“Your ship was named La Bella Catarina, señor,” said I, at this point, as he had not mentioned this fact, though I don’t think Captain Farmer approved of my interruption, for he gave me a look which made me shut up at once, “was she not sir?”
“Yes, young gentleman,” he replied. “She was so-called after my poor sister-in-law, the murdered lady whose body you saw in the cabin which proved her tomb—Ay que hermosa esta—oh, how beautiful she was! She was the wife of my only brother, Don Pedro Olivarez, who died in defending her. Thus his corpse you also beheld. Oh, my friends, he was the noblest, best and bravest brother in the world. He had, alas, a joint share with me in that accursed vessel.”
He was overcome with emotion again when he had got so far; and Dr Nettleby, fearing the narration was too much for him in his present weak state, wanted him to leave off his story until he felt better.
But after resting a minute or two and taking another sip of the cordial the doctor handed him, the Spaniard insisted on going on with the painful recital.
His brother, he said, had charge of the specie sent out in their ship; and, as his wife had been recommended change of air, he determined to take her with him on the voyage to Cuba, thinking the trip out and home would do her good, as well as the poor little baby, who had been only born two months to the very day on which they sailed from Cadiz.
All went well with them until they were near the Azores, or Western Islands, where the ship sprang a leak and met with such baffling winds that she was driven back to the eastward, close in to the Portuguese coast; when the crew, who were tired out with keeping to the pumps, managed to broach the cargo and madden themselves with the liquor they found below.
“What happened next?” asked Captain Farmer, on his pausing here to take breath and put the cordial to his lips. “I suppose they got drunk on the sherry, my friend?”
“Ah, yes, los maladettos—the cursed devils!” replied the Spanish captain, his eyes flashing with anger. “If the brutes had only got drunk, neither my brother nor I would have minded it much, although they might have done so at our expense, it being our wine which they wasted, the brutes!”
He then went on to state that the men became so violent and insubordinate, that when his brother and himself battened down the hatches to prevent their broaching any more of the casks, they broke into open mutiny.
The mate was the ringleader of the conspiracy.