"Do me the honour, Señor," said be, "to partake of a slight dejeuner-à-la fourchette in the cabin. We will also hope for the pleasure of your company at dinner. Supper you will probably eat at home."
And so saying, he motioned courteously towards the cabin stairs. The Spaniard looked in the seaman's face, and read in its decided expression, and in the slight smile of intelligence that played upon it, that he must not hope either to resist or outwit his polite but peremptory entertainer. So, making a virtue of necessity, he descended into the cabin.
The joy of the refugees at finding themselves thus unexpectedly rescued from the captivity they so much dreaded, may be more easily imagined than described. They remained for some time without uttering a word; but the tears of the lady, and the looks of heartfelt gratitude of her husband were the best thanks they could offer their deliverer.
On went the schooner; fainter and fainter grew the outline of the land, till at length it sank under the horizon, and nothing was visible but the castle of the Molo and the topmasts of the vessels riding at anchor off the Havannah. They were twenty miles from land, far enough for the safety of the fugitive, and as far as it was prudent for those to come who had to return to port in an open boat. Ready's good-humour and hearty hospitality had reconciled him with the Spaniard, who seemed to have forgotten the trick that had been played him, and the punishment he would incur for having allowed himself to be entrapped. He shook the captain's hand as he stepped over the side, the negroes dipped their oars into the water, and in a short time the boat was seen from the schooner as a mere speck upon the vast expanse of ocean.
The voyage was prosperous, and in eleven days the vessel reached its destination. The Columbian officer, his wife and children, were received with the utmost kindness and hospitality by the young and handsome wife of Captain Ready, in whose house they took up their quarters. They remained there two months, living in the most retired manner, with the double object of economizing their scanty resources, and of avoiding the notice of the Philadelphians, who at that time viewed the patriots of Southern America with no very favourable eye. The insurrection against the Spaniards had injured the commerce between the United States and the Spanish colonies, and the purely mercantile and lucre-loving spirit of the Philadelphians made them look with dislike on any persons or circumstances who caused a diminution of their trade and profits.
At the expiration of the above-mentioned time, an opportunity offered of a vessel going to Marguerite, then the headquarters of the patriots, and the place where the first expeditions were formed under Bolivar against the Spaniards. Estoval (that was the name by which the Columbian officer was designated in his passport) gladly seized the opportunity, and taking a grateful and affectionate leave of his deliverer, embarked with his wife and children. They had been several days at sea before they remembered that they had forgotten to tell their American friends their real name. The latter had never enquired it, and the Estovals being accustomed to address one another by their Christian names, it had never been mentioned.
Meantime, the good seed Captain Ready had sown, brought the honest Yankee but a sorry harvest. His employers had small sympathy with the feelings of humanity that had induced him to run the risk of carrying off a Spanish state-prisoner from under the guns of a Spanish battery. Their correspondents at the Havannah had had some trouble and difficulty on account of the affair, and had written to Philadelphia to complain of it. Ready lost his ship, and could only obtain from his employers certificates of character of so ambiguous and unsatisfactory a nature, that for a long time he found it impossible to get the command of another vessel.
In the autumn of 1824, I left Baltimore as supercargo of the brig Perverance, Captain Ready. Proceeding to the Havannah, we discharged our cargo, took in another, partly on our own account, partly on that of the Spanish government, and sailed for Callao on the 1st December, exactly eight days before the celebrated battle of Ayacucho dealt the finishing blow to Spanish rule on the southern continent of America, and established the independence of Peru. The Spaniards, however, still held the fortress of Callao, which, after having been taken by Martin and Cochrane four years previously, had again been treacherously delivered up, and was now blockaded by sea and land by the patriots, under the command of General Hualero, who had marched an army from Columbia to assist the cause of liberty in Peru.
Of all these circumstances we were ignorant, until we arrived within a few leagues of the port of Callao. Then we learned them from a vessel that spoke us, but we still advanced, hoping to find an opportunity to slip in. In attempting to do so, we were seized by one of the blockading vessels, and the captain and myself taken out and sent to Lima. We were allowed to take our personal property with us, but of brig or cargo we heard nothing for some time. I was not a little uneasy; for the whole of my savings during ten years' clerkship in the house of a Baltimore merchant were embarked in the form of a venture on board the Perseverance.
The captain, who had a fifth of the cargo, and was half owner of the brig, took things very philosophically, and passed his days with a penknife and stick in his hand, whittling away, Yankee fashion; and when he had chapped up his stick, he would set to work notching and hacking the first chair, bench, or table that came under his hand. If any one spoke to him of the brig, he would grind his teeth a little, but said nothing, and whittled away harder than ever. This was his character, however. I had known him for five years that he had been in the employ of the same house as myself, and he had always passed for a singularly reserved and taciturn man. During our voyage, whole weeks had sometimes elapsed without his uttering a word except to give the necessary orders.