“Oh, my Nora’s gown for me,
To rise and fall as nature pleases,”
when the wearer is, as in the present case she was, young and beautiful. They all wore a long plain white gauze strap, like a broad ribbon—(little Reefpoint afterwards said they wore boat-pennants at their mastheads—I don’t know what Madam Maradan Carson would call it)—in their hair, which fell down from amongst the braids nearly to their heels, and then they replied in their magnificent language, when casually addressed during dinner, with so much naïveté. We, the males of the party, had drank little or nothing—a bottle of claret or so a-piece—and a dram of brandy, to qualify a little vin-de-grave that we had flirted with during dinner, when our landlord rose, along with his brother-in-law, wished us a good afternoon, and departed to his counting-house, saying he would be back by dark, leaving the captain and me and friend Bang to amuse the ladies the best way we could, as the clerks had taken wing along with their master. Don Ricardo’s departure seemed to be the signal for all hands breaking loose, and a regular romping match took place—the girls producing their guitars; and we were all mighty frolicsome and happy, when a couple of padres, from the convent of La Merced, in their white flannel gowns, black girdles, and shaven crowns, suddenly entered the hall. We, the foreign part of the society, calculated on being pulled up by the clerigos, but deuce a bit; on the contrary, the young females clustered round them, laughing and joking, while the Señora Campana presented them with goblets of claret, in which they drank our healths, once and again, and before long they were gamboling about, all shaven and shorn, like a couple of three-year-olds. Bang had a large share of their assiduity, and, to see him waltzing with a fine, active, and—what I fancy to be a rarity—a clean-looking priest, with his ever-recurring “mucho, mucho,” was rather entertaining.
The director of the post-office, and a gentleman who was called the “Corregidor de Tabaco”—literally the “corrector of tobacco”—dropped in about this time, and one or two ladies, relatives of Mrs Campana, and Don Ricardo returning soon after, we had sweetmeats and liqueurs, and coffee and chocolate, and a game at monte, and maco, and were, in fact, very happy. But the happiest day, as well as the most miserable, must have an end, and the merry party dropped off, one after another, until we were left all alone with our host’s family. Madama soon after took her departure, wishing us a good-night. She had no sooner gone than Bang began to shoot out his horns a bit. “I say, Tom, ask the Don to let us have a drop of something hot, will you, a tumbler of hot brandy-and-water, after the waltzing, eh?—I don’t see the bedroom candles yet.” Nor would he, if we had sat there till doomsday. Campana seemed to have understood Bang; the brandy was immediately forthcoming, and we drew in to the table to enjoy ourselves—Bang waxing talkative. “Now, what odd names; why, what a strange office it must be for his majesty of Spain to employ at every port a corrector of tobacco; that his liege subjects may not be imposed on, I suppose—what capital cigars this same corrector must have, eh?”
I suppose it is scarcely necessary to mention that, throughout all the Spanish American possessions, tobacco is a royal monopoly, and that the officer above alluded to is the functionary who has the management of it. Don Ricardo, hearing something about cigars, took the hint, and immediately produced a straw case from his pocket and handed it to Bang.
“Mucho, mucho,” quoth Bang; “capital, real Havannah.”
So now, since we had all gotten fairly into the clouds, there was no saying how long we should have remained in the seventh heaven; much would have depended upon the continuance of the supply of brandy; but two female slaves presently made their appearance, each carrying a quatre. I believe I have already described this easily-rigged couch somewhere: it is a hardwood frame, like what supports the loose top of a laundry table, with canvass stretched over the top of it, but in such a manner that it can be folded up flat and laid against the wall when not in use, while a bed can be immediately constructed by simply opening it and stretching the canvass. The handmaidens accordingly set to work to arrange two beds, or quatres—one on each side of the table where we were sitting—while Bang sat eyeing them askance, in a kind of wonderment as to the object of their preparations, which were by no means new either to the captain or me, who, looking on them as matters of course, continued in close confabulation with Don Ricardo during the operations.
“I say, Tom,” at length quoth Bang, “are you to be laid out on one of these outlandish pieces of machinery, eh?”
