PART FIFTH – THE LOT OF MAN
CHAPTER ONE
“Why have I been brought here, your worships?” I asked, with a great deal of firmness.
There were two figures in black, the one beside, the other behind a large black table. I was placed in front of them, between two soldiers, in the centre of a large, gaunt room, with bare, dirty walls, and the arms of Spain above the judge’s seat.
“You are before the Juez de la Primiera Instancia,” said the man in black beside the table. He wore a large and shadowy tricorn. “Be silent, and respect the procedure.”
It was, without doubt, excellent advice. He whispered some words in the ear of the Judge of the First Instance. It was plain enough to me that the judge was a quite inferior official, who merely decided whether there were any case against the accused; he had, even to his clerk, an air of timidity, of doubt.
I said, “But I insist on knowing…”
The clerk said, “In good time…” And then, in the same tone of disinterested official routine, he spoke to the Lugareño, who, from beside the door, rolled very frightened eyes from the judges and the clerk to myself and the soldiers – “Advance.”
The judge, in a hurried, perfunctory voice, put questions to the Lugareño; the clerk scratched with a large quill on a sheet of paper.
“Where do you come from?”
“The town of Rio Medio, Excellency.”
“Of what occupation?”
“Excellency – a few goats…”
“Why are you here?”
“My daughter, Excellency, married Pepe of the posada in the Calle…”
The judge said, “Yes, yes,” with an unsanguine impatience. The Lugareño’s dirty hands jumped nervously on the large rim of his limp hat.
“You lodge a complaint against the senor there.”
The clerk pointed the end of his quill towards me.
“I? God forbid, Excellency,” the Lugareño bleated. “The Alguazil of the Criminal Court instructed me to be watchful.
“You lodge an information, then?” the juez said.
“Maybe it is an information, Excellency,” the Lugareño answered, “as regards the senor there.”
The Alguazil of the Criminal Court had told him, and many other men of Rio Medio, to be on the watch for me, “undoubtedly touching what had happened, as all the world knew, in Rio Medio.”
He looked me full in the face with stupid insolence, and said:
“At first I much doubted, for all the world said this man was dead – though others said worse things. Perhaps, who knows?”
He had seen me, he said, many times in Rio Medio, outside the Casa; on the balcony of the Casa, too. And he was sure that I was a heretic and an evil person.
It suddenly struck me that this man – I was undoubtedly familiar with his face – must be the lieutenant of Manuel-del-Popolo, his boon companion. Without doubt, he had seen me on the balcony of the Casa.
He had gained a lot of assurance from the conciliatory manner of the Juez, and said suddenly, in a tentative way:
“An evil person; a heretic? Who knows? Perhaps it was he who incited some people there to murder his señoria, the illustrious Don.”
I said almost contemptuously, “Surely the charge against me is most absurd? Everyone knows who I am.”
The old judge made a gentle, tired motion with his hand.
“Señor,” he said, “there is no charge against you – except that no one knows who you are. You were in a place where very lamentable and inexplicable things happened; you are now in Havana: you have no passport. I beg of you to remain calm. These things are all in order.”
I hadn’t any doubt that, as far as he knew, he was speaking the truth. He was a man, very evidently, of a weary and naïve simplicity. Perhaps it was really true – that I should only have to explain; perhaps it was all over.
O’Brien came into the room with the casual step of an official from an office entering another’s room.
It was as if seeing me were a thing that he very much disliked – that he came because he wanted to satisfy himself of my existence, of my identity, and my being alone. The slow stare that he gave me did not mitigate the leisureliness of his entry. He walked behind the table; the judge rose with immense deference; with his eternal smile, and no word spoken, he motioned the judge to resume the examination; he stood looking at the clerk’s notes meditatively, the smile still round lips that had a nervous tremble, and eyes that had dark marks beneath them. He seemed as if he were still smiling just after having been violently shaken.
The judge went on examining the Lugareño.
“Do you know whence the señor came?”
“Excellency, Excellency…” The man stuttered, his eyes on O’Brien’s face.
“Nor how long he was in the town of Rio Medio?” the judge went on.
O’Brien suddenly drooped towards his ear. “All those things are known, senor, my colleague,” he said, and began to whisper.
The old judge showed signs of very naïve astonishment and joy.
“Is it possible?” he exclaimed. “This man? He is very young to have committed such crimes.”
