"Ay, massa, like dis:" he sang a few notes. "Her song is all de same as a nuss-gal making him noisy pickaninny go for to sleep."
He went to the galley and presently returned with a tray full of breakfast things. Don Lazarillo was awakened by the negro lad laying the cloth for breakfast. I was at the skylight at the moment and my eye was upon the Spaniard. He started to his feet, delivered himself of a loud yawn, looked blankly around him with the stupid air of the newly awakened; the motions of his body were then arrested as though he had been paralyzed; he listened, intently gazing aft, continued to listen while you might count twenty, the expression of his face slowly changing from astonishment to terror. He then made a stride and disappeared out of the small range of view I commanded. I strained my ear but caught nothing unusual. He has heard the Señora del Padron singing, thought I.
The negro boy went again to the galley and once more returned with a second tray of dishes for the table. I was hungry and sleepy. Rest I might easily obtain by summoning Butler aft to keep a look-out, but I had no notion of turning in until I had breakfasted. I supposed that I should be expected to eat as heretofore, when Captain Dopping was alive in the vessel—that is to say, after the Spaniards had left the table; and I was wondering when Don Christoval meant to put in an appearance; at that moment he came on deck.
His face was colorless; I may say it was ghastly with what I must term its pallor of swarthiness. The peculiar hue seemed to enlarge his eyes. He stood curling his mustaches a moment looking around him, and then approached me with a shallow and unquiet smile.
"All goes well with the schooner, I hope, Captain Portlack?" said he.
"Yes, sir."
"How does the weather promise?"
"The day may keep fine, but I look for wind presently."
"I am going to ask you," said he, with a harsher Spanish or foreign intonation in his accent than I had ever before noticed in his speech, "to be so good, Señor Portlack," he raised his hat and held it a little above his head, "to waive your custom of taking your meals in the cabin," he put his hat on. "I deplore the necessity. You will not regard it, if you please, as a violation of the laws of hospitality—laws by which we are eminently governed in our country. Neither will you suppose that your estimable society is not prized and your professional help and attainments greatly valued by Don Lazarillo de Tormes and myself. But—" He abruptly ceased, giving me nothing more to interpret than a truly royal sweep of his arm.
"You wish me to eat in my own quarters, Don Christoval? I shall be happy to do so; but I presume I am to be waited upon?"