“Señorita,” said I, addressing her in Spanish, “my uncle and I will talk at this table; let us not disturb you. You and I have no secrets—now.”
She smiled and looked grave all in a moment, slightly bowed and resumed her seat and her work. And, indeed, I minded not her presence. Much that I should presently say, much that would presently be spoken by my uncle, must be as unintelligible to her as Welsh or Erse.
We seated ourselves, and I took my uncle by the hand and blessed God for the privilege of beholding him again. I inquired after my aunt; she was well; after my cousin; hale and hearty; married three months since, lived in a small house at Folkstone, whence her young husband traded in a ship of which he was part owner. I asked after Captain Spalding. The Royal Brunswicker had passed through the Downs in the previous December; my uncle had heard nothing of her since; he had written to Spalding that I was drowned after having been pressed, and while being conveyed aboard a frigate off Deal. He had claimed my wages and clothes as next of kin, and Spalding had sent him what was due to me and what remained of my togs. I asked how many men of the frigate’s boat had perished; he replied only one man was picked up, one of the pressed men, an Irishman.
“That was the fellow,” said I, “whose behavior led to the disaster.”
I had many more questions to ask, the tediousness of which I will not bestow upon you. I then entered upon the story of my own adventures from the hour of my leaving his house on that black night of storm and thunder. He stopped me after I had related my gibbet experience to tell me that a tall woman, dressed as a widow, was found about forty yards distant from the gibbet, dead, with her arms round the ironed body of the felon. Miss Aurora looked up at this; she had heard me tell that story of the gibbet and the lightning stroke and the mother. She looked up, I say, muttered, and crossed herself, then went on with her work. I paused to think a little upon the dead mother, then proceeded steadily with my story; when I came to Greaves’ narrative of the discovery of the dollar-ship my uncle’s eyes grew small in his head with the intentness of his gaze.
He seldom winked; he breathed small and faint until I described the discovery of the dollars and their transhipment, on which he fetched a deep breath and hit the table a sounding blow with his fist. Manifold were the changes of his countenance as I progressed; he lived in every scene I drew; cursed Yan Bol and his crew in the language of Beach Street; started out of his chair to grasp the lady Aurora by the hand on my relating her share in the recovery of the brig. And then he became a strict man of business, his jolly face hardening to the rise and pressure of his old smuggling instincts when I spoke of the chests of dollars in the lazarette and asked him to advise me how, when, and where to secretly convey them ashore.
“Let’s have a look at ’em, Bill,” said he. The excitement was gone out of him; he was as cool as ever he had been in the most artful and desperate of his midnight jobs. I took him into the lazarette and between us we handled a chest of about three thousand dollars to test its weight. He then said—as quietly as though his talk was of empty casks and “dead marines”—“The money must be got ashore to-night. It mustn’t remain aboard after to-night.”
“How shall I go to work?”
“Leave that to me.”
“Who’ll receive the cases, uncle?”