"Hah! is it to be guerra al cuchillo between us?" said the half Spaniard, touching his knife with a grim smile; "if so, cuidar con el lobo!"—(beware of the wolf.)
"Let me pass," said Hawkshaw, choking with rage.
"Not yet. I see you have still on your finger the ring we cut off the hand of the old padre, whom we lured into the Barranca, by sending, in the name of our Lady of Guadaloupe, a message that he must hasten to a dying man."
"Liar!" hissed Hawkshaw, while the crew drew nearer.
"He bent down to hear the confession of the expiring sinner—you, capitano—YOU, who sprang up and cut his throat. Ho! ho! Demonio, I knew from the first that we were companeros de viage."
"Villain and fiend!" muttered Hawkshaw, while drops of shame and rage rolled over his damp, pale visage, and his hands longed to clutch the muscular throat of the brawnier, mocking, and malevolent Barradas; "villain and fiend! so you are here?"
"Yes, and Zuares, too, Senor Capitano, as you have known well by the skulking aft; so civility is best. Oh, neither of us have forgotten that pleasant afternoon which we spent together in the Barranca Secca."
"Was I to blame for your mistake, or your brother's crime?"
"Now, what have you to say that I do not denounce you to your fine friends in the cabin, eh?—particularly to that girl with the dark eyes. Santos! what shoulders she has, such a bust and ankles! and then, there is that pretty little mina-bird, her sister, with the red cheeks and plump arms. It makes a fellow's mouth water to see them here upon the open ocean, so far from land—and help, eh, mates?—one would admire a coal-black negress here. And so you love the oldest one, capitano, eh?"
Hawkshaw drew back with indignant disgust at the idea of Ethel being referred to by such lips.