She pointed to several objects. I gave her the English names, and she pronounced them deliberately, in a rich voice, invariably tacking the Spanish equivalent to the word, as though she wished me to observe it. I sat for about a quarter of an hour over my supper, and then, looking at the clock significantly, and then up through the skylight, that she might gather my intention, I arose, giving her a little bow. She rose also, and, pointing upward, tapped her bosom, most clearly saying in that way—“May I accompany you?”
“Si, señorita,” said I, expending, as I believe, in those words the whole of my stock of her tongue.
A fine smile lighted up her face, and she addressed me; and what I reckon she said was that it would not take me long to learn Spanish. She picked up her hat, and then, looking at the table, pointed, and showing her white teeth, said, “Bread—pan; meat—carne; vine—vino;” and so on through the words I had interpreted, making not one blunder either of pronunciation or indication of the object, saving that she called wine vine, and ham yam.
I conducted her on deck; I believe Yan Bol had been surveying us from the skylight; I perceived his big figure lurching forward when I emerged, and his way of going made me suppose that he had been looking through the skylight with his ear bent. “An old ape hath an old eye,” thought I, as I watched him disappear in the darkness.
The crew were assembled on the forecastle and singing songs there. They had rigged up two or three lanterns and sat in the light of them, drinking rum-and-water out of mugs, and smoking pipes. A strange voice was singing at that moment; I listened, and guessed it to be one of the two Spaniards. The girl paused and listened too. She then ejaculated, “Ay! Ayme!” and went to the rail, and gazed out to sea.
There blew a soft wind, cool with dew, out of the southwest. I looked for the island, but the shadow of it was blent like smoke with the darkness. The ripples ran in faint, small ivory curls, and the water was full of roaming glows of phosphorus. The Spanish sailor ceased to sing. A fiddle struck up, screwing and squeaking into a tune which immediately set my toes tapping; a hoarse cough succeeded, and then rang out the roaring voice of Travers:
“Eight bells had struck, and the starboard watch was called,
And the larboard watch they went to their hammocks down below;
Before seven bells the case it was quite altered,
And broad upon our lee-beam we sight a lofty foe.
Up hammocks and down chests,
Oh, the boatswain he piped next,
And the drummer he was called, at quarters for to beat.
We stowed our hammock well
Before we struck the bell,
And we bore down upon her with a full and flowing sheet!
(Chorus) And we bore down upon her with a full and flowing she-e-t!”
There were more verses. The chorus was always the same; it burst with hurricane power from the lips of the English seamen, who sang with passion, as though in defiance of the Dutch and Spanish listeners; and, indeed, the matter of the song was headlong and irresistible. The lady standing at the bulwark turned her head to listen, but when the noise had ended she sank her face afresh, put her elbow on the rail, leaned her chin upon her hand, and so gazed straight out into the darkness.
Much had she to think of, and her weight of memory would be the heavier, and the color of it the sadder for her inability to communicate a syllable of what worked in her brain, when she thought of the wreck in which her mother may have perished, or of the livid cinder of an island on which she had been imprisoned for four days, of her present condition, and of her future. I wondered as I looked at her whether, if she had my language or I hers, she would be impassioned and dramatic in the recital of her adventures, or whether she would talk quietly, describe without vehemence of speech or motion, prove herself, in short, the dignified, apparently cold woman I found her in her compelled silence or speech? This I wondered while I watched her with an irritable yearning after words that I might speak. What had been the two sailors’ behavior to her on the island? Where and how had she slept of nights there? What had been her sufferings in the open boat? Who was she? Was she visiting Madrid to presently return to South America? She troubled my curiosity. She was as a book written in an unintelligible tongue, but curiously and beautifully embellished with plates which enable you to guess at the choiceness and profusion of the feast you are unable to sit at.
Now Yan Bol sang a song. His voice rent the night, and I observed the lady erect her figure as though she hearkened with astonishment. I walked aft to take a look at the compass, and to see that the binnacle lamp was burning well.