“Hobble, gobble,” gurgled the Priest, nearly choked.
“Ave Maria purissima, que bocado—what a mouthful!—What can that be?”
This was more than I knew, I must confess, and altogether I was consumedly puzzled, but, from a disinclination to alarm the women, I held my tongue. Padre Carera this time moved away to the other side from beneath the hole, but still within two feet of it—in fact, he could not get in this direction farther for the altar-piece—and being still half asleep, he lay back once more against the wall to finish his nap, taking the precaution, however, to clap on his long shovel hat, shaped like a small canoe, crosswise, with the peaks standing out from each side of his head, in place of wearing it fore and aft, as usual. Well, thought I, a strange party certainly; but drowsiness was fast settling down on me also, when the same black paw was again thrust through the hole, and I distinctly heard a nuzzling, whining, short bark. I rubbed my eyes and sat up, but before I was quite awake, the head and neck of a large Newfoundland dog was shoved into the chapel through the round aperture, and making a long stretch, with the black paws thrust down and resting on the wall, supporting the creature, the animal suddenly snatched the Padre’s hat off his head, and giving it an angry worry—as much as to say, “Confound it—I had hoped to have had the head in it”—it dropped it on the floor, and with a loud yell, Sneezer, my own old dear Sneezer, leaped into the midst of us, floundering amongst the sleeping women, and kicking the firebrands about, making them hiss again with the water he shook from his shaggy coat, and frightening all hands like the very devil.
“Sneezer, you villain, how came you here!” I exclaimed, in great amazement—“How came you here, sir?” The dog knew me at once, and when benches were reared against him, after the women had huddled into a corner, and every thing was in sad confusion, he ran to me, and leaped on my neck, gasping and yelping; but finding that I was angry, and in no mood for toying, he planted himself on end so suddenly, in the middle of the floor, close by the fire, that all our hands were stayed, and no one could find in his heart to strike the poor dumb brute, he sat so quiet and motionless. “Sneezer, my boy, what have you to say—where have you come from?” He looked in the direction of the door, and then walked deliberately towards it, and tried to open it with his paws.
“Now,” said the Captain, “that little scamp, who would insist on riding with me to St Jago, to see, as he said, if he might not be of use in fetching the surgeon from the ship in case I could not find Dr Bergara, has come back, although I desired him to stay on board. The puppy must have returned in his cursed troublesome zeal, for in no other way could your dog be here. Certainly, however, he did not know that I had fallen in with Dr Pavo Real;” and the good-natured fellow’s heart melted, as he continued—“Returned—why, he may be drowned—Cringle, take care little Reefpoint be not drowned.”
Sneezer lowered his black snout, and for a moment poked it into the white ashes of the fire, and then raising it and stretching his neck upwards to its full length, he gave a short bark, and then a long loud howl.
“My life upon it, the poor boy is gone,” said I.
“But what can we do?” said Don Ricardo; “it is as dark as pitch.”
And we again set ourselves to have a small rally at the brandy and water, as a resolver of our doubts, whether we should sit still till daybreak, or sally forth now and run the chance of being drowned, with but small hope of doing any good; and the old priest having left the other end of the chapel, where the ladies were once more reposing, now came to join our council of war, and to have his share of the agua ardiente.
The noise of the rain increased, and there was still a little puff of wind now and then, so that the Padre, taking an alfombra, or small mat, used to kneel on, and placing it on the step where the folding doors opened inwards, took a cloak on his shoulders, and sat himself down with his back against the leaves, to keep them closed, as the lock or bolt was broken, and was in the act of swigging off his cupful of comfort, when a strong gust drove the door open, as if the devil himself had kicked it, capsized the Padre, blew out the lights once more, and scattered the brands of the fire all about us. Transom and I started up, the women shrieked; but before we could get the door to again, in rode little Reefpoint on a mule, with the doctor of the Firebrand behind him, bound, or lashed, as we call it, to him by a strong thong. The black servants and the females took them for incarnate fiends, I fancy, for the yells and shrieks they set up were tremendous.