galvanic battery, he snatched down a telescope from the wall, steadied it at the window-sash, and peered again long and anxiously to windward. He saw nothing, however, save the long, glassy, unbroken undulations of a calm tropical sea, rolling away off beyond the ledge under a burning sun; no sign of a breeze––not even a cat’s-paw; and only now and then the leap of a deep-sea fish sparkling for a moment in the air, and some sluggish gulls and pelicans sailing and diving about the reef for their prey. Shutting up the glass with a crash that made the joints ring, he strode to the settee, where hung several knotted bell-ropes, and, seizing one, gave it a sharp jerk. Then putting his ear to an aperture in the wall, where was a hollow cane tube like the mouth of a speaking-trumpet, he listened attentively till a hoarse whisper uttered the word,
“Señor.”
Putting his mouth to the tube, he said,
“Can you make out the ‘Centipede’ from the crag station?”
“Not sure, sir, this morning; but last evening, at sunset, I saw a sail which I took to be her. The sea-breeze is just beginning to make, and if she’s to windward of Punta Arenas she’ll soon heave in sight.”
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This colloquy was held in Spanish; and when the signal-man had ceased speaking, the interlocutor lit another cigar mechanically, kicked a foot-stool out of his way like a foot-ball, and thus communed with himself as he rapidly paced between the table and the veranda:
“Fourteen weeks ago yesterday since the schooner was off Matanzas; not a word of news to cheer me through all that cursed fever; the spring trade done, and the track deserted by this time!”
Then pausing in his walk, he stopped at the chart-stand, and unrolling a map, he went on:
“Where, in the devil’s name, could she possibly have gone to? She might have been to Cape Horn and back before this. Miserable fool that I was to trust the craft with that thirsty, thick-headed Gibbs! Diavolo! he may have been captured, and if he has, I hope his neck has been stretched like a shred of jerked beef.”
Even while he was talking a bell struck near the settee, and, putting his ear again to the tube, the hoarse voice said,
“I can make her out now, señor. She’s just caught the strong young breeze, and is, hull up, coming along with the bonnet off her fore-sail and a reef in her main-sail! There’s a felucca to windward of her, which I take to be the ‘Panchita!’ ”
“Ah ha!” laughed the individual in the room. “The ‘Centipede’ is safe, then; and I am to have the pleasure, too, of a visit from the Tuerto, the mercenary old owl, with his account of sales and his greed. But let me once catch him foul, and, my one-eyed friend, I’ll treat you to such a dance that you won’t need shoes!”
Here he glanced with a meaning look at the silk rope swaying from the beam above his head, and the laugh of satisfaction which followed was not one a timid man would care to hear in a dark night; nor did it come from his heart, as any one might have discovered from the ferocious gleam of inward passion which shot out in the cold sparkle of his eyes and flitted away over his grating teeth.
Controlling his feelings, however, and stepping out on the veranda, he drew aside the curtains and sung out to the men in the huts, “One of you fellows, tell the boatswain I want him.”
The men started up, and a moment after a man in a blue jacket stood out from one of the sheds and threw up his hand to his straw hat.
THE “PANCHITA”
“Get together the people! Let run the cable at the Alligator’s mouth, and have three or four warps ready for the schooner when she passes the point! The ‘Panchita’ is coming too, so look out, and have enough lines to tow both vessels in case the breeze fails. Tell Mr. Gibbs to moor close under the other shore in the old berth, and to come to me when he’s anchored! D’ye hear?”
All this was said in a sharp tone of command, and by the alacrity with which the orders were executed the men seemed to be accustomed to a master who knew how to rule them.
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CHAPTER IX.
CAPTAIN AND MATE.
| “So I hauled him off to the gallows’ foot, And blinded him in his bags; ’Twas a weary job to heave him up, For a doomed man always lags; But by ten of the clock he was off his legs In the wind, and airing his rags!” |
A couple of hours had passed since the occupant of the stone building had last spoken to his subordinates down at the inlet, but the interval he devoted to a minute inspection of weapons in the armory adjoining his bedroom. They were all in excellent order, of the best make, and very neatly arranged in stands and cases around the room. When he emerged again, after locking the door, he held an exquisite pair of small pistols inlaid with gold in his hand, which he gently polished with his cambric handkerchief, and then slipped them into his trowsers pockets. Then he held short dialogues with the voice at the signal-station, and, without looking out of the window, he informed himself of what was doing outside, and what progress the vessels made toward their haven. When, however, the schooner poked her slim, low black bows, with her sails down, around the point, he gave one stealthy peep, or glare rather, at her. He took all in at that glance, from the patches of sheet-lead nailed over the shot-holes in her side, to the sawed-off stump of the fore-top-mast; and then he remarked the absence of the boat which was carried amidships, and the few men moving about her deck. Ay! he took it all in with that one comprehensive glance, and when he had done, he raised his fore finger quivering with anger, and slowly and unconsciously passed it with an ominous gesture across his throat.
Soon was heard a sullen plunge as an anchor was let go, and the splashing of the warps upon the water as the stern of the “Centipede” was being moored to the rocks, to make room for her companion the felucca, now shortly expected.
“Mr. Gibbs is coming on shore, señor, and he seems to have a wooden leg,” came through the tube. “The doctor is coming with him, and there is a little boy in the boat.”
“Ho!” muttered the man in the saloon, “where was that brat picked up?”
Nothing more was said. The tall man lit a cigar, threw himself 54 into an easy attitude on the settee, opened a richly-bound volume, and waited. Ten minutes may have gone by when the trampling of feet was heard on the smooth rocks outside the building, and the voice of Mr. Gibbs exclaimed,
“Easy, will ye? Doctor! Don’t ye see it tears the narves out of me to hobble with this broomstick-handle of a leg! There! Stop a bit! How in thunder am I to climb this ladder? Oh!” Here a low howl of pain. “Another shove. Easy, old Sawbones! So––give us another push, will ye? All right! There, that’ll do.”
The next minute Mr. Bill Gibbs stood on the broad piazza, and, with the assistance of a crutch, he hobbled to the entrance of the apartment, and only pausing to recover his wind and compose his features, he pulled off his straw hat and entered.
“So ho! Mr. Gibbs,” said the man on the settee, as the burly, lame ruffian darkened the entrance, laying the book down as he spoke, and waving his delicate handkerchief before him.
“So ho! Mr. Gibbs, you’ve come back at last! Delighted to see you. I am, ’pon my soul. Ah! one of those stout pins gone? Why, how’s this? Some little accident? Santa Cruz rum and a tumble down the hatchway, perhaps, eh? D’ye smoke? Take a cheroot. Put that bag on the table.”
All this was said in a gay, gibing tone, with an indifference and sang froid that a tight-rope dancer might have been proud of; and as he ended, he threw