“Why, I suppose so; and comfortable enough beds they are, I can assure you.”
“Don’t fancy them much, however,” said Bang; “rather flimsy the framework.”
The servants now very unceremoniously, no leave asked, began to clear away all the glasses and tumblers on the table.
“Hillo!” said the skipper, casting an inquiring glance at Campana, who, however, did not return it, but, as a matter of course apparently, rose, and taking a chair to the other end of the room, close by the door of an apartment which opened from it, began in cold blood to unlace and disburden himself of all his apparel, even unto his shirt.
This surprised us all a good deal, but our wonderment was lost on the Don, who got up from his seat, and in his linen garment, which was deucedly laconic, made his formal bow, wished us good-night, and vanished through the door. By this, the ebony ladies had cleared the table of the crystal, and had capped it with a yellow leather mattress, with pillows of the same, both embossed with large tufts of red silk; on this they placed one sheet, and leaving a silver apparatus at the head, they disappeared—”Buenas noches, señores—las camas estan listas.”
Bang had been unable to speak from excess of astonishment; but the skipper and I, finding there was no help for it, had followed Campana’s example, and kept pace with him in our peeling, so that, by the time he disappeared, we were ready to topple into our quatres, which we accordingly did, and by this time we were both at full length, with our heads eased each in one of Don Ricardo’s silk nightcaps, contemplating Bang’s appearance, as he sat in disconsolate mood in his chair at the head of the table, with the fag-end of a cigar in the corner of his cheek.
“Now, Bang,” said Transom, “turn in, and let us have a snooze, will ye?”
Bang did not seem to like it much.
“Zounds, Transom, did you ever hear of a gentleman being put to bed on a table? Why, it must be a quiz. Only fancy me dished out and served up like a great calipi in the shell! However, here goes—But surely this is in sorry taste; we had our chocolate a couple of hours ago—capital it was, by the by—in vulgar Staffordshire china, and now they give us silver—”
“Be decent, Bang,” cut in the skipper, who was by this time more than half asleep.—”Be decent, and go to bed—that’s a good fellow.”
“Ah, well;” Aaron undressed himself and lay down; and there he was laid out, with a candle on each side of his head, his red face surmounted by a redder handkerchief tied round his head, sticking out above the white sheet; and supported by Captain Transom and myself, one on each side. All was now quiet. I got up and put out the candles, and, as I fell asleep, I could hear Aaron laughing to himself—”Dished, and served up, deuced like Saint Barts. I was intended for a doctor, Tom, you must know.—I hope the Don is not a medical amateur—I trust he won’t have a touch at me before morning.—Rum, subject I should make—he! he!” All was silent for some time.
“Hillo!—what is that?” said Aaron again, as if suddenly aroused from his slumbers—”I say, none of your fun, Transom.”
A large bat was flaffing about, and I could hear him occasionally whir near our faces.
“Oh, a bat!—hate bats—how the skipper snores!—I hope there be no resurrection—men in St Jago, or I shall be stolen away to a certainty before morning.—How should I look as a skeleton in a glass—ease, eh?”
I heard no more until, it might be, about midnight, when I was awakened, and frightened out of my wits, by Bang rolling off the table on to my quatre whi
ch he broke in his fall, and then we both rolled over and over on the floor.
“Murder!” roared Bang.—”I am bewitched and bedevilled. Murder! a scorpion has dropped from the roof into my mouth, and stung me on the nose. —Murder! Tom—Tom Cringle—Captain—Transom, my dear fellows, awake and send for the doctor. Oh my wig!—oh dear!—oh dear!”
At this uproar I could hear Don Ricardo striking a light, and presently he appeared with a candle in his hand, more than half naked, with la señora peering through the half-opened door behind him.
“Ave Maria purissima—what is the matter? Where is el Señor Bang?”
“Mucho, mucho,” shouted Bang from below the table. “Send for a doctoribus, Señor Richardum. I am dead and t’other thing—help!—help!”
“Dios guarda usted,” again ejaculated Campana. “What has befallen him?” addressing the skipper, who was by this time on his head’s antipodes in bed, rubbing his eyes, and in great amazement.
