The Pilot and his Wife: Chapter 15

Chapter 15

It was into a badly-lighted tavern, with two or three rooms leading out
of one another, that his friend then conducted him. Men of the most
various social positions, many with a military look, and in
half-threadbare uniforms, filled the inner rooms; and in the outer one
he had seen upon entering a number of seafaring men, who looked like
Americans, and who nodded to him on the strength of his sailor's dress.
There were several women, more or less well dressed, moving about among
them, and others standing with eager faces over the gambling-table in
the inner room. All were drinking acachacas, and the whole place was
pervaded with a cloud of tobacco-smoke, out of which there came a
deafening clamour of talk.

Salv� had a seat found for him by his friend at a long table, amongst a
number of bronzed, bearded men, with large hats, leather breeches, and
spurs, whose company he by no means cared about. They looked like
mounted bullock-drivers, such as he had seen at Monte Video, or still
more, perhaps, like brigands, or banditti.

"They belong to Mendez's volunteer corps," whispered Federigo, as he
presented him then to the chief of the party, who sat at the top of the
table--a powerful fellow, with a weather-beaten complexion, heavy black
mustachios, and a pair of small active eyes, which, more than once
afterwards, when Salv� was not looking, were turned critically upon him.

Every now and then they clinked their glasses together to some party
toast; but otherwise they were quiet enough at first. People of the same
calibre sat round other tables in the immediate neighbourhood; and at
another were intermingled well-dressed persons from the town, who were
carrying on a whispered conversation, and who appeared anxious.

The shouting, and the noise, and the laughter kept increasing. There
were already drunken faces at the table, and in several directions
quarrelling and the sound of blows were beginning to be heard. Federigo,
who seemed to be known to many in the rooms, had mixed with the crowd,
and Salv�'s neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with
dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy
leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very
different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many
debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never
imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made
up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help.
He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from them with
a whole skin, and he felt in his breast-pocket to see that his knife was
there.

One of the North Americans who had nodded to him, in virtue of his
sailor's dress, when he entered, came over to him now and asked him to
come and sit with them; but as he rather felt himself under Federigo's
charge, he declined just then. Shortly after, to his surprise, he saw
the se�orita standing at the gaming-table, with her head, which was all
he could see, beautifully dressed; and he observed that the eyes of the
keeper of the tavern--a tall, lean Portuguese, with a long, sallow face,
and hardly any hair on his head, who himself presided at the table--were
turned towards her continually with a look of humble, tender concern.
She was playing excitedly, and losing every time. At last she stopped,
in evident irritation, and beckoned him to one side, with a certain
authority, in spite of his having the table to attend to.

They spoke eagerly together, and Salv� caught a rapid glance directed
towards himself by the se�orita, which he did not at all like. She was
unnaturally pale; and he saw that she finally gave the other her hand,
which he kissed with an enraptured expression, and she then disappeared
from the room.

The landlord's face beamed the whole evening afterwards, and he bowed
politely to Federigo as he passed the table. The latter, the next time
he came near Salv�, whispered rather scornfully--

"I believe my sister has bartered away her soul this evening, and
promised to marry that old money-bag there who keeps the tavern.
Congratulate us, _amigo mio_!"

Salv� observed that the said money-bag conferred now more than once with
the man at the head of his own table, and was apparently making terms
with him; and that the latter also, when he thought he was not observed,
glanced over at himself in a way that was very far from putting him at
his ease.

The American who had spoken to him before--a tall, athletic-looking man,
with a fair beard round a hard Yankee face, and with a remnant of gold
lace on the sleeve of his jacket--had since been at the gaming-table,
and had been losing one doubloon after another.

"They don't play fair, my lad!" he cried in English to Salv�, to whom he
seemed anxious to make up.

"I daresay not," was the reply; "it's a vile den."

"What country do you hail from?"

"Norway."

"Ah! Norwegian. Good sailors."

"Deserted at Rio?" he asked then, with a laugh, as if he expected, as a
matter of course, an answer in the affirmative.

"Shall I play for you?" he asked presently.

"No money."

"Here's a guinea on account of your wages on board the 'Stars and
Stripes,' for Valparaiso and Chinchas!" he cried, with a laugh that was
heard above the surrounding din; and flinging a gold piece on the table,
he lost it.

He turned, and putting his hand to his mouth, shouted--

"One more on account!" and another gold piece shared the fate of the
first.

"One more on account!" there came again, and with the same result.

Salv� had by this time had about enough of this free-and-easy and
undesired playing on his account. The man's face, moreover, with all its
joviality, by no means attracted him, and he shouted to him in a
sharply-protesting tone--

"Play for yourself, Yankee."

The American seemed not to be able to hear on that side, for he
repeated, coolly nodding to him--

"One more on account!"

Salv�'s patience was exhausted. He had been sitting all this time
squeezed up in the narrow space between the bench and the wall with
people on both sides of him, preventing his getting out; but now
grasping his neighbour violently by the shoulder, he sprang all at once
across the table and over to the unabashed Yankee, with an irresistible
feeling that, come what might, he would get out into the freedom of the
open air once more.

Just then there came from the furthest room a cry of "police." The
lights in that room were at once extinguished; and a moment after, those
in the room where Salv� was on the point of falling foul of the American
(who, to his great surprise, found him all of a sudden confronting him)
went out also.

Their hostile relations, however, were almost immediately turned into
friendly ones. For Salv�, who had seen the landlord making a rush
towards him, felt himself suddenly, in the midst of the confusion caused
by the darkness, seized by two men and forced towards a door leading in
another direction than that in which he saw the stream was setting, and
which no doubt was the way out.

"Help, Yankee! there's some villany on here; the small door to the
right!" he shouted, with great presence of mind, and at the same moment
the door was slammed behind him. A handkerchief was tied over his mouth;
he was tripped up and brought heavily to the ground, where his feet and
hands were tied, and he was then shot into a dark side-room, which
seemed to be at the back of a press, that was unlatched to pass him
through.

"H'm!" said the Yankee coolly, to himself. "I am not going to lose his
pay, if I know it," and he set out accordingly in search of the police,
with whom he had no outstanding account.

Salv� was certain he had heard the se�orita's voice whispering in the
outer room; and not long after he heard the latch in the press raised,
and she stood before him with a light. She looked at him mischievously,
and spilt some oil out of the lamp on to his face with a little scornful
laugh. But her expression changed then to that of a tigress burning for
revenge that is compelled to put off the gratification of her fury, and
she darted out again, clapping down the latch behind her.

Salv� lay tightly bound with his hands behind his back. But his cat-like
suppleness enabled him eventually to wriggle his sheath-knife out of his
breast pocket, and he found no great difficulty then in freeing himself
from his bonds.

He stood now with his knife in his hand and listened.

Before long he heard the American's voice, with the police, and they
appeared to be searching. He shouted to them; and the next moment he was
released.

"He is one of our crew--belongs to the Stars and Stripes," said the
American, arresting Salv�, who, as long as he got out of this accursed
town now, did not care in what capacity it might be, and offered no
opposition.

"You have not improved your beauty, my lad," said his rescuer,
derisively, as he held up the light to his face.

"I should like to have one word with the tavern-keeper before I go,"
said Salv�.

"And that is what we have not the slightest inclination for," said the
American--who, it now appeared, was boatswain on board--in a dry tone of
authority. "We are not going larking with the police. Besides, having
once recovered that trifle of wages, I don't mean to risk losing it
again."

The Yankees made a close ring round their prisoner, and there was
nothing for it but to follow as he was directed. A look, however, at the
boatswain gave him to understand that that question of the wages would
be settled between them when they got on board.

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