The clerk hurriedly left the room. He returned with many papers. O’Brien, leaning over the judge’s shoulder, emphasized words with one finger. What new villainies could O’Brien be meditating? It wasn’t possibly the Lugareño’s suggestion that I had lured men to murder Don Balthasar? Was it merely that I had infringed some law in carrying off Seraphina?
The old judge said, “How lucky, Don Patricio! We may now satisfy the English admiral. What good fortune!”
He suddenly sat straight in his chair; O’Brien behind him scrutinized my face – to see how I should bear what was coming.
“What is your name?” the judge asked peremptorily.
I said, “Juan – John Kemp. I am of noble English family; I am well enough known. Ask the Señor O’Brien.”
On O’Brien’s shaken face the smile hardened.
“I heard that in Rio Medio the senor was called… was called…” He paused and appealed to the Lugareño.
“What was he called – the capataz the man who led the picaroons?”
The Lugareño stammered, “Nikola… Nikola el Escoces, Señor Don Patricio.”
“You hear?” O’Brien asked the judge. “This villager identifies the man.”
“Undoubtedly – undoubtedly,” the Juez said. “We need no more evidence… You, Señor, have seen this villain in Rio Medio, this villager identifies him by name.”
I said, “This is absurd. A hundred witnesses can say that I am John Kemp…”
“That may be true,” the Juez said dryly, and then to his clerk:
“Write here, ‘John Kemp, of noble British family, called, on the scene of his crimes, Nikola el Escoces, otherwise El Demonio.’”
I shrugged my shoulders. I did not, at the moment, realize to what this all tended.
The judge said to the clerk, “Read the Act of Accusation. Read here…” He was pointing to a paragraph of the papers the clerk had brought in. They were the Act of Accusation, prepared long before, against the man Nichols.
This particular villainy suddenly became grotesquely and portentously plain. The clerk read an appalling catalogue of sordid crimes, working into each other like kneaded dough – the testimony of witnesses who had signed the record. Nikola had looted fourteen ships, and had apparently murdered twenty-two people with his own hand – two of them women – and there was the affair of Rowley’s boats. “The pinnace,” the clerk read, “of the British came within ten yards. The said Nikola then exclaimed, ‘Curse the bloodthirsty hounds,’ and fired the grapeshot into the boat. Seven were killed by that discharge. This I saw with my own eyes… Signed, Isidoro Alemanno.” And another swore, “The said Nikola was below, but he came running up, and with one blow of his knife severed the throat of the man who was kneeling on the deck…”
There was no doubt that Nikola had committed these crimes; that the witnesses had sworn to them and signed the deposition… The old judge had evidently never seen him, and now O’Brien and the Lugareño had sworn that I was Nikola el Escoces, alias El Demonio.
My first impulse was to shout with rage; but I checked it because I knew I should be silenced. I said:
“I am not Nikola el Escoces. That I can easily prove.”
The Judge of the First Instance shrugged his shoulders and looked, with implicit trust, up into O’Brien’s face.
“That man,” I pointed at the Lugareño, “is a pirate. And, what is more, he is in the pay of the Señor Juez O’Brien. He was the lieutenant of a man called Manuel-del-Popolo, who commanded the Lugareños after Nikola left Rio Medio.”
“You know very much about the pirates,” the Juez said, with the sardonic air of a very stupid man. “Without doubt you were intimate with them. I sign now your order for committal to the carcel of the Marine Court.”
I said, “But I tell you I am not Nikola…”
The Juez said impassively, “You pass out of my hands into those of the Marine Court. I am satisfied that you are a person deserving of a trial. That is the limit of my responsibility.”
I shouted then, “But I tell you this O’Brien is my personal enemy.”
The old man smiled acidly.
“The señor need fear nothing of our courts. He will be handed over to his own countrymen. Without doubt of them he will obtain justice.” He signed to the Lugareño to go, and rose, gathering up his papers; he bowed to O’Brien. “I leave the criminal at the disposal of your worship,” he said, and went out with his clerk.
O’Brien sent out the two soldiers after him, and stood there alone. He had never been so near his death. But for sheer curiosity, for my sheer desire to know what he could say, I would have smashed in his brains with the clerk’s stool. I was going to do it; I made one step towards the stool. Then I saw that he was crying.
“The curse – the curse of Cromwell on you,” he sobbed suddenly. “You send me back to hell again.” He writhed his whole body. “Sorrow!” he said, “I know it. But what’s this? What’s this?”
The many reasons he had for sorrow flashed on me like a procession of sombre images.
“Dead and done with a man can bear,” he muttered. “But this – Not to know – perhaps alive – perhaps hidden – She may be dead…” With a change like a flash he was commanding me.
