Gustave Aimard
The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

CHAPTER XI.
THE TWO CAPTAINS OF THE "GOLETA."

Whilst señora Bustamente was formally taking some refreshment, Gladsden summoned Ignacio.

"Lieutenant," said he, sternly, "it is a honour for me to have Madam Vázquez, the bride of Benito Vázquez, the pearl diver, to present to you."

Ignacio bowed, and darted from his widely distended eyes an enormous show of admiration at the young Mexican.

"The famous pearl fisher," murmured he; "the take will be rare and splendid now."

"This lady," continued the master, "is our passenger, you are answerable for her being treated with the utmost deference, and the greatest attention by all the crew. We'll fashion a cabin for her hereabouts. All the men are forbidden to enter here under any pretence whatever. Do'ye hear, Master Ignacio?"

"Yes."

"Then what the mischief are you staring for?"

"Ha, Señora Vázquez?" he repeated. "Surely I behold with admiration dazed eyes the incomparable daughter of the martial hacendero, don José de Miranda."

"Eh! How now, what do you know of the lady?"

"Only that she was the chosen bride of his Excellency, don Aníbal Cristobal."

"Eh? Why, of course!"

"And that illustrious scoundrel," went on the late lieutenant of banditti, with a refreshing air of morality, "after having had the poor don tracked to his death by the venomous Apache, to whom I owe my brother's loss – one to him! A thousand devils pull at him – the captain not my lamented Pepillo – after all that show of hatred to him who took the lady out of his clutches, don Aníbal will not allow the double removal unimpeded, I'll wager you a thousand ounces against one poor, old, worn dollar, of the señorita and his dear Burlonilla."

"Indeed! We'll see about that."

The speaker marked a curious mixture of fear and doubt flit across the visage of Ignacio.

Benito, seeing that he was only in the way of his young wife's settling down in her new home, and having some neglected preparations to make ashore, proposed a hasty return thither.

The captain all the less reluctantly coincided with his expressed intention, as he had a confidential message to transmit to the British vice-consul – a young Jewish gentleman on whom he believed he could rely in such an emergency as impended.

In Benito's absence, captain Gladsden took further precautions. Disliking a budding smile on the phiz of Ignacio, he ordered him below, placing Bristol Jem at the head of affairs in his stead, and charged the carpenter to hurry on his woodwork. The rest of the time was given up to completing the readiness to start.

Going on 3 p.m. the Englishman was walking the deck under an umbrella, when he perceived a boat pushing off from the wharf. It could not be Benito, in this huge shallow punt, impelled by eight oars, in the bow of which six armed men in uniform were standing, while at the stern were seated two persons in gay array.

One was a stout dame, extravagantly caparisoned; the other, a tall man in almost as brilliant and absurd an attire. The latter was not altogether unfamiliar to the captain, and he smiled in anticipation of the affair to be communicated.

Whilst the heavily laden embarkation bore down upon the cutter with a leisure which was insulting, Gladsden ordered his ensign to be dipped three times. Immediately he had the satisfaction of perceiving the flag of the British consul execute the same movement. Benito had, therefore, delivered his message, to which this courtesy was an acknowledgment.

Gladsden went below, and approaching the bulkhead, behind which doña Dolores was ensconced, whispered to her:

"Lady! I have reason to suppose that a boat is coming hither with persons on board whose intention is to seize on you and take you to land in the absence of your husband. Now, you need not worry yourself. Don't show any tokens of being here. I have answered for your protection to don Benito, and I know quite how to take care of you, as well as my craft, against all the desperadoes in the Intendencia of all Sonora."

"Oh, do so, sir!" returned the young lady, a prey to deep emotion, spite of the Englishman's confident and jesting accent, "And we shall bless you! Out of the little window I, too, have espied the skiff coming; and I have recognised my aunt and the pretender to my hand. I would rather die than fall into their hands! Oh, why – oh, why is not Benito here?"

