Gonzales, now thoroughly sobered by the seriousness of the situation, attempted to account for my presence, but before he had fairly begun his story, the Captain, who by this time was beyond all reason, burst roaring forth again:
"Oh, so you brought him! You did, hey? Well, did n't I tell you to let no lazy, loafing bumboat-man set foot on board? Do you laugh at my orders, you good-for-nothing scum of the sea? And above all things why did you ever drag such a creature as this down between decks to disgrace the whole of His Majesty's navy? Get up, you bundle of rags!"
I scrambled to my feet, seeking to shuffle to one side out of his immediate sight, but a heavy hand closed instantly on my ragged collar and held me fronting him. For a moment I thought he meant to strike me, but I appeared such a miserable, dejected specimen of humanity that the fierce anger died slowly out of his eyes.
"Francisco," he called sternly, "heave this thing overboard, and be lively about it! Saints of Mercy! he smells like a butcher-boat in the tropics."
Hustled, dragged, cuffed, mercilessly kicked, the fellows got me out upon the open deck at last; I caught one fleeting glimpse of the great masts, the white, gleaming planks under foot, the horrified, upturned, face of Alphonse in the little boat beneath, and then, with a heave and a curse, over I went, sprawling down from rail to river, as terrified a darky as ever made hasty departure from a man-of-war.
CHAPTER IV
WE HOLD A COUNCIL OF WAR
The last object I remember seeing was the white face of the Capuchin monk peering at me over the rail, and my earliest thought as I arose to the surface, was that as the water had probably cleansed my skin it would be wise to keep well out of sight from the deck. Fortunately the boat floated close at hand. Laying hasty grasp upon it, but remaining well immersed in the river, I bade the thoroughly frightened black paddle with diligence out of that neighborhood. This was a task he was not slow in accomplishing, fear lending strength to trained muscles, and we soon had the good fortune to discover a safe landing-place beneath the lee of a long molasses shed, where our plight was unobserved by any one.
Remaining hidden here myself, feeling reasonably secure from prying eyes, I despatched Alphonse after dry clothing, meanwhile tramping back and forth across the packed earthen floor to keep chilled blood in circulation, seeking eagerly to evolve out of the confused events of the afternoon some programme for future guidance. This task was no light one. The closer I faced the desperate work remaining unaccomplished the less I enjoyed the outlook, the more improbable appeared success. Getting aboard the "Santa Maria" was now, to my mind, the simplest part of the adventure, but beyond the accomplishment of that feat I could perceive little to encourage me. What must necessarily follow my safe gaining of that guarded deck, during the dark hours of the night, depended so largely upon the occurrence of helpful circumstances, any definite plan of action arranged beforehand became simply an impossibility. Still, striving to make allowances for the unexpected, I managed to put together a chain of details, trusting, with the blind faith of a fatalist, that these would somehow fall into line when the hour came. If they failed, as was likely, I determined to shift them about in any way possible as each fresh emergency arose. I realized how small a part any preliminary survey holds in such an enterprise as now fronted me, an enterprise to be worked out amid darkness and grave personal peril, where any bungling act or false move might overturn everything in an instant; yet it is always well—or at least so I have found it—to trace some outline of procedure, rather than trust wholly to the intuitions of the moment. God's aid seems usually granted to those doing most for themselves.