The Freebooters Part 45

"Where is it?"

"As the man a.s.sured me that it contained articles of considerable value, I had the chest placed in my bedroom, in order that it might be in safety."

"Lead me to your room."

"Whenever you please, Excellency."

"Senors," El Alferez said, addressing the two naval officers and Ramirez, "wait for me in this room; in ten minutes I will join you again."

And without awaiting a reply, he made a sign to the pulquero to lead the way, and left the room with a rapid step. There was a momentary silence with the three men; they seemed to be engaged in sad thoughts, and looked anxiously around them. Time, which never stands still, had rapidly advanced during the course of the events we have narrated.

Nearly the whole night had pa.s.sed away, the first gleams of dawn were beginning to whiten the smoky walls of the pulqueria, and already some inhabitants, who had risen earlier than the others, were venturing into the streets; ere long the sun would make its appearance.

"Day will soon be here," Don Serapio remarked, as he shook his head anxiously.

"What matter?" Ramirez answered.

"What matter, do you say?" Don Serapio replied in amazement; "but it seems to me that one of the most important conditions for the enterprise we are about to attempt, is darkness."

"Certainly," Don Cristoval supported him, "if we wait till the sun has risen, any surprise will be impossible."

Ramirez shrugged his shoulders.

"You do not know the man under whose orders you have voluntarily placed yourselves," he answered; "impossible things are those he prefers attempting."

"You know him better than we do then, as you speak thus of him?"

"Better than you or anyone," the sailor said with considerable animation; "I have the greatest faith in him; for ten years I have lived by his side, and have many times been able to appreciate all the n.o.bility and generosity that exist in his heart."

"Ah," the two officers said, walking quickly up to him, "who is he, then?"

An ironical smile curled Ramirez's delicate lip.

"You know as well as I do: a warm patriot, and one of the most renowned Chiefs of the revolutionary movement."

"Hum!" Don Sandoval remarked, "that is not what we want to know."

"What then?" he asked with almost imperceptible irony.

"Hang it, you say that you have lived ten years with this man," Don Serapio went on; "you must know certain peculiarities about him which no one else is acquainted with, and which we should not be sorry to know."

"That is possible; unfortunately, I am utterly unable to satisfy your curiosity on that point; if El Alferez has not thought proper to give you certain intimate details about his private life, it is not my place to reveal them to you."

Don Serapio was about to reply rather sharply to the sailor, when the door opened through which Don Alferez had gone out, and the pulquero entered, followed by a lady. The two officers could scarce refrain from a cry of surprise on recognising beneath this dress El Alferez himself.

The young Chief wore feminine attire with considerable grace and reality; he walked with such ease, and appeared so accustomed to the thousand knick-nacks of a lady's dress--in a word, the metamorphosis was so complete, that, had it not been for the eye whose strange l.u.s.tre the young man had not quite succeeded in subduing, the three men could have sworn that this singular being was really a woman.

The costume of El Alferez, though not rich, was elegant, and in good taste; his face, half concealed beneath the silken folds of his rebozo, partly hid his haughty expression; in his right hand he held a pretty sandalwood fan, with which he played with that graceful nonchalance so full of skill which is only possessed by Spanish women and their American daughters.

"Well, Caballeros," the young man said mincingly, in a sweet and harmonious voice; "do you not recognize me? I am the daughter of your friend Dona Leonora Salcedo, Dona Mencia."

The three men bowed respectfully.

"Pardon me, Senorita," Don Serapio replied as he gravely kissed the tips of El Alferez's fingers; "we know you perfectly well, but were so far from antic.i.p.ating the happiness of meeting you here, that----"

"Even at this moment, after hearing you speak, we dare not yet believe in the reality of what we see."

The pulquero looked in alarm from one to the other. The worthy man understood nothing of what was going on, and he asked himself confidentially were he asleep or awake. In fact, he was not far from believing himself under a spell.

"I do not understand your surprise, Caballeros," the feigned Dona Mencia said with a stress on her words; "was it not arranged some days back between yourselves, my mother, and my husband, that we should go this morning and breakfast with Commandant Rodriguez, on board the _Libertad_ corvette?"

"Of course," Don Serapio quickly exclaimed; "excuse me, Senorita, but I really do not know where my head is. How could I have forgotten that?"

"I will excuse you," El Alferez replied with a smile, "but on condition that you repair your inexplicable forgetfulness, and rather ungallant behaviour, by offering me your arm to go on board the corvette at once."

"The more so," Don Cristoval added, "as we have rather a long distance to go, and I have no doubt the Commandant is expecting us."

"Canarios! I should think he was," Ramirez e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; "why, Senor, he sent me with a boat to take you aboard."

"Since that is the case, I think we shall do well by starting without further delay."

"We are at your orders, Senorita."

"Stay, my good man," El Alferez added in a soft voice, and addressing the pulquero, "take this in recollection of me."

The good man, half stunned by what he saw, mechanically held out his right hand, into which the mysterious adventurer carelessly let a gold onza fall; then, taking Don Serapio's arm, he went out, preceded by Don Cristoval and Ramirez, who hurried to get the boat ready. The pulquero stood in his doorway, and looked after the strange visitors who had spent the whole night in his house, as long as he could see them; then he went in again, shaking his head thoughtfully, and muttering, as he jingled the coin he had received--"All this is not clear; a man who is a woman, friends who do not recognize each other after two hours'

conversation, that is preciously queer; I am certain something is going to happen. But hang me if I mix myself up in it; it is well, in certain circ.u.mstances, to know how to hold one's tongue; besides, it is no business of mine; the money they gave me is good, and I have no right to look further."

Strengthened by this philosophic reasoning, and filled with prudence, the pulquero closed his door, and went to bed in order to fetch up by day the sleep his singular curiosities had made him lose during the night.

[1] What rumour resounds in the distance which interrupts the placid silence of the dark night?

[2] Can it be the rapid gallop of a horse urged along a narrow road--or the ferocious howling of a starving beast of prey--or, perchance, the whistling of the north-west wind?

CHAPTER XIX.

AT SEA.

It was about four in the morning; the dawn was beginning to mark the horizon with wide white bands; on the extreme line of the water, a bright red reflection, the harbinger of sunrise, announced that the sun would soon appear. At this moment a light brig gradually emerged from the dense fog that hid it, and could be seen sailing close to the wind along the dangerous and rugged coast which forms the entrance of Galveston Bay, at the mouth of the Rio Trinidad.

It was a neat vessel of three hundred tons at the most, with a gracefully-built hull, and its tall masts coquettishly raking. The rigging was carefully painted and tarred, the yards symmetrically square, and more than all, the menacing muzzles of four eight-pounder carronades which peered out of the bulwarks on either side, and the long thirty-two pounder swivel in the bows, indicated that, although a man-of-war pennant might not be flying from the mainmast, it was not the less resolved, in case of necessity, to fight energetically against the cruisers that might attempt to check its progress.

At the moment when we first notice the brig, with the exception of the man at the wheel, and an individual walking up and down the p.o.o.p smoking his pipe, at the first glance the brig's deck seemed deserted; still, on examining it carefully, fifteen men const.i.tuting the watch might have been seen sleeping in the bows, whom the slightest signal would be sufficient to awaken.

"Halloh!" the walker said suddenly, as he halted near the binnacle, and addressed the helmsman; "I fancy the wind is shifting."