Old Tom Lambourne, Ned Carlton, and Probart, the carpenter, now rejoined me and expressed great discontent that Antonio was not "run up at once," adding the satisfaction with which they would all have "walked aft with the line, had he been at the other end of it," and prophesying evil to the ship and her crew if he was kept aboard.
"But what is the captain to do?" asked Probart; "'tain't no use attempting to kill that Cubano—he is either Davy Jones or the Devil!"
"Or Whirlwind Tom, as puts maggots into the midshipmen's nuts," said Lambourne, "and makes a sound ship leak, nobody knows how or why; sours the burgoo forward and the wine aft; makes many a poor fellow lose his hold when laying out on the yard-arm in a dark night, and works all manner o' mischief aboard."
"If he ain't Whirlwind Tom, out and out," added Probart, solemnly, and with increasing energy, as if by describing their own fears they wished to apologize for their desertion of me, "if he ain't Whirlwind Tom, I say he's something as bad, and I wish I was clear o' this here craft, before he works us all a mischief."
"I think he's the ghost of some old buccaneer that's been hung at Port Royal, or marooned on the Albuquerque Keys long ago," said Lambourne. "He has already found an old shipmate aboard, and may I never see the Nore again if they won't be up to something sly before long: for that fellow has sin enough on his soul to sink a seventy-four!"
The San Ildefonso was a beautiful ship, and very man-o'-war-like in her general aspect.
Her decks were clean and spotless. Every rope was tidily belayed and coiled away in its place, and the brass mountings of her binnacle lamps, of her wheel and capstan, were all polished till, like the twelve brass nines she carried, they shone with the brightness of burnished gold.
She was thoroughly Spanish, though—for all the food on board, even to the cabin biscuits, had the flavor of garlic; and every thing else, even to the red and yellow flag at the gaff peak, was redolent of Havana cigars.
Her cargo was valuable, and consisted of the most choice productions of Java, such as sugar, coffee, pepper, indigo, and tobacco, with spices of all kinds.
Among her cabin passengers she had the Dutch Governor of Surabaya, a province of Java, which is bounded on the north by the sea of that name, and on the east by the Straits of Madura. He was a retired soldier, and latterly had been a planter, and was now returning home to Holland with a vast quantity of luggage, in which, as Hislop informed me, according to the rumor current about the forecastle, an almost fabulous amount of guilders was packed in canvas bags.