The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 21

"Take! They were two war frigates, I tell 'ee!"

"Iss, iss; don't lose your temper. All I managed to take was this young French orcifer here; but I thought, maybe, that you--having a handier craft--"

Jacka chuckled a bit; but he wasn't one to keep a joke going for spite.

"Look-y-here, Cap'n," he said; "I'll hear your tale when we get into dock, and you shall hear mine. What I want 'ee to do just now is to take this here lugger again and sail along in to Plymouth with her as your prize. I wants, if possible, to spare the feelin's of this young gentleman, an' make it look that he was brought in by force. For so he was, though not in the common way. An' I likes the fellow, too, though he do kick terrible hard."

They do say that two days later, when Cap'n Jacka walked up to his own door, he carried the cinder-sifter under his arm; and that, before ever he kissed his wife, he stepped fore and hitched it on a nail right in the middle of the wall over the chimney-piece, between John Wesley and the weather-gla.s.s.

THE POISONED ICE

We were four in the _patio_. And the _patio_ was magnificent, with a terrace of marble running round its four sides, and in the middle a fountain splashing in a marble basin. I will not swear to the marble; for I was a boy of ten at the time, and that is a long while ago.

But I describe as I recollect. It was a magnificent _patio_, at all events, and the house was a palace. And who the owner might be, Felipe perhaps knew. But he was not one to tell, and the rest of us neither knew nor cared.

The two women lay stretched on the terrace, with their heads close together and resting against the house wall. And I sat beside them gnawing a bone. The sun shone over the low eastern wall upon the fountain and upon Felipe perched upon the rim of the basin, with his lame leg stuck out straight and his mouth working as he fastened a nail in the end of his beggar's crutch.

I cannot tell you the hour exactly, but it was early morning, and the date the twenty-fourth of February, 1671. I learnt this later. We in the _patio_ did not bother ourselves about the date, for the world had come to an end, and we were the last four left in it. For three weeks we had been playing hide-and-seek with the death that had caught and swallowed everyone else; and for the moment it was quite enough for the women to sleep, for me to gnaw my bone in the shade, and for Felipe to fasten the loose nail in his crutch. Many windows opened on the _patio_. Through the nearest, by turning my head a little, I could see into a n.o.ble room lined with pictures and heaped with furniture and torn hangings. All of it was ours, or might be, for the trouble of stepping inside and taking possession. But the bone (I had killed a dog for it) was a juicy one, and I felt no inclination to stir. There was the risk, too, of infection--of the plague.

"Hullo!" cried Felipe, slipping on his shoe, with the heel of which he had been hammering. "You awake?"

I put Felipe last of us in order, for he was an old fool. Yet I must say that we owed our lives to him. Why he took so much trouble and spent so much ingenuity in saving them is not to be guessed: for the whole city of Panama comprehended no two lives more worthless than old Dona Teresa's (as we called her) and mine: and as for the Carmelite, Sister Marta, who had joined our adventures two days before, she, poor soul, would have thanked him for putting a knife into her and ending her shame.

But Felipe, though a fool, had a fine sense of irony. And so for three weeks Dona Teresa and I--and for forty-eight hours Sister Marta too--had been lurking and doubling, squatting in cellars crawling on roofs, breaking cover at night to s.n.a.t.c.h our food, all under Felipe's generalship. And he had carried us through. Perhaps he had a soft corner in his heart for old Teresa. He and she were just of an age, the two most careless-hearted outcasts in Panama; and knew each other's peccadilloes to a hair. I went with Teresa. Heaven knows in what gutter she had first picked me up, but for professional ends I was her starving grandchild, and now reaped the advantages of that dishonouring fiction.

"How can a gentleman sleep for your thrice-accursed hammering?" was my answer to Felipe Fill-the-Bag.

"The city is very still this morning," he observed, sniffing the air, which was laden still with the scent of burnt cedar-wood. "The English dogs will have turned their backs on us for good. I heard their bugles at daybreak; since then, nothing."

"These are fair quarters, for a change."

He grinned. "They seem to suit the lady, your grandmother. She has not groaned for three hours. I infer that her ill.u.s.trious sciatica is no longer troubling her."

Our chatter awoke the Carmelite. She opened her eyes, unclasped her hand, which had been locked round one of the old hag's, and sat up blinking, with a smile which died away very pitiably.

"Good morning, Senorita," said I.

She bent over Teresa, but suddenly drew back with a little "Ah!" and stared, holding her breath.

"What is the matter?"

She was on her knees, now; and putting out a hand, touched Teresa's skinny neck with the tips of two fingers.

"What is the matter?" echoed Felipe, coming forward from the fountain.

