"Who can tell!" returned Courtenay. "For my part I fancy all Spaniards have very lax notions of commercial morality, and Master Juan may perhaps amuse himself, as opportunity offers or when times are bad, with a little quiet smuggling. Although, even in such a case," he continued, "I can scarcely see the need for such a formidable armoury; for I should hardly suspect him of the inclination to undertake the risk of running a cargo worth fighting for. Well, shall we go on deck and take a look round before sitting down to breakfast?"
"By all means," said I; and we were in the very act of ascending the companion-ladder when Francisco made his appearance at its head, coming down stern-foremost, with a coffee-pot in one hand and a smoking dish of broiled fish in the other, so we had to give way for him or run an imminent risk of being scalded.
"El capitano kisses your hands, excellencies," said the lad, as he laid his double burden on the table, "and he hopes you have both slept well."
"Admirably," I answered, adding, as I looked at the appetising dish which sent up its grateful odours from the table, "Put out another plate, knife and fork, and so on; and tell "el capitano" that we shall be very pleased if he will join us at breakfast."
The lad stared at us in mute astonishment for a moment, flushing like a bashful girl meanwhile. Then, recovering himself, he muttered: "I will tell him, gentlemen; he will feel himself highly honoured."
"That is all right," laughed Courtenay, as the lad slid up the companion; "a very right and proper feeling, though I scarcely know why he should experience it."
A minute later a heavy tramp was audible coming along the deck. The sunlight streaming down through the open companion suffered a temporary eclipse; a pair of legs, encased in enormous sea-boots, presented themselves to our admiring gaze, and finally a huge fellow of fully six feet in height, and broad in proportion, came towards us, bowing and stooping in the most awkward manner, partly by way of salutation and partly to avoid striking his head against the low deck-beams. He was dark-complexioned, bushy whiskered, with keen restless black eyes, and a shock of ebon hair very imperfectly concealed by a black-and-red-striped fisherman"s cap of knitted worsted, which he removed deferentially the moment his eye fell upon us. He wore large gold ear-rings in his ears, and was attired in a thick dreadnought jacket over a black-and-red- striped shirt, which was confined about his waist by a broad leather belt, to which was attached a sheath-knife of most formidable dimensions. The skirts of the shirt were worn _outside_ his trousers, so that his _tout ensemble_ was exactly that of a dashing pirate or smuggler bold, as that interesting individual is presented on the boards of a third-rate transpontine theatre of the present day. He was a picturesque-looking person enough, _but he certainly was not Juan Gonzalez_, to whom he bore no more resemblance than I did.
Courtenay and I glanced at each other in surprise, but neither of us said a word.
"_Muchisimos gracias_ for your honoured invitation, excellencies," said our friend, again bowing awkwardly, as he slid into a seat at the head of the table, leaving Courtenay and me to stow ourselves on the lockers, one on each side of him. "I am gratified to learn from Francisco that you rested soundly during the night I was afraid the motion of the felucca would prove disagreeable to you. We have had a fine breeze from the eastward all night, and La Guayra is now nearly a hundred miles astern of us."
"That is good news," I remarked. "But why should you have antic.i.p.ated any evil results to us from the motion of the craft? Are you not aware that we are pretty well seasoned sailors?"
"No," said our companion; "I was not aware of it. When I urged the captain-general to send naval officers I understood him to say that he had none available for the service, but that he would send two officers of marines. I did not like his proposal, and I am very glad to find that he has thought better of it. What can a soldier--even though he be a marine--know about soundings, and bearings, and sea-marks? And the entrance to the place is very difficult indeed, as you will see, gentlemen, when we come to it."
"What in the world is the man talking about?" thought I, glancing across the table at Courtenay to see what he thought of it. That irrepressible young gentleman elevated his eyebrows inquiringly, tipped me a wink of preternatural significance with his left eye--our host was sitting on Courtenay"s starboard hand--and then devoted himself most a.s.siduously to the red snapper off which he was breakfasting.