“Tell me how you escaped.”
I had a vague inspiration of the truth.
“You aren’t fit for a decent man’s speaking to,” I said.
“You let her drown.”
It gave me suddenly the measure of his ignorance; he did not know anything – nothing. His hell was uncertainty. Well, let him stay there.
“Where is she?” he said. “Where is she?”
“Where she’s no need to fear you,” I answered.
He had a sudden convulsive gesture, as if searching for a weapon.
“If you’ll tell me she’s alive…” he began.
“Oh, I’m not dead,” I answered.
“Never a drowned puppy was more,” he said, with a flash of vivacity. “You hang here – for murder – or in England for piracy.”
“Then I’ve little to want to live for,” I sneered at him.
“You let her drown,” he said. “You took her from that house, a young girl, in a little boat. And you can hold up your head.”
“I was trying to save her from you,” I answered.
“By God,” he said. “These English – I’ve seen them, spit the child on the mother’s breast. I’ve seen them set fire to the thatch of the widow and childless. But this… But this… I can save you, I tell you.”
“You can’t make me go through worse than I’ve borne,” I answered. Sorrow and all he might wish on my head, my life was too precious to him till I spoke. I wasn’t going to speak.
“I’ll search every ship in the harbour,” he said passionately.
“Do,” I said. “Bring your Lugareños to the task.”
Upon the whole, I wasn’t much afraid. Unless he got definite evidence he couldn’t – in the face of the consul’s protests, and the presence of the admiral – touch the Lion again. He fixed his eyes intently upon me.
“You came in the American brigantine,” he said. “It’s known you landed in her boat.”
I didn’t answer him; it was plain enough that the drogher’s arrival had either not been reported to him, or it had been searched in vain.
“In her boat,” he repeated. “I tell you I know she is not dead; even you, an Englishman, must have a different face if she were.”
“I don’t at least ask you for life,” I said, “to enjoy with her.”
“She’s alive,” he said. “Alive! As for where, it matters little. I’ll search every inch of the island, every road, every hacienda. You don’t realize my power.”
“Then search the bottom of the sea,” I shouted.
“Let’s look at the matter in the right light.”
He had mastered his grief, his incertitude. He was himself again, and the smile had returned – as if at the moment he forced his features to their natural lines.
“Send one of your friars to heaven – you’ll never go there yourself to meet her.”
“If you will tell me she’s alive, I’ll save you.”
I made a mute, obstinate gesture.
“If she’s alive, and you don’t tell me, I can’t but find her. And I’ll make you know the agonies of suspense – a long way from here.”
I was silent.
“If she’s dead, and you’ll tell me, I’ll save you some trouble. If she’s dead and you don’t, you’ll have your own remorse and the rest, too.”
I said, “You’re too Irish mysterious for me to understand. But you’ve a choice of four evils for me – choose yourself.”
He continued with a quivering, taut good-humour: “Prove to me she’s dead, and I’ll let you die sharply and mercifully.”
“You won’t believe!” I said; but he took no notice.
“I tell you plainly,” he smiled. “If we find… if we find her dear body – and I can’t help; but I’ve men on the watch all along the shores – I’ll give you up to your admiral for a pirate. You’ll have a long slow agony of a trial; I know what English justice is. And a disgraceful felon’s death.”
I was thinking that, in any case, a day or so might be gained, the Lion would be gone; they could not touch her while the flagship remained outside. I certainly didn’t want to be given up to the admiral; I might explain the mistaken identity. But there was the charge of treason in Jamaica. I said:
“I only ask to be given up; but you daren’t do it for your own credit. I can show you up.”
He said, “Make no mistake! If he gets you, he’ll hang you. He’s going home in disgrace. Your whole blundering Government will work to hang you.”
“They know pretty well,” I answered, “that there are queer doings in Havana. I promise you, I’ll clear things up. I know too much…”
He said, with a sudden, intense note of passion, “Only tell me where her grave is, I’ll let you go free. You couldn’t, you dare not, dastard that you are, go away from where she died – without… without making sure.”
“Then search all the new graves in the island,” I said, “I’ll tell you nothing… Nothing!”
He came at me again and again, but I never spoke after that. He made all the issues clearer and clearer – his own side involuntarily and all the griefs I had to expect. As for him, he dared not kill me – and he dared not give me up to the admiral. In his suspense, since, for him, I was the only person in the world who knew Seraphina’s fate, he dared not let me out of his grip. And all the while he had me he must keep the admiral there, waiting for the surrender either of myself or of some other poor devil whom he might palm off as Nikola el Escoces. While the admiral was there the Lion was pretty safe from molestation, and she would sail pretty soon.
