Читать книгу Captain Brand of the "Centipede" - H. A. Wise - Страница 15

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“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 a handful of cigars across the table, and pushed the pan of coals toward his visitor. Before, however, Gibbs had time to utter a word in reply, his companion, while lolling over the settee, caught up an opera-glass from the table, and, placing it to his eyes, went on:

“Ha! ho! the fore-top-mast of my pretty long-legged schooner is gone. Pretty stick it was! I suppose, Master Gibbs, that you”––he nodded fiercely without removing the glass––“cut it up for that lovely new leg you’ve mounted. Ay, my beauty!” again apostrophizing the vessel, which lay like a wounded bird in the calm inlet before him; “but where’s my handsome barge, that used to cover the long gun? Ho! stormy weather you’ve seen of late.”

During all this one-sided conversation Gibbs had managed to wriggle his mutilated body on to a wicker chair, where he steadied himself with his crutch, evincing manifest signs of choler the while by running his fat fingers through the reddish door-mat of hair, hitching up his trowsers, and rapping nervously his timber stump of a leg on the floor, until at last, unable, apparently, longer to control himself, he burst out, with his bad face suffused with passion,

“I say, Captain Brand, it’s time to end them ’ere gibes. What’s took place is unfortinate; but, howsoever, I has a bag of shiners and a wooden leg to show for it, and d––n the odds.”

55

“Stop, stop, my bull-dog! Don’t be profane in my presence, if you please. We are both Christians, you know, and friends too, I hope.”

This was said in a very precise, emphatic, and clear enunciation, and without apparent heat; and Captain Brand smiled too––but such a smile, as his wide mouth came down with a twitch at the corners, and left a sort of hole, where the cigar was habitually stuck, to see his teeth through.

“And now, my friend, suppose you give me some little account of your cruise, and fill up, if you can, any chinks that I haven’t seen through already,” he concluded, throwing his legs again over the back of the settee, and elevating his eyebrows as the cigar smoke curled in spiral wreaths around his face.

Mr. Gibbs hereupon settled himself more at ease in his chair, laid his crutch across his knees, and began:

“I s’pose, sir, you got the news I sent in a letter from Matanzas, after we’d been chased out of the Nicholas Channel by that Yankee corvette?”

Captain Brand nodded at the eye-bolt which held the green silk rope from the ceiling, as if calculating mentally the strain it would bear, merely as a matter of philosophical speculation, perhaps.

“Well, arter that––and a very tight race it was––we ran down to the Behamey Banks. There we picked up a Yankee schooner loaded with shingles and lumber; and as the skipper was sarsy, I just made him and his crew walk one of his own planks, and then bored a couple of holes through his vessel, arter taking out some water which we stood in need of. You hasn’t a drop of summut to drink, has you, Captain Brand? becase it makes my jaw-tackle dry to talk much.”

The captain merely motioned with a wave of his cambric handkerchief to an open liquor-case which stood on a cabinet near, and to which Mr. Gibbs hobbled; when, seizing a square flask of crystal incased in a network of frosted silver, he returned with it to the table. Had Mr. Gibbs chosen he might have brought with the flask a small, thimble-shaped liqueur glass; but he did not, and contented himself with a china coffee-cup which stood on the tray before him. He seemed a little near-sighted too; and as he inverted the flask, gave no heed to the quantity of fluid he poured into the cup. But he took care, however, that it did not run over; and then, raising it with a trembling hand to his lips, he said, “My sarvice to you, Captain Brand,” and tossed it down his capacious throat. The captain gave no response to this compliment, but as Mr. Gibbs put down the coffee-cup he said blandly,

“Thank you; but suppose you put that flask back in the case. I 56 am rather choice with that brandy; it was a––given to me by a––person who was a––unfortunately hanged, and a––I rarely offer it a––the second time.”

Puffing his cigar as he spoke in an easy manner, he then turned round to listen to Mr. Gibbs’s narrative. Becoming more genial as the brandy loosened his tongue, Mr. Gibbs continued:

“Well, sir, from the Behameys we ran to leeward, nearly to the Spanish Main, in hopes, perhaps, of finding some stray fellow as was bound to Europe; but we see nothing for days and days, and weeks and weeks, till finally the water fell short again, and we beats up and runs into Santa Cruz. There, as luck would have it, Eboe Pete and French Tom got into a bit of a scrimmage up on a gentleman’s plantation arter sunset, and was werry roughly handled by a patrol of sogers as happened to be near. I believe as how Eboe Pete died that night; and I heerd, too, that French Tom had his skull cracked; and what does he go for to do but make a confession to the authorities that the ‘Centipede’ was a pirate!

“Well, captain, the moment that information reached me, and seein’ a sogers’ boat gettin’ ready, and the sogers running about the water-battery of the fort, than I just slips the cable, and runs out to sea like a bird; and, Lord love ye, sir! the way they pitched round shot arter us was––was––” Here Master Gibbs paused for a simile, and the captain observed with a hacking, cough-like laugh,

“You saved the water-casks, though?”

“Why no, sir; and we was forced to go upon a ’lowance of a pint a water a man!”

“Ho!” rejoined the listener. “Capital! Didn’t suffer, I hope? Go on.”

“Howsomever, I says to myself, the captain wants a good valy’ble cargo, and so we beats up again and stretches away back along the coast of Jamaiky, on the look-out for any think that might be comin’ that ’ere way. Well, sir, d’ye see, airly one morning, as we was a lying as close as wax under the land, we spies a big brig becalmed off to seaward; but we diskivered at the same time that same Yankee cruiser as was in chase of us off Matanzas. I know’d as how you would be displeased at any risks being run, so we keeps clean and snug inshore, under a pint o’ land, till set of sun, and until arter the moon went down. Then the breeze sprung up fresh from the old trade quarter, and says I, now we’ll make a dash at that ’ere drogher, and squeeze him as dry as bone-dust; more pertikerly, ye see, captain, since the corvette, arter dodgin’ about him all day, had yawed off, and, with his port-tacks aboard, was beatin’ to wind’ard.”

Here Mr. Gibbs’s auditor took the cigar from his mouth and rolled his light blue eyes at him, puffed a thick volume of smoke through the corner of his mouth, but said never a syllable.