"How long do you reckon it will take us to make the run?" I asked, with the view of maintaining the conversation rather than because of my comprehension of it.
"Well," said our picturesque friend, "let me reckon. To-day is Thursday. If this breeze holds steady we ought to be off Cape Irois about daybreak next Wednesday morning. Then, unless the wind heads us, we may hope to weather Cape Maysi about sunset the same day; after which we may expect to have the breeze well on our starboard quarter, which will enable us to complete the run in good time to pa.s.s through the Barcos Channel and reach our anchorage before nightfall on the following Friday evening."
"Ah!" remarked Courtenay, as coolly as though he fully understood the whole drift of this singular conversation, "a little over a week, if the weather remains favourable. When you say that the entrance is difficult, do you refer to the Barcos Channel more particularly or to--?"
"Oh no!" was the reply; "that is easy enough--for a small vessel of light draught, that is to say--although there are one or two awkward places there which I will point out to you; but it is the entrance to the lagoon itself which will give you the most trouble."
"Precisely; that is what we have been given to understand," said Courtenay, addressing himself to us both. "I presume you have a chart of the place?"
"No," said our friend; "the place has never yet been surveyed, and Giuseppe will not permit anyone to sound anywhere within the entrance to the lagoon. I told the captain-general this when he asked me the same question. Did he not mention this to you?"
"No, he did not," said Courtenay, with all the seriousness imaginable; "he never said a word to me about it. Did he mention it to you?" with a glance across the table at me.
"Not a word," said I. "I suppose he forgot it in his hurry. You must understand," I continued, turning to the unknown one, "that so far as _we_ are concerned, this business has been arranged in the most hurried manner, and we must look to you for enlightenment upon any points which the captain-general may have omitted to explain to us."
"Oh, yes! a.s.suredly, senors, a.s.suredly," was the satisfactory reply.
"It is part of my bargain, you know."
"Quite so," chimed in Courtenay. "And if, as my friend and I talk the matter over, we happen to come to something which is not altogether clear, we will not fail to apply to you. By the by, do you happen to have such a thing as a decent cigar on board this smart little felucca of yours?"
Our interlocutor glanced from one to the other of us with a merry twinkle in his eye, as though Courtenay"s innocent inquiry veiled the best joke he had heard for a long time.
"A decent cigar!" said he. "Ha! ha! if I have not, then I don"t know where else you should look for one, gentlemen. Allow me." And, pushing past me to the after part of the locker, he raised a lid and produced a box of weeds which he laid upon the table. Then, with an awkward bow, he said, as he made for the companion-ladder:
"If you have finished breakfast, gentlemen, I will send Francisco down to clear the table."
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
CAPTAIN CARERA IMPARTS SOME INTERESTING INFORMATION.
Not a word was said by either of us until the unknown one had emerged from the companion and removed himself well out of ear-shot. Then, as Courtenay pushed the cigar-box across the table to me, after selecting a weed for himself, he looked me in the face and, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, remarked:
"Well, Lascelles, what is your interpretation of this riddle? What is the character of this felucca? Who and what is her skipper? And whither are we bound?"
"Hush!" said I, "here comes the boy. We shall find ourselves in an exceedingly awkward fix unless we keep a very bright lookout."
Here Francisco entered the cabin and began to clear away the wreck of the breakfast.
"Why, Francisco, my lad, you look pale. You surely do not feel sea- sick, do you?" exclaimed Courtenay.
"Sea-sick! oh, no!" said the lad. "I got over all that long ago."
"Ah, indeed!" remarked my fellow-mid in his usual off-hand manner.
"And, pray, what may "long ago" mean? Last voyage, or the voyage before--three months ago--six months--a year?"
"More nearly two years ago, senor. I shall have been to sea two years come next month," was the reply.
"Two years, eh! Why, you are a perfect veteran, a regular old sea-dog, Francisco," continued Courtenay as he exhaled a wreath of pale-blue smoke from his pursed-up lips and watched it go curling in fantastic wreaths up through the open sky-light. "And have you been all that time in the _Pinta_?"