At the same time, except for the momentary sheer joy of tormenting a man whom I couldn’t help regarding as a devil, I had more than enough to fear. I had suffered too much; I wanted rest, woman’s love, slackening off. And here was another endless coil – endless. If it didn’t end in a knife in the back, he might keep me for ages in Havana; or he might get me sent to England, where it would take months, an endless time, to prove merely that I wasn’t Nikola el Escoces. I should prove it; but, in the meantime, what would become of Sera-phina? Would she follow me to England? Would she even know that I had gone there? Or would she think me dead and die herself? O’Brien knew nothing; his spies might report a hundred uncertainties. He was standing rigidly still now, as if afraid to move for fear of breaking down. He said suddenly:
“You came in some ship; you can’t deceive me, I shall have them all searched again.”
I said desperately, “Search and be damned – whatever ships you like.”
“You cold, pitiless, English scoundrel,” he shrieked suddenly. The breaking down of his restraint had let him go right into madness. “You have murdered her. You cared nothing; you came from nowhere. A beggarly fool, too stupid to be even an adventurer. A miserable blunderer, coming in blind; coming out blind; and leaving ruin and worse than hell. What good have you done yourself? What could you? What did you see? What did you hope?.. Sorrow? Ruin? Death? I am acquainted with them. It is in the blood; ‘tis in the tone; in the entrails of us, in our mother’s milk. Your accursed land has brought always that on our own dear and sorrowful country… You waste, you ruin, you spoil. What for?.. Tell me what for? Tell me? Tell me? What did you gain? What will you ever gain? An unending curse!.. But, ah, ye’ve no souls.”
He called very loudly, as if with a passionate relief, his voice giving life to an unsuspected, misgiving echo:
“Guards! Soldiers!.. You shall be shot, now!”
He was going to cut the knot that way. Two soldiers pushed the door noisily open, their muskets advanced. He took no notice of them; and they retained an attitude of military stupidity, their eyes upon him. He whispered:
“No, no! Not yet!”
Then he looked at me searchingly, as if he still hoped to get some certainty from my face, some inkling, perhaps some inspiration of what would persuade me to speak. Then he shook his wrists violently, as if in fear of himself.
“Take him away,” he said. “Away! Out of reach of my hands. Out of reach of my hands.”
I was trembling a good deal; when the soldiers entered I thought I had got to my last minute. But, as it was, he had not learnt a thing from me. Not a thing. And I did not see where else he could go for information.
CHAPTER TWO
The entrance to the common prison of Havana was a sort of lofty tunnel, finished by great, iron-rusted, wooden gates. A civil guard was exhibiting the judge’s warrant for my committal to a white-haired man, with a red face and blue eyes, that seemed to look through tumbled bushes of silver eyebrows – the alcayde of the prison. He bowed, and rattled two farcically large keys. A practicable postern was ajar on the yellow wood of the studded gates. It was as if it afforded a glimpse of the other side of the world. The venerable turnkey, a gnome in a steeple-crowned hat, protruded a blood-red hand backwards in the direction of the postern.
“Señor Caballero,” he croaked, “I pray you to consider this house your own. My servants are yours.”
Within was a gravel yard, shut in by portentous lead-white house-sides with black window holes. Under each row of windows was a vast vaulted tunnel, caged with iron bars, for all the world like beasts’ dens. It being day, the beasts were out and lounging about the patio. They had an effect of infinite tranquillity, as if they were ladies and gentlemen parading in a Sunday avenue. Perhaps twenty of them, in snowy white shirts and black velvet knee-breeches, strutted like pigeons in a knot, some with one woman on the arm, some with two. Bundles of variegated rags lay against the walls, as if they were sweepings. Well, they were the sweepings of Havana jail. The men in white and black were the great thieves… and there were children, too – the place was the city orphanage. For the fifth part of a second my advent made no difference. Then, at the far end, one of the men in black and white separated himself, and came swiftly to me across the sunny patio. The others followed slowly, with pea-fowl steps, their women hanging to them and whispering. The bundles of rags rose up towards me; others slunk furtively out of the barred dens. The man who was approaching had the head of a Julius Cæsar of fifty, for all the world as if he had stolen a bust and endowed it with yellow skin and stubby gray and silver hair. He saluted me with intense gravity and an imperial glance of yellow eyes along a hooked nose. His linen was the most spotless broidered and embossed stuff; îrom the crimson scarf round his waist protruded the shagreen and silver handle of a long dagger. He said:
“Señor, I have the honour to salute you. I am Crisostomo Garcia. I ask the courtesy of your trousers.”
