Trafalgar: A Tale. Benito Pérez Galdós

Don Alonso, “and after having once joined the dance it would be a disgrace to back out of it. Last month, when I was at Cadiz, at my cousin’s daughter’s christening, Churruca said to me: ‘This French alliance and that villainous treaty of San Ildefonso, which the astuteness of Buonaparte and the weakness of our government made a mere question of subsidies, will be the ruin of us and the ruin of our fleet if God does not come to the rescue, and afterwards will be the ruin of the colonies too and of Spanish trade with America. But we must go on now all the same. …’ ”

      “Well,” said Doña Francisca, “what I say is that the Prince of Peace is interfering in things he does not understand. There you see what a man without learning is! My brother the archdeacon, who is on Prince Ferdinand’s side, says that Godoy is a thoroughly commonplace soul, that he has studied neither Latin nor theology and that all he knows is how to play the guitar and twenty ways of dancing a gavotte. They made him prime minister for his good looks, as it would seem. That is the way we do things in Spain! And then we hear of starvation and want—everything is so dear—yellow fever breaking out in Andalusia.—This is a pretty state of things, sir—yes, and the fault is yours; yours,” she went on, raising her voice and turning purple. “Yes, señor, yours, who offend God by killing so many people—and if you would go to church and tell your beads instead of wanting to go in those diabolical ships of war, the devil would not find time to trot round Spain so nimbly, playing the mischief with us all.”

      “But you shall come to Cadiz too,” said Don Alonso, hoping to light some spark of enthusiasm in his wife’s heart; “you shall go to Flora’s house, and from the balcony you will be able to see the fight quite comfortably, and the smoke and the flames and the flags.—It is a beautiful sight!”

      “Thank you very much—but I should drop dead with fright. Here we shall be quiet; those who seek danger may go there.”

      Here the dialogue ended, and I remember every word of it though so many years have elapsed. But it often happens that the most remote incidents that occurred even in our earliest childhood, remain stamped on our imagination more clearly and permanently than the events of our riper years when our reasoning faculties have gained the upper hand.

      That evening Don Alonzo and Marcial talked over matters whenever Doña Francisca left them together; but this was at rare intervals, for she was suspicious and watchful. When she went off to church to attend vespers, as was her pious custom, the two old sailors breathed freely again as if they were two giddy schoolboys out of sight of the master. They shut themselves into the library, pulled out their maps and studied them with eager attention; then they read some papers in which they had noted down the names of several English vessels with the number of their guns and men, and in the course of their excited conference, in which reading was varied by vigorous commentary, I discovered that they were scheming the plan of an imaginary naval battle. Marcial, by means of energetic gymnastics with his arm and a half, imitated the advance of the squadron and the explosion of the broadsides; with his head he indicated the alternate action of the hostile vessels; with his body the heavy lurch of each ship as it went to the bottom; with his hand the hauling up and down of the signal flags; he represented the boatswain’s whistle by a sharp sibilation; the rattle of the cannon by thumping his wooden leg on the floor; he smacked his tongue to imitate the swearing and confusion of noises in the fight; and as my master assisted him in this performance with the utmost gravity I also must need take my share in the fray, encouraged by their example and giving natural vent to that irresistible longing to make a noise which is a master passion with every boy. Seeing the enthusiasm of the two veterans, I could no longer contain myself and took to leaping about the room—a freedom in which I was justified by my master’s kind familiarity; I imitated with my head and arms the movements of a vessel veering before the wind, and at the same time making my voice as big as possible I shouted out all the most sonorous monosyllables I could think of as being most like the noise of a cannon. My worthy master and the mutilated old sailor, quite as childish as I in their own way, paid no attention to my proceedings, being entirely preoccupied with their own ideas.

      How I have laughed since when I have remembered the scene! and how true it is—in spite of all my respect for my companions in the game—that senile enthusiasm makes old men children once more and renews the puerile follies of the cradle even on the very brink of the tomb!

      They were deep in their discussion when they heard Doña Francisca’s step returning from church.

      “She is coming!” cried Marcial in an agony of alarm, and they folded up the maps and began to talk of indifferent matters. I, however, not being able to cool down my juvenile blood so rapidly or else not noticing my mistress’s approach soon enough, went on, down the middle of the room in my mad career, ejaculating with the utmost incoherence, such phrases as I had picked up: “Tack to starboard! Now Port! Broadside to the leeward! Fire! Bang! bom! boom! …” She came up to me in a fury and without any warning delivered a broadside on my figure-head with her right hand, and with such effect that for a few moments I saw nothing but stars.

      “What! you too?” she cried, battering me unmercifully. “You see,” she added, turning on her husband with flashing eyes, “you have taught him to feel no respect for you!—You thought you were still in the Caleta did you, you little ne’er do weel?”

      The commotion ended by my running off to the kitchen crying and disgraced, after striking my colors in an ignominious manner, before the superior force of the enemy; Doña Francisca giving chase and belaboring my neck and shoulders with heavy slaps. In the kitchen I cast anchor and sat down to cry over the fatal termination of my sea-fight.