"It is all very true, sir," he replied; "but I don't like a seaman who cannot look his shipmate right in the face."
"You are a physiognomist," I suggested.
"Don't know what kind of a mist that may be, Master Rodney; but this I know—there is always something cunning and dangerous in a fellow who looks over your shoulder, as that Spaniard does, when he should look at your eyes."
Antonio had an excessive dislike for deck duty by night. He exhibited a strange dread of being left alone, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to look over the vessel's side, always shrinking back, as if he expected to see something hideous rise out of the sea. Weston suggested that perhaps his recent suffering had unmanned and rendered him nervous; but the crew thought otherwise.
In his sleep, Antonio frequently disturbed the men in the forecastle bunks by his mutterings, his wild dreams, outcries, and sonorous Spanish maledictions.
I was at the wheel on a calm and lovely night (it was the 13th of January), when we were off the beautiful shore of Hispaniola. I remember well that Cape Samanna bore west by south, and Cape Cabron west by north; for my task of steering was new to me, and Weston's orders were "to keep her full and by,"—that is, as close to the wind as possible without making the canvas shiver.
I could see the lights that glittered in the distant villages that studded the low but fertile peninsula of Samanna. All was still and quiet in the ship and around it. Soothed by the solemnity of the hour and the vast solitude of the sea, my heart was full, and busy memory brought before me loved faces and voices, places and scenes, that were far, far away in dear Old England.
The brig was gliding through the water rapidly but imperceptibly, and almost without a sound; the men of the watch were leaning over the bulwark to leeward; and the air, the sea, and all aloft and below, seemed to sleep in the moonlight; not a reef point pattered on the taut canvas, and scarcely a wavelet rippled, save in the dead-water astern that marked the white wake of the Eugenie.
Suddenly a shrill and piercing cry rang out upon the night, and Antonio the Cubano rushed from the forecastle with the wildest terror expressed in his black eyes; his visage was pale and ghastly, and the perspiration glittered like bead drops on his clammy brow. With his bare feet, he stumbled over the chain cable, which lay coiled on the deck, for on that afternoon we had hauled it up, and bent it to the working anchor.
He came running aft in his shirt, brandishing a knife in his hand, and exclaiming, in fierce and then imploring accents—