"Yes, senor, all that time. Captain Carera is my uncle, you know. He adopted me when my mother died, and has promised to make a sailor of me."
"Ah! very good of him; very good, indeed," went on Courtenay. "A very worthy fellow that uncle of yours, Francisco. And has the _Pinta_ been engaged in the same trade ever since you joined her?"
"The same trade, senor? I--I--"
"There, don"t be alarmed at my question, my lad," interrupted Courtenay.
"You need not answer it unless you choose, you know; but there is no occasion for secrecy with _us_. You understand that, do you not?"
"Well, I don"t know, I am sure, excellency. I suppose it is all right, however, or you would not be here, so I do not mind answering. We _have_ been engaged in the same trade--for the most part--ever since I joined the _Pinta_."
"And a pretty profitable business your uncle must have found it,"
remarked Courtenay.
"I don"t know so much about that, senor," was the reply. "It _used_ to be profitable enough at first, I believe, when el capitano had it all in his own hands. But now that Giuseppe has admitted other traders, we not only have to pay higher prices for the goods, but we also have to take our turn with others for a cargo. Then, too, Giuseppe has not been so very fortunate of late; the British cruisers have given him a great deal of trouble."
"Ah, yes, they are a pestilent lot, those British--always thrusting their noses into other people"s business!" agreed my unabashed chum.
"Well," he continued to me, "shall we go on deck and take a look round?
Uncommonly good cigars these of your uncle"s, Francisco. Leave the box on the table, my lad, will ye?"
On reaching the deck we were now, for the first time, able to take particular note of the vessel on board which we, by some inexplicable blunder, thus found ourselves--for that a blunder had been perpetrated by somebody we now fully realised. The craft proved to be a st.u.r.dy little felucca of some sixty tons or so; very shallow and very beamy in proportion to her length; stoutly built, with high quarters, and low but widely-flaring bows, which tossed the seas aside in fine style and enabled her to thrash along with perfectly dry decks. She was rigged with a single stout, stumpy mast, raking well forward, upon which was set--by means of an immense yard of bamboos "fished" together, and twice the length of the craft herself--an enormous lateen or triangular sail, the tack of which consisted of a stout rope leading from the fore-end of the yard to a ring-bolt sunk into the deck just forward of the mast, whilst the sheet travelled upon an iron hawse well secured to the taffrail. There were five hands on deck when we made our appearance, namely, the skipper and the helmsman--who were having a quiet chat together--and three men in the waist, on the weather side of the deck, who were busy patching a sail. The weather was gloriously fine, with scarcely a cloud to be seen in the clear sapphire vault overhead; and a fresh cool breeze from about east-north-east was ruffling up the white- caps to windward, straining at the huge sail until the yard bent like a fishing-rod, and careening the gallant little craft to her covering- board, whilst it drove her along at the rate of a good honest nine knots in the hour. There was no other sail anywhere in sight, nor indeed anything to distract attention from the little vessel herself, save the shoals of flying-fish which now and then sparkled out from under our forefoot and went skimming away through the air to leeward, until they vanished with a flash, only to reappear, perhaps, next moment, with their inveterate foe, a dolphin, in hot pursuit. The moment we showed ourselves above the companion the skipper rose to his feet--he had been sitting cross-legged on the deck, under the weather bulwarks--and joined us, evidently under the impression that it was an essential part of his duty to make himself agreeable. He made some commonplace remark about the weather, to which we both vouchsafed a ready and gracious response, very fully realising by this time the peculiarity and perilous nature of our position on board the felucca--a position from which it was, of course, utterly impossible for us then to effect a retreat--and being especially anxious not only to avert any possibility of a suspicion as to our _bona fides_, but also to extract such further hints as might tend to the elucidation of that position. For some time the conversation was of a general and utterly unimportant character; at length, however, Carera, evidently reverting to the topic which was uppermost in his mind, remarked:
"I have thought it best, senors, to mention to Manuel, my mate there,"