command that we were aiding Don Carlos, for as soon as we got within hailing distance we were ordered to heave to. We paid no attention to the command, of course, and as the only effect of a warning gun which followed was to increase our speed, they sent half a dozen shots at us, as a matter of duty. One of them shattered the fore-topmast and brought the fore-rigging down by the run; the others went wild. We were fired at from a height and dropping shots seldom hit, though when they do they are generally disastrous. With everything dragging forward, until the gear could be cleared away, we proceeded down the widening river at full speed. Greatly to my surprise we were not even hailed by the fort at the mouth of the river, where I had looked for some serious business, and we continued happily on our way to London.
Soon after our arrival there I established the Gitano girl, to whom I had become deeply attached, in a cottage near Chalk Farm, not far from the city. I left her amply supplied with money and there were other gypsies near there with whom she could fraternize. It is an evidence of the strange way in which my life has been ordered that I never saw her again. When I returned, at the first opportunity, in about two years, I found nothing but a pile of blackened ruins where the cottage had stood. The Gitano girl’s beauty had made her known to the people who lived nearby but they had not seen her for more than a year, and the neighboring gypsies had moved away, no one knew where. I am not much given to regrets, being content to let my destiny work itself out free from senseless protests, yet if my wishes had been consulted I would not have lost my glorious Gitano girl. Possibly the ruined cottage symbolized a love that had burned itself out or it may be that somewhere her spirit is waiting for mine. “Why?” and “When?” are questions that I never attempt to answer.
That experience finished me with Don Carlos. Seven or eight years later, when I was selling arms to Montenegro and Turkey, and not long after he had finally been driven out of Spain, I met him at Claridge’s Hotel in London, as he came in from attending church at the Greek Chapel. He recognized me and, after pausing for a second, offered me his hand, but I refused it.
“What do you mean?” he demanded angrily.
“I mean, Your Royal Highness,” I replied, with some sarcasm, “that if I am here to shake hands with you it is through no good will of yours, for you tried to have me assassinated in your mountains.” He looked at me hard for a moment, shrugged his shoulders, and walked on.
After settling up with Nickell on the Don Carlos expedition I devoted myself, for a few months, to legitimate commerce. I had bachelor quarters on Russell Square, in London, and divided my time between that city and Paris, where I opened a branch of my mercantile and shipping house at 30 Rue Vivienne. While in Paris I lived at the Grand Hotel and loafed at Charley Wells’ American restaurant nearby on the Rue Scribe. In both London and Paris I read and heard considerable about a picturesque South American named Guzman Blanco. He had been driven out of Venezuela, of which country he was Vice-President, and was said to be then planning a revolt through which he expected to gain the presidency. I was anxious to meet him but was unable to do so, as both of us were moving about a great deal. I had thought of Venezuela before I visited Europe and, attracted by the promised revolt, I decided that I would go to that country as soon as the Franco-Prussian War, which then was almost ready to break out, was over, or before that if it lasted longer than I thought it would. Just before the war began I bought three cargoes of wines at Bordeaux and sent them to London, where I sold them later at a good profit.
During the brief war, which began on July 19, 1870, and ended in the capitulation of the French at Sedan on September first, I had three ships busy with honest cargoes, but I did not get a chance to do any contraband running until just before its close. The Austrian Army was then being rearmed with the improved Werndle rifle, and thousands of the old guns were stored in the arsenal at Vienna.
Nickell had bought a lot of them at a bargain but on account of the war Austria would not release them without a guarantee that they were not to be used against Germany. I was led to believe I could sell five thousand of these rifles to the Committee of Safety at Bordeaux; so I bought that number from Nickell and, with an order for their delivery, I went to Trieste in the “Leckwith.” Charles Lever, the novelist, was then the British consul at Trieste, where he died a year or two later. On the pretence that the arms were for Japan, and that I would be able to establish that fact within a few days, I secured the removal of the guns from Vienna to the Trieste arsenal, which was only a few hundred yards from the dock at which the “Leckwith” was tied up. However, to get them over that short distance and then to get away with them was a problem that puzzled me. I was mulling over it one day in a café when a maudlin young Englishman, who was sitting at the table with me and had been trying to talk to me, pulled out a passport, all plastered with red seals and wax in the old Continental fashion. It was a most formidable and ceremonious looking document and the instant I saw it an inspiration seized me. From the most taciturn I became the most jovial of companions and plied the Englishman with wine until he fell sound asleep.