“Oh, a bat—hate bats—how the skipper snores! I hope there be no resurrection-men in St Jago, or I shall be stolen away to a certainty before morning. How should I look as a skeleton in a glass-case, eh?”
I heard no more, until, it might be, about midnight, when I was awakened, and frightened out of my wits, by Bang rolling off the table on to my quatre, which he broke in his fall, and then we both rolled over and over on the floor.
“Murder!” roared Bang. “I am bewitched and bedevilled. Murder! a scorpion has dropped from the roof into my mouth, and stung me on the nose. Murder! Tom—Tom Cringle—Captain—Transom, my dear fellows, awake and send for the doctor. Oh my wig—oh dear oh dear.”
At this uproar I could hear Don Ricardo striking a light, and presently he appeared with a candle in his hand, more than half naked, with la senora peering through the half-opened door behind him.
“Ave Maria purissima—what is the matter? Where is el Senior Bang?”
“Mucho, mucho,” shouted Bang from below the table. “Send for a doctoribus, Senor Richarsum. I am dead and t’other thing help!—help!”
“Dios guardo usted,” again ejaculated Campana. “What has befallen him?” addressing the skipper, who was by this time on his head’s antipodes in bed, rubbing his eyes, and in great amazement.
“Tell him, my dear Transom, that a scorpion fell from the roof, and stung me on the nose.”
“What says he?” enquired the Spaniard.
Poor Transom’s intellect was at this time none of the clearest, being more than half asleep, and not quite so sober as a hermit is wont to be; besides, he must needs speak Spanish, of which he was by no means master, which led to a very comical blunder. Alacran, in Spanish, means scorpion, and Cayman, an alligator, not very similar in sound certainly, but the termination being the same, he selected in the hurry the wrong phrase.