Anthony and Cleopatra.
No sooner had the captain given the order, than the whole schooner echoed with the deafening sounds of a huge gong, whose noise was sufficient to rouse the soundest sleeper in the lowest recesses of the schooner.
The sounds seemed to possess the power of transforming the vessel, where such quiet and silence a little before had reigned, to a scene of unbounded revelry. No sooner had they fallen on the ears of the grim and bearded sailors, than shouts of joy and mirth burst forth from the same men, who, but a short time before seemed pressed by a paralizing power into discipline, order, and the silence of death.
The deck then suddenly became a scene of the liveliest animation; small groups of men settled themselves here and there, some to sing, others to dance, and others again preferring less boisterous amusement, to listen to the long stories of some weather-beaten son of Neptune.
The jolly songs of all nations, as sung by the different denizens that formed the motley crew of the schooner, rose upon the bosom of the silent gulf. The Spaniard sang his animated oroco songs; the Llanero, who had been seduced away from his native plains to seek as arduous an existence on the boisterous element, chanted the pastoral ditties with which he was accustomed to break the monotony of many a live-long night on the lonely Savanahs of South America; the Frenchman rattled over his lively airs, and the jolly choruses of merry England, too, were not unheard on board of the Black Schooner.
The guitar here and there stimulated the Terpsichorean powers of some heavy sailor, and the schooner rang with the merry laugh of those who listened to the jokes of some funny old tar. Nor were the joys of drinking unfelt. Every sailor had his drinking can by his side, and contentment might have been read on the rigid features of every one as he quaffed the stimulating liquor.
One of the chief subjects of attraction seemed to be an old sailor, whose features proclaimed him a son of distant England, while a deep scar on his forehead, and the brown-baked hue of his face, pointed him out as one who had seen service. He was entertaining those around him with some of his adventures, and was, at the same time, speaking in his native language, which was understood by his hearers. Few, indeed, were the tongues that those men did not know; the wheel of fortune had turned them round and round in their day, and had cast them into many a different place, and there was scarcely a country in the world to which their pursuits had not taken them.
“Yes, by G—d,” the old sailor was saying, “that ere Llononois was the very devil. I remember when he took Maracaybo,—a devil of a fight that was, and no mistake,—three nights in the swamps without bread or grog; I remember when we took that place, there was a poor sinner that we suspected had some dibs. The commodore seized him—devil of a man he was—‘Where have you buried your money?’ Says he—says he—the sinner, I mean, ‘I have no money,’ says he. Says the commodore, says he, ‘you lie, you rascal, and I will make you show me the coffers!’ He took the lubber—by G—d I’ll never forget that day—not I: he took the lubber and tied a line round his head, just as if he would season his head—as I would the main-shrouds—he tied the line round his head, and took a hitch in it with a marlin-spike, and twisted the line until you would ha’ swore it would cut the lubber’s head in two. The sinner sang out murder, but the commodore twisted the more, and asked him for the dibs. He said he had’nt any. ‘Have’nt any, you rascal?’ cried the commodore, in a fury, and twisted the line tighter and tighter, until the eyeballs of the lubber swelled like a rat in a barrel of pork. Lord! I never seed the like—and Jim Splice has seen many things, too, I can tell you—but he still said he had no money. At last the commodore got angry—a terrible man he was when he was not, leave alone when he was—‘Where is your money?’ he cried, more like a devil than a man. ‘I hav’nt any,’ the poor man cried, but that would’nt do: the commodore took his sword, opened the poor fellow’s breast, tore out his heart, and bit it, telling the other Spaniards he would serve them just in the same way if they did not give him all the money they had. By G—d, I’ll never forget that, anyhow! I never seed human flesh eaten afore that—Jim Splice never did—it was too much for me, hearch!” and the old sailor made a hideous grimace. “Yes: I was’nt much longer with that ere Llononois after that, I know. He was a brave man, though, after all, but nothing like our captain. There was a black day for him, however, ay, ay: that ere gentleman aloft keeps a good watch, I know, and he kept a sharp look out on that ere Llononois especially, and had the windward of him in no time. The unfortunate man was cast away afterwards among the same Spaniards, whose hearts he said he would eat, and had to skulk in the woods where he shortly afterwards died of starvation: by G—d, yes, of starvation.”