"Don't be under any uneasiness," reiterated the other; "I shall keep my pledge to your husband. Only, I say again, keep perdue, and do not reveal your presence by any noise."

"I promise to obey you, sir Captain. You are a really good man! Heaven will benefit you for the protection you accord me. I shall go on praying for you and myself!"

"Very well; so pluck up, Señorita, and soon the fun will be over!"

He remounted to the deck. He glanced over the bay, and went to the stem with his marine glass, looking over the oncoming "scow" contemptuously to view the shore near the consul's habitation. A longboat, manned by twelve oarsmen, and carrying the English flag at the stern, was seen to quit the pier and steer for the Burlonilla, making good time.

The port was "getting lively."

Though things were going on nicely enough, Gladsden did not mean to be taken unawares, and, not to be blamed for neglecting to take any precaution, he had a cutlass and a brace of boarding pistols laid handily on the sliding cover of the companionway. In those waters one never knows how matters may turn out, and, to prevent the turning out being unpleasant, a man is easiest when thoroughly on his guard.

Though the English representative's boat had left the shore some time after the native one, it was not slow in overhauling it, outstripping it without deigning to hail it or otherwise notice it, and ran alongside the Little Joker on the seaward side, while the other boat was rather far away.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Lyons," said Gladsden, receiving the deputy-consul, warmly.

"Yes, here I am, Captain. You can do anything you like with me, you know. Only, as your messenger was in a hurry to be off, I am very little informed upon passing matters, and I may be able to act better in your interest if you acquaint me how things stand and move."

Gladsden briefly told the story.

"Is that all!" exclaimed deputy-consul Lyons, laughing finely, as Jews do. "Don't you be alarmed, but let me deal with this fellow. The friend of don Stefano must be a suspicious character, and that he is the chief of the in-country night marchers, and also the doer of little piracies with this same brigantine does not, therefore, startle me. But your visitors are hailing you. You might receive them with that bulldog sweetness of demeanour which characterise us British," he went on, smiling shyly. "Before all, put away those weapons, quite useless. The affair will finish with more of a display of brass than steel or lead."

"I will hope so, though it's a thing of indifference," replied the master of the Little Joker. "Anyway, I rely on you."

"That's the best."

So the cabin boy removed the weapons, while his captain, accompanied by the British sub-consul, strode to the gangway thrown open in the low waist, arriving just in time to offer his hand to the lady passenger of the shallop. Behind her the drolly accoutred sham Chilian commodore scrambled aboard.

Doña Josefa de Miranda was of elephantine form, with her hair, neck, ears, and arms literally laden with gems, gold eagles, and Mexican coins, pierced and strung in the shape of collars and bracelets. A thousand dollar China crape shawl showed all its florid pattern in embroidery, spread on her broad shoulder. A figured muslin dress, much too short, was caught in at what she probably flattered herself was a waist, by a sash sprinkled with precious stones. A profusion of costly rings shone on her gloved hands. It was manifest that don José de Miranda in his flight had left some valuables which his kinswoman had forestalled the executors in securing.

Nothing could be more repulsive in its uncomeliness than the swarthy lineaments of this corpulent being, whose carping physiognomy and small glistening coffee coloured eyes wore an expression of indescribable spitefulness.

Close to her escort, captain Gladsden undoubtedly recognised the scarred hook nose, hatchet face, and lank figure of his gambling opponent. It was the same grotesque uniform which had been donned to astonish the natives at the supper table of don Stefano.

