"What! this in the face of day?"
"Oh yes; those things are managed coolly enough here, Mr Brail. They are now on their way to the coast, where a vessel is doubtless lying ready to carry them over to Jamaica, and to bring them back when they have laid out their money in goods. See there, those sumpter mules are laden with their bags of doubloons; when they return to Batabano, with the assistance of my friend Juan Nocheobscuro there, and some of his gang, their goods will soon be in the tiendas, or shops of Havanna, to the great injury of the fair trader who pays duties, I will confess—and I hope the evil will soon be put down; but there it is for the present as you see it."
"But how comes Listado to know so many of the tailor-looking caballeros?"
"They are all customers of ours," said he, "who only resort to Jamaica occasionally, and are mostly shopkeepers themselves, or have partners who are so."
"And our excellent Irish friend himself, may I ask, who is he—is he your partner?"
"No, no," said M——, "he is not my partner, but he is connected with most respectable Irish correspondents of mine, who consign linens and other Irish produce largely to my establishment, and for whom I load several ships in the season with sugar and coffee; so Monsieur Listado, who is rich since his father's death (he was the head of the firm), has been sent by the Irish house to superintend the sales of the outward cargoes, under my auspices, and to take a sort of general charge of shipping the returns; but," continued he, laughing, "as you see, he does not kill himself by the intensity of his application to business. He is a warm-hearted and light-headed Irishman,—one who would fight for his friend to the last, and even with him for pastime, if no legitimate quarrel could be had. We had a little bother with him at first, but as I know him now, we get on astonishingly; and I don't think we have had one single angry word together for these six months past, indeed never since he found out from my letter-book that I had once done an essential mercantile service to his father, in protecting a large amount of his bills drawn while he was in New York, when dishonoured by a rascally agent at that time employed by him here. But who comes?" Who indeed, thought I, as no less a personage than Lennox himself brought up the rear, on a stout mule, in his dingy suit of sables; cutting a conspicuous figure amongst the gaudily dressed Dons. He paced steadily past us, and when I bid him good-by, he merely touched his hat and rode on. Presently the whole cavalcade was out of sight, and nothing else occurred until we arrived at Havanna, and I found myself once more comfortably lodged under Mr Duquesné's hospitable roof.
About a fortnight after this I received letters from Mr Peter Brail, my uncle in Liverpool, offering me a share in the firm, and enjoining me, if I accepted it, to return immediately, without visiting Jamaica. He also stated that he had written his Kingston correspondents, with instructions as to some business that I was to have transacted, had I, as originally intended, gone thither; and mentioned to them, at the same time, the probable change in my plans.
This was too favourable an offer to be declined; I therefore made up my mind to close with it; but, as I could not wind up my Havanna transactions for some time, I determined to spend the interim as pleasantly as possible.
Two days afterwards I was invited to make one in a cruise into the country. Accordingly, the following morning we were all prepared to set off to visit Mr Hudson's estate; it was about five in the morning—we had packed up—the volantes and horses were already at the door, and Mrs Hudson, her daughter Helen, with Dicky Phantom, once more in his little kilt of a frock, in her hand; Sophie Duquesné, De Walden, Mr Hudson, and myself, all spurred and whipped, if not all booted, were ready in the vestibule, waiting by candle-light for Mr Listado, who was also to be of the party. Gradually the day broke, and as the servants were putting out the candles, in compliment to Aurora's blushes, in trundled our Hibernian friend, with his usual boisterosity.
"Hope I haven't kept you waiting, Mr Hudson?—that villain Palotinto, the black warehouseman, store nigger"—with a wink to me—"as you would call him in New York,"—Mr Hudson laughed good-naturedly—"got drunk, and be fiddled to him—never swear before ladies, Brail—and forgot to call me; and when he did wake me, he could not find my spurs, and the mule's bridle was amissing, and the devil knows what all had gone wrong; so I was bothered entirely—but here I am, my charmers, large as life, and as agreeable as ever—don't you think so, Miss Hudson?" She laughed; and as the blundering blockhead dragged, rather than handed her towards her volante, I felt a slight comical kind of I don't-know-what, and a bit of a tiny flutter, not a thousand miles from my heart.—"Ho, ho," thought I, Benjie. "But what an ass you were not to hand her out your——. Death and the devil, what does the mouldy potato mean?"—continued I to myself, as Listado, after fumbling to get the step of the New-York built voiture out, and knocking the Moreno, or brown driver, down on his nose for attempting to help him, desecrated the sweet little body's slender waist with his rough arms, and actually lifted her, laughing and giggling (skirling, to borrow from Lennox), bodily into the carriage.