“It’s very strange,” says De Lara. “I’d heard she was to sail soon, but not till another ship came to relieve her.”
“That ship has come,” returns Rocas—“a corvette. I saw her working up the coast last evening just before sunset. She was making for the Gate, and must be inside now.”
“If all this be true,” says the chief conspirator, “we need lose no more time, but put on our masks and bring the affair off at once. It’s too late for doing anything to-night; but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t act to-morrow night, if it prove a dark one. We four of us will be strength enough for such a trifling affair. I thought of bringing Juan Lopez, our croupier; but I saw he wouldn’t be needed. Besides, from the way he’s been behaving lately I’ve lost confidence in him. Another reason for leaving him out will be understood by all of you. In a matter of this kind it isn’t the more the merrier, though it is the fewer the better cheer. The yellow dust will go farther among four than five.”
“It will,” exclaims the cockfighter with emphasis, showing his satisfaction at what De Lara has done. He adds: “To-morrow night, then, we are to act?”
“Yes, if it be a dark one. If not, ’twill be wiser to let things lie over for the next. A day can’t make much difference; while the colour of the night may. A moonlit sky, or a clear starry one, might get us all where we’d see stars without any being visible—through a noose round our neck?”
“There’ll be no moon to-morrow night,” puts in the smuggler, who, in this branch of his varied vocations, has been accustomed to take account of such things. “At least,” he adds, “none that will do us any harm. The fog’s sure to be on before midnight; at this time of year, it always is. To-morrow night will be like the last—black as a pot of pitch.”
“True,” says De Lara, as a man with some experience of the sea, also having meteorological knowledge. “No doubt, ’twill be as you say, Rocas. In that case we’ll have nothing to fear. We can get the job done, and be back here before morning. Ah, then seated round the table, we’ll not be like we are now—poor as rats; but every one with his pile before him—sixty thousand pesos.”
“Carramba!” exclaims Diaz, in a mocking tone, “while saying vespers to-night, let’s put in a special prayer for to-morrow night to be what Rocas says it will—black as a pot of pitch.”
The profane suggestion is hailed with a burst of ribald laughter; after which they set about preparing the mascaras, and other disguises, to be used in their nefarious enterprise.