When this precious pair came in upon the deck of the Little Joker, the armed men attempted to follow. But Mr. Holdfast – whose enforced stay in the fort, penniless, scornfully used by the Guaymasians, had filled him with terrible detestation of all Mexicans in general, and Western ones in particular – gleefully obeyed his orders by bidding them keep their distance. At once the corporal seemed indisposed to bow to this injunction, and seized the Turk's head at the end of the rope guard of the gangplank, thus railed to assist the lady, the first officer, without losing an atom of his habitual coolness, shoved the skiff head off so roughly with his foot as to make the soldier lose his balance and fall between the two gunnels into the water. This, to the laughter of the seamen, who cherish an animosity towards soldiers, and, furthermore, against the armed police, always seeking an excuse to be manifested. Luckily, the soldier had kept his hold of the main ropes, and hung long enough to be lifted up into the boat to the disapproval, if a certain splash of a tail in the water not remote, signified anything, of a shark which had immediately prepared to sup on him instead of the cook's waste.

Meanwhile, without deigning to attach the least interest to this suggestive episode, the massive dame, giving the new master of the brigantine a lofty look, used her most cutting tone to demand, haughtily, if she were addressing the commander of the bark.

"Yes, madam," replied Gladsden, bowing stiffly, "for which recent coming into possession I am happy, because it procures me the honour of receiving on my deck as weighty a personage as your ladyship appears to be. To whom have I the favour of speaking?"

The proud woman announced herself, sonorously, as "Doña Maria Josefa Dolores Miranda y Pedrosa y Saltabadil de la Cruz de Carbaneillo y Merlusa." The hearer bowed deeply at each bead on the string, darting a look aslant as if he feared the little brigantine was rather top-heavy with all these names. Then she pointed to her companion, who had been eyeing the ship's new crew with an annoyed face which was diverting enough to anyone in the secret of his interest, like an exhibition of a curious wild beast.

"This is – for you need save yourself the trouble to name an old acquaintance – Don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Pizarro Almagro de Cortes," took up the gibing captain, with a wink for the consulary assistant. "It is rather crushing, besides, your ladyship, to have here a descendant of three of the conquerors."

Don Aníbal was curling his moustache to keep his countenance. His native impudence was oozing out at every pore.

"This gentleman," proceeded the important lady, "is my son-in-law, hence his accompanying me."

"Your daughter must be a happy woman to be the mate of so brilliant an officer, an admiral, at least, I suppose?"

"Well, the alliance will not come off for a little spell, within these four-and-twenty hours, sir. To conduce to that beneficent result, you see me here."

"I am fully aware, Señorita," returned Gladsden, getting tired of keeping up the chaff, "that I would never have boasted the possession of this craft but for don Aníbal, but, in compensation, I hardly believe he comes to me to be furnished with a wife, unfortunately, unless it be the gunner's daughter, to which alliance he is heartily welcome to my consent. I am afraid he will go away a bachelor for all the marriageable young ladies here."

It is lamentable to record that the sailors, who had been bandying verbal bonbons with the soldiers, chafing on the shallop, raised a laugh at the expense of Don Aníbal, who perfectly well understood, in his other part of pirate, that to marry the gunner's daughter, is to be bound, face down, on a cannon and there undergo a flogging. So he drew himself up with a savage gleam in the eyes:

"Mind what you say, or I will have you to know that I am very rich, and otherwise of good position. It will be easy for me to make you repent any insolence to me or my friend. So, take my caution for it, you had better be respectful, and not forget whom you are addressing."

Gladsden slapped the Panama on his head which he had so far held in hand.

"If it comes to that, ma'am," he said, "you must allow me to remark, with all the respect that you claim, and which I will show you inasmuch as you are of the gentle sex, and for that reason solely, that you are labouring under an error. You don't seem fairly to know whom you are talking to! I am the captain and owner of this goleta, and, moreover, I am a foreigner. My deck is the same thing as a piece of the country under the colours of which I sail. However grand you may be over there, on land, your power falls pretty flat on these planks. I have the honour to present to you the deputy of Her Britannic Majesty's Consul who will bear me out in my observation."

CHAPTER XII.
THE ROUT COMPLETE

At this declaration of the modern "Ego civis Romanus," captain Matasiete rather stepped behind the woman than otherwise, as a wary warrior chooses a cotton bale for breastwork when bullets are likely to fly.