“Tell him, my dear Transom, that a scorpion fell from the roof, and stung me on the nose.”
“What says he?” inquired the Spaniard.
Poor Transom’s intellect was at this time none of the clearest, being more than half asleep, and not quite so sober as a hermit is wont to be; besides he must needs speak Spanish, of which he was by no means master, which led to a very comical blunder. Alacran, in Spanish, means scorpion, and Cayman, an alligator, not very similar in sound, certainly, but the termination being the same, he selected in the hurry the wrong phrase.
“He says,” replied Transom in bad Spanish, “that he has swallowed an alligator, or something of that sort, sir.” Then a loud yawn.
“Swallowed a what?” rejoined Campana, greatly astonished.
“No, no,” snorted the captain—”I am wrong—he says he has been stung by alligator.”
“Stung by alligator?—impossible.”
“Why, then,” persisted the skipper, “if he be not stung by an alligator, or if he has not really swallowed one, at all events, an alligator has either stung or swallowed him—so make the most of it, Don Ricardo.”
“Why, this is absurd, with all submission,” continued Campana; “how the deuce could he swallow an alligator, or an alligator get into my house to annoy him?”
“D——n it,” said Transom, half tipsy, and very sleepy—”that’s his lookout.—You are very unreasonable, Don Ricardo; all that is the affair of friend Bang and the alligator; my purpose is solely to convey his meaning faithfully”—a loud snore.
“Oh,” said Campana, laughing, “I see, I see; I left your friend sobre mesa” [on the table], but now I see that he is sub rosa.”
“Help, good people, help!” roared Bang—”help, or my nose will reach from this to the Moro Castle—Help!”
We got him out, and were I to live a thousand years, which would be a tolerably good spell, I don’t think I could forget his appearance. His nose, usually the smallest article of the kind that I ever saw, was now swollen as large as my fist, and as purple as a mulberry—the distension of the skin, from the venomous sting of the reptile—for stung he had been by a scorpion—made it semi-transparent, so that it looked like a large blob of currant jelly hung on a peg in the middle of his face, or a gigantic leech, gorged with blood, giving his visage the semblance of some grotesque old-fashioned dial, with a fantastic gnomon.
“A poultice—a poultice—a poultice, good people, or I shall presently be all nose together!”—and a poultice was promptly manufactured from mashed pumpkin, and he was put to bed, with his face covered up with it, as if an Italian artist had been taking a cast of his beauties in plaster of Paris.
In the application of this said poultice, however, we had nearly extinguished poor Aaron amongst us, by suffocating him outright; for the skipper, who was the operating surgeon in the first instance, with me for his mate, clapped a whole ladleful over his mouth and nose, which, besides being scalding hot, sealed those orifices effectually, and, indeed, about a couple of tablespoonfuls had actually been forced down his gullet, notwithstanding his struggles, and exclamations of “Pumpkin—bad—softened with castor-oil—d——n it, skipper, you’ll choke me”—spurt—sputter—sputter—”choke me, man.”
“Cuidado,” said Don Ricardo; “let me manage”—and he got a small tube of wild cane, which he stuck into Bang’s mouth, through a hole in the poultice-cloth, and set a negro servant to watch that it did not sink into his gullet as he fell asleep, and with instructions to take the poultice off whenever the pain abated; and there he lay on his back, whistling through this artificial beak, like a sick snipe.
At length, however, all hands of us seemed to have fallen asleep; but towards the dawning I was awakened by repeated bursts of suppressed laughter, and, upon looking in the direction from whence the sounds proceeded, I was surprised beyond all measure to observe Transom in a corner of the room in his trousers and shirt, squatted like a tailor on his hams, with one of the sable damsels on her knees beside him holding a candle, while his Majesty’s Post-Captain was plying his needle in a style and with a dexterity that would have charmed our friend Stultze exceedingly, and every now and then bending double over his work, and swinging his body backwards and forwards, with the water welling from his eyes, laughing all the while like to choke himself. As for his bronze candlestick, I thought she would have expired on the spot, with her white teeth glancing like ivory, and the tears running down her checks, as she every now and then clapped a handkerchief on her mouth to smother the uncontrollable uproariousness of her mirth.
