By the partial light proceeding from the open door of an inner apartment, I could see that it was a desolate-looking place, with a parcel of bags of cotton piled up in a corner, and lumbered, rather than furnished, with several skranky leathern-backed Spanish chairs.
Several rooms opened off each end of the said hall, beside the one from which the light streamed. The skipper unceremoniously passed on to this apartment, motioning to me to follow him. I did so, and found an old gentleman, dressed in a gingham coat and white trowsers, and wearing a well-worn tow wig and spectacles, seated at a small table, smoking, with a glass of spirits and water beside him, and an empty tumbler opposite, as if some one had been accompanying him in his potations; while a young lady, rather a pretty girl, seated at a piano, with some music open before her, was screening her eyes from the light, and employed, so far as I could judge, in peering down towards the cove, as if trying to make out some object in that direction.
"Well, father, I cannot see either of them; surely they have put out all the lights on purpose—not a glimmer, I declare." Turning round, she started on seeing us, and rising, left the room suddenly by another door.
"Who may ye be now?" quoth the old man, rather testily, as if some recent visitors had not been over and above acceptable, taking his cigar at the same time out of his mouth, and knocking the ashes off the end of it against the candlestick. "Are you any of Captain Wallace's people?"
"No," said Tooraloo. "Was that Captain Wallace we met going down the path just now?"
He gave no answer, but again enquired, in a still more sharp and querulous tone, "who we were? Wha the deevil are ye, I say? Wull ye no speak?"
"Toby," said I, "out with your ditty, man." So our situation was speedily explained to him—that we had bore up in distress, and wanted assistance. The issue was, after a good deal of palaver, that he promised to send his people to lend a hand with our repairs in the morning.
"But who was the gentleman we met?" said I, repeating Toby's question, and endeavouring to pin the crusty old gentleman to an answer.
"Indeed, sir," said he, now greatly relieved, as he began to understand our real character, and the peacefulness of our object—"indeed, sir, I cannot rightly tell. He is an American, I rather think, and commands two Buenos-Ayrean"——
Here some one coughed significantly under the open window. The old man looked dogged and angry at this, as if he had said, "What the deuce! mayn't I say what I choose in my own house?" And gulping down his grog with great fierceness, as if determined not to understand the hint, he continued, speaking emphatically through his set teeth—