"Tut, tut, tut! What is all this farrago to me? In plain words, I come for my daughter whom you took off shore and have on this, I am afraid, piratical craft. I summon you to restore my child straightway, or I'll give you a tough bird to pick!"

Gladsden impudently looked from her to the salteador and then back again, as if he were in doubt which was "the old bird" she offered for plucking.

"And you will have me to deal with my fresh hand at ship ruling, Señor," cried don Aníbal at last, having edged over, to the gangway, and seeing the skiff drawn near enough for the soldiers, eager for the fray under the taunts of the seamen, to haply clamber on board to his aid.

The boatmen, whom he knew something of, and who might have numbered more than one of the former crew of the Little Joker, could be relied on to back up the musketeers, he believed.

"My young Captain, if you play the resistant, hang me if I shall not bring you to reason and decorate a shark's tooth with fragments of your hide! Even yet, you do not know of what I am capable! Rayo de Dios. Mind yourself! Patience is not one of my virtues!"

The consul intimated to Gladsden that there was no necessity of an outbreak of temper, as, while the brigantine's crew could lay out the soldiers comfortably in a twinkling, his own boat's crew could eat up the skiff's propelling force without salt.

"Will you answer me, sir," resumed the stout lady.

"Señorita," Gladsden responded, with all the self-possession possible, "I do not know what you are driving at. I have nothing to do with your bucket of tar – I mean your family affairs, and I do not want to dip into it. If your kinswoman has left your agreeable society, I daresay she had her grounds of action. It is no lookout of mine, and I shall keep my fingers clear of it, I tell you. Whether you go around rummaging for her or not, I shall pay no heed, so long as you do not flounce about my ship, hardly of your burthen for such carasolling, telling me your troubles. As for this gentleman," he went on, spinning round so fiercely on Master Matasiete, with the new log line of nominatives, "I warn him charitably that if he does not stick his long cabbage cutter between his legs and scuttle off instanter, I will hurl him, his names and titles, his long nose and long moustache, clean over the side to regale the harbour scavenger. This little programme being clearly laid down, I rather think you twain had better drop back into your boat."

He thereupon turned his back on my lady as if to give his men the order. She retreated a step, but, turning as red in the gills as a turkey-cock, blurted out —

"Stay, stay, master Captain. You shall not slide out of it thus. I have an order of the secretary of the colonel governor to take my dear child back from any place whatever."

"Suppose you are good enough to let me inspect this warrant, madam?" said Mr. Lyons, quietly.

"I have no objections. You are not a boor. Your residence here has civilised you. Is it not perfectly in order?"

"Beautifully inscribed, madam," replied the pro-consul; "only that writ does not run here!"

"Why not, pray?" she exclaimed, haughtily, bridling up at the implied slight to Mexico.

"Simply because the Port Governor himself has no right to issue search warrants for foreign vessels, even though the application is backed up by so noted a banker as don Stefano Garcia. In the first place, your complaint ought to have been laid before me – from the moment an Englishman is accused. I would have then opened an inquiry, and if it appeared proper that the British shipping in port should be examined I would have so advised Colonel Fontoro, and my chancellor would have been charged to accompany you in the investigation. I do not say that, on account of the somewhat slow movements of that peculiar creature, the 'red tape worm,'" he added, smiling softly, "all these indispensable regulations would not have tried your ladyship's patience, but, I believe, our office is credited with more celerity than your own government houses. At all events, as the forms have been ignored, this order has no value. I also think you had better retire, for this captain, as he notified you very kindly, has the right to tumble you neck and crop over the board, and what little I know of him makes it certain that he will not hesitate to carry out his warning if either of you continue obstinately to stay here contrary to his will!"