“Why, captain, what spree is this?” said I.
“Never you mind, but come here. I say, Mr Cringle, do you see him piping away there?”—and there he was, sure enough, still gurgling through the wild cane, with his black guardian, whose province it was to have removed the poultice, sound asleep, snoring in the huge chair at Bang’s head, wherein he had established himself, while the candle at his patient’s cheek was flickering in the socket.
My superior was evidently bent on wickedness.
“Get up and put on your trousers, man.”
I did so.
“Now wait a bit till I cooper him. Here, my darling”—to the sable virgin, who was now on the qui vive, bustling about—”here,” said the captain, sticking out a leg of Bang’s trousers, “hold you there, my dear—”
She happened to be a native of Haiti, and comprehended his French,
“Now, hold you that, Mr Cringle.”
I took hold of the other leg, and held it in a fitting position, while Transom deliberately sewed them both up.
“Now for the coat-sleeves.”
We sealed them in a similar manner.
“So—now for his shirt.”
We sewed up the stem, and then the stern, converting it into an outlandish-looking pillow-case, and finally both sleeves; and, last of all, we got two live land-crabs from the servants by dint of persuasion and a little plata, and clapped one into each stocking-foot.
We then dressed ourselves, and when all was ready we got a piece of tape for a lanyard, and made one end fast to the handle of a large earthen water-jar, full to the brim, which we placed on Bang’s pillow, and passed the other end round the neck of the sleeping negro.
“Now get you to bed,” said the captain to the dingy handmaiden, “and stand by to be off, Mr Cringle.”
He stepped to Don Ricardo’s bedroom door, and tapped loudly.
“Hillo!” quoth the Don. On this hint, like men springing a mine, the last who leave the sap, we sprang into the street, when the skipper turned, and, taking aim with a large custard-apple which he had armed himself with (I have formerly described this fruit as resembling a russet bag of cold pudding), he let fly. Spin flew the apple—bash on the blackamoor’s obtuse snout. He started back, and in his terror and astonishment threw a somersault over the back of his chair—gush poured the water—smash fell the pipkin. “Murder!” roared Bang, dashing off the poultice-cast with such fury that it lighted in the street—and away
we raced at the top of our speed.
We ran as fast as our legs could carry us for two hundred yards, and then turning, walked deliberately home again, as if we had been out taking a walk in the cool morning air.
As we approached, we heard the yells of a negro, and Bang high in oath.
“You black rascal, nothing must serve your turn but practising your John Canoe tricks upon a gentleman! Take that, you villain, as a small recompense for floating me out of my bed—or rather off the table;” and the ludicrousness of his couch seemed to come over the worthy fellow once more, and he laughed loud and long. “Poor devil, I hope I have not hurt you? Here, Quashi, there’s a pistole; go buy a plaster for your broken pate.”
By this time we had returned in front of the house, and as we ascended the front stairs, we again heard a loud racketing within; but blackie’s voice was now wanting in the row, wherein the Spaniard and our friend appeared to be the dramatis personæ—and sure enough there was Don Ricardo and Bang at it, tooth and nail.
“Allow me to assist you,” quoth the Don.
“Oh no—mucho—mucho,” quoth Bang, who was spinning round and round in his shirt on one leg, trying to thrust his foot into his trousers; but the garment was impervious; and, after emulating Noblet in a pirouette, he sat down in despair.
We appeared—”Ah, Transom, glad to see you—some evil spirit has bewitched me, I believe—overnight I was stung to death by a scorpion—half an hour ago I was deluged by an invisible spirit—and just now, when I got up, and began to pull on my stockings, Lord! a land-crab was in the toe part, and see how he has scarified me”—forking up his peg. “I then tried my trousers,” he continued, in a most doleful tone—”and lo! the legs are sealed. And look at my face, saw you ever such an unfortunate? But the devil take you, Transom, I see through your tricks now, and will pay you off for this yet, take my word for it.”