“Not another word to be said,” quoth Transom—“the guitars by all means.”
The girls in an instant, without any preparatory blushing, or other botheration, rose, slipped their heads and right arms through the black ribbons that supported their instruments, and stepped into the middle of the room.
“The Moorish Maid of Granada,” said Senora Campana. They nodded.
“You shall take Fernando, the sailor’s part,” said Senora Candalaria, the youngest sister, to Juana, “for your voice is deeper than mine, and I shall be Anna.”
“Agreed,” said Juana, with a lovely smile, and an arch twinkle of her eye towards me, and then launched forth in full tide, accompanying her sweet and mellow voice on that too much neglected instrument, the guitar. It was a wild, irregular sort of ditty, with one or two startling arabesque bursts in it. As near as may be, the following conveys the meaning, but not the poetry.
The Moorish Maid of Granada
FERNANDO
The setting moon hangs over the hill;
On the dark pure breast of the mountain lake
Still trembles her greenish silver wake,
And the blue mist floats over the rill.
And the cold streaks of dawning appear,
Giving token that sunrise is near;
And the fast clearing east is flushing,
And the watery clouds are blushing;
And the day-star is sparkling on high,
Like the fire of my Anna’s dark eye.
The ruby-red clouds in the east
Float like islands upon the sea,
When the winds are asleep on its breast;
Ah, would that such calm were for me!
And see, the first streamer-like ray
From the unrisen god of day,
Is piercing the ruby-red clouds,
Shooting up like golden shrouds:
And like silver gauze falls the shower,
Leaving diamonds on bank, bush, and bower,
Amidst many unopened flower.
Why walks the dark maid of Granada?
ANNA
At evening when labour is done,
And cool’d in the sea is the sun;
And the dew sparkles clear on the rose,
And the flowers are beginning to close,
Which at nightfall again in the calm.
Their incense to God breathe in balm;
And the bat flickers up in the sky,
And the beetle hums moaningly by;
And to rest in the brake speeds the deer,
While the nightingale sings loud and clear.
Scorched by the heat of the sun’s fierce light,
The sweetest flowers are bending most
Upon their slender stems;
More faint are they than if tempest tost,
Till they drink of the sparkling gems
That fall from the eye of night.
Hark! from lattices guitars are tinkling,
And though in heaven the stars are twinkling,
No tell-tale moon looks over the mountain,
To peer at her pale cold face in the fountain;
And serenader’s mellow voice,
Wailing of war, or warbling of love,
Of love, while the melting maid of his choice,
Leans out from her bower above.
All is soft and yielding towards night,
When blending darkness shrouds all from the sight;
But chaste, chaste, is this cold, pure light,
Sang the Moorish maid of Granada.
After the song, we all applauded, and the ladies having made their conges, retired. The Captain and I looked towards Aaron Bang and Don Ricardo; they were tooth and nail at something which we could not understand. So we wisely held our tongues.
“Very strange all this,” quoth Bang.
“Not at all,” said Ricardo. “As I tell you, every slave here can have himself or herself appraised, at any time they may choose, with liberty to purchase their freedom day by day.”
“But that would be compulsory manunmission,” quoth Bang.