It is impossible to depict the rage which swayed the stout woman as she heard this speech, in a firm voice and peremptory tone. She flew out against the speaker, the captain and all the grinning crew, to the Chinese cook and cabin boy themselves, with all the strongest insults and threats in her resonant Castilian tongue, to which had been added the native additions not found in dictionaries of the Spanish Academy, which glanced off blunted from the frigid Englishman, however.

The prudent captain of salteadores and pirates, as the case might be, took care not to intervene while under don Jorge Federico's eye. His own wandered after he had secured an open way to retreat, and he managed, unseen by the others, to exchange a glance with Ignacio, whose head just peeped up out of the fore hatch, where he was ensconced.

"This is all very well," cried the enormous virago at last, "I do withdraw because you are all in the plot against me, and I have no power, poor little weak woman (afeniquita) that I am to enforce my rights! But I'll spend half my fortune to punish this outrage. Oh, that the guns of the island would blow you over the little stars if you seek to escape me. We shall meet again, you puppy; come, Don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Pizarro y Amalgro de Cortes, follow me. I have taken a vow that you shall be my son-in-law; and you shall wear that title though it cost me my own name."

"You are not likely to lose yours by marriage," observed Mr. Gladsden, accompanying her to the side opening. "At least, I'll back that opinion roundly."

"Vulgar buffoon!" she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders till her jewels jingled like a head mule's bells. "Come, dear Don Aníbal; let us leave this Indian canoe. I repeat that you shall be the husband of my daughter."

The Mexican had stepped into the boat, spite of the rule to give place to the dame, and omitted to offer his hand, as a fresh arrival shocked his sight. It was Benito Vázquez Bustamente, coming off with his baggage in a shore boat, managed by a couple of Indians, one young enough to be the grandchild of the other. Both had those bloodshot eyes which are the living tokens of a life as a pearl diver.

"You may bestow your daughter on whom you like," interposed the young Mexican, at one spring impatiently clearing the shallop and the ducking heads of the startled soldiers, and alighting between the robber captain and that of the Burlonilla, who seemed about to step into the flat boat and cuff the Mexican even there. "But doña Dolores is only your niece, and you lie after the most shameful pattern when you pretend to the honour of being her mother."

This unexpected address so dumbfounded the huge señora, that she almost fell back upon the soldier, and would have done so only that the prick of a bayonet, "peaking up," broke into her absence of mind, due to the consternation.

Amid a roar of laughter as she floundered upon the nearly crushed soldier, trying to right her upon her feet, the shallop was pushed off, and the Indians of Benito aiding the movement and from it glancing to the brigantine's side, their little boat took its place, and began to discharge the baggage which the pearl diver had collected to make his wife's voyage more comfortable.

A little while after the deputy-consul, thanked warmly by all parties concerned, entered his longboat, and was rapidly transported to land, even before the infuriated don Aníbal and the lady whom he had so feebly cavaliered arrived at the pier side. It seemed to him, as he glanced amusedly into it, that a strange face had been added to the crew, but his attention was immediately diverted by smoke beyond the breakwater, denoting the coming of a steamer, and he forbore to increase the humiliation of the two Mexicans by dwelling on them.

Not a quarter of an hour afterwards, as the steamer was signalled, and showing her private emblem, was telegraphed to don Stefano Garcia as the Casta Susana, of Acapulco, direct from the Sandwich Islands, consigned to him, the goleta left the port, speeding under all sail, right through the steamer's trailing smoke.

For one second this vapour eclipsed the Burlonilla, which seeing, Matasiete standing on the pier head beside the baffled señora Maria Josefa, remarked:

"There is nothing under canvas that can take that craft; but I will have a try at it with steam. Will you come?"

"Anywhere!" cried the vindictive sister of don José de Miranda, "Anywhere, if revenge only flourishes there."

"I think," muttered Ignacio to himself behind this worthy pair, "that don Jorge Federico had far better have left me first officer of the Burlonilla. At the same rank on board of the Casta Susana, methinks I shall handle my brother's pearls before he does."