"She is dead!" said I, dropping the hand which I had lifted.

"Jesu--" began the Carmelite, and stopped: and we stared at one another, all three.

With her eyes wide and fastened on mine, Sister Marta felt for the crucifix and rope of beads which usually hung from her waist. It was gone: but her hands fumbled for quite a minute before the loss came home to her brain. And then she removed her face from us and bent her forehead to the pavement. She made no sound, but I saw her feet writhing.

"Come, come," said Felipe, and found no more to say.

I can guess now a little of what was pa.s.sing through her unhappy mind.

Women are women and understand one another. And Teresa, unclean and abandoned old hulk though she was, had stood by this girl when she came to us flying out of the wrack like a lost ship. "Dear, dear, dear"--I remembered sc.r.a.ps of her talk--"the good Lord is debonair, and knows all about these things. He isn't like a man, as you might say": and again, "Why bless you, He's not going to condemn you for a matter that I could explain in five minutes. 'If it comes to that,' I should say--and I've often noticed that a real gentleman likes you all the better for speaking up--'If it comes to that, Lord, why did You put such b.l.o.o.d.y-minded pirates into the world?' Now to my thinking"--and I remember her rolling a leaf of tobacco as she said it--"it's a great improvement to the mind to have been through the battle, whether you have won or lost; and that's why, when on earth, He chose the likes of us for company."

This philosophy was not the sort to convince a religious girl: but I believe it comforted her. Women are women, as I said; and when the ship goes down a rotten plank is better than none. So the Carmelite had dropped asleep last night with her hand locked round Teresa's: and so it happened to Teresa this morning to be lamented, and sincerely lamented, by one of the devout. It was almost an edifying end; and the prospect of it, a few days ago, would have tickled her hugely.

"But what did she die of?" I asked Felipe, when we had in delicacy withdrawn to the fountain, leaving the Carmelite alone with her grief.

He opened his mouth and pointed a finger at it.

"But only last evening I offered to share my bone with her: and she told me to keep it for myself."

"Your Excellency does not reason so well as usual," said Felipe, without a smile on his face. "The ill.u.s.trious defunct had a great affection for her grandchild, which caused her to overlook the ambiguity of the relationship--and other things."

"But do you mean to say--"

"She was a personage of great force of character, and of some virtues which escaped recognition, being unusual. I pray," said he, lifting the rim of his rusty hat, "that her soul may find the last peace!

I had the honour to follow her career almost from the beginning. I remember her even as a damsel of a very rare beauty: but even then as I say, her virtues were unusual, and less easily detected than her failings. I, for example, who supposed myself to know her thoroughly, missed reckoning upon her courage, or I had spent last night in seeking food. I am a fool and a pig."

"And consequently, while we slept--"

"Excuse me, I have not slept."

"You have been keeping watch?"

"Not for the buccaneers, my Lord. They left before daybreak. But the dogs of the city are starving, even as we: and like us they have taken to hunting in company. Now this is a handsome courtyard, but the gate does not happen to be too secure."

I shivered. Felipe watched me with an amiable grin.

"But let us not," he continued, "speak contemptuously of our inheritance. It is, after all, a very fair kingdom for three. Captain Morgan and his men are accomplished scoundrels, but careless: they have not that eye for trifles which is acquired in our n.o.ble profession, and they have no instinct at all for hiding-places. I a.s.sure you this city yet contains palaces to live in, linen and silver plate to keep us comfortable. Food is scarce, I grant, but we shall have wines of the very first quality. We shall live royally. But, alas! Heaven has exacted more than its t.i.the of my enjoyment. I had looked forward to seeing Teresa in a palace of her own. What a queen she would have made, to be sure!"

"Are we three the only souls in Panama?"

Felipe rubbed his chin. "I think there is one other. But he is a philosopher, and despises purple and linen. We who value them, within reason, could desire no better subject." He arose and treated me to a regal bow. "Shall we inspect our legacy, my brother, and make arrangements for the coronation?"

"We might pick up something to eat on the way," said I.

Felipe hobbled over to the terrace. "Poor old ----," he muttered, touching the corpse with his staff, and dwelling on the vile word with pondering affection. "Senorita," said he aloud, "much grief is not good on an empty stomach. If Juan here will lift her feet--"

We carried Dona Teresa into the large cool room, and laid her on a couch. Felipe tore down the silken hangings from one of the windows and spread them over her to her chin, which he tied up with the yellow kerchief which had been her only headgear for years. The Carmelite meanwhile detached two heavy silver sconces from a great candelabrum and set them by her feet. But we could find no tinder-box to light the candles--big enough for an altar.