I did not answer him. I did not see what he wanted with my trousers, which weren’t anyway as valuable as his own. The others were closing in on me like a solid wall. I leant back against the gate; I was not frightened, but I was mightily excited. The man like Cæsar looked fiercely at me, swayed a long way back on his haunches, and imperiously motioned the crowd to recede.
“Señor Inglesito,” he said, “the gift I have the honour to ask of you is the price of my protection. Without it these, my brothers, will tear you limb from limb, there will nothing of you remain.”
His brothers set up a stealthy, sinister growl, that went round among the heads like the mutter of an obscene echo among the mountain-tops. I wondered whether this, perhaps, was the man who, O’Brien said, would put a knife in my back. I hadn’t any knife; I might knock the fellow’s teeth down his throat, though.
The alcayde thrust his immense hat, blood-red face, and long, ragged, silver locks out of the little door. His features were convulsed with indignation. He had been whispering with the Civil Guard.
“Are you mad, gentlemen?” he said. “Do you wish to visit hell before your times? Do you know who the senor is? Did you ever hear of Carlos el Demonio? This is the Inglesito of Rio Medio!”
It was plain that my deeds, such as they were, reported by O’Brien spies, by the Lugareños, by all sorts of credulous gossipers, had got me the devil of a reputation in the patio of the jail. Men detached themselves from the crowd, and went running about to announce my arrival. The alcayde drew his long body into the patio, and turned to lock the little door with an immense key. In the crowd all sorts of little movements happened. Women crossed themselves, and furtively thrust pairs of crooked, skinny, brown, black-nailed fingers in my direction. The man like Cæsar said:
“I ask your pardon, Señor Caballero. I did not know. How could I tell? You are free of all the patios in this land.”
The tall alcayde finished grinding the immense key in the lock, and touched me on the arm.
“If the senor will follow me,” he said. “I will do the honours of this humble mansion, and indicate a choice of rooms where he may be free from the visits of these gentry.”
We went up steps, and through long, shadowy corridors, with here and there a dark, lounging figure, like a stag seen in the dim aisles of a wood. The alcayde threw open a door.
The room was like a blazing oblong-box, filled with light, but without window or chimney. Two men were fencing in the illumination of some twenty candles stuck all round the mildewed white walls on lumps of clay. There was a blaze of silver things, like an altar of a wealthy church, from a black, carved table in the far corner. The two men, in shirts and breeches, revolved round each other, their rapiers clinking, their left arms scarved, holding buttoned daggers. The alcayde proclaimed:
“Don Vincente Salazar, I have the honour to announce an English senor.”
The man with his face to me tossed his rapier impatiently into a corner. He was a plump, dark Cuban, with a brooding truculence. The other faced round quickly. His cheeks shone in the candle-light like polished yellow leather, his eyes were narrow slits, his face lugubrious. He scrutinized me intently, then drawled:
“My! You?.. Hang me if I didn’t think it would be you!”
He had the air of surveying a monstrosity, and pulled the neck of his dirty print shirt open, panting. He slouched out into the corridor, and began whispering eagerly to the alcayde. The little Cuban glowered at me; I said I had the honour to salute him.
He muttered something contemptuous between his teeth. Well, if he didn’t want to talk to me, I didn’t want to talk to him. It had struck me that the tall, sallow man was undoubtedly the second mate of the Thames. Nicholas, the real Nikola el Escoces! The Cuban grumbled suddenly:
“You, Señor, are without doubt one of the spies of that friend of the priests, that O’Brien. Tell him to beware – that I bid him beware. I, Don Vincente Salazar de Valdepefias y Forli y…”
I remembered the name; he was once the suitor of Seraphina – the man O’Brien had put out of the way. He continued with a grotesque frown of portentous significance:
“To-morrow I leave this place. And your compatriot is very much afraid, Señor. Let him fear! Let him fear! But a thousand spies should not save him.”
The tall alcayde came hurriedly back and stood bowing between us. He apologized abjectly to the Cuban for intruding me upon him. But the room was the best in the place at the disposal of the prisoners of the Juez O’Brien. And I was a noted caballero. Heaven knows what I had not done in Rio Medio. Burnt, slain, ravished… The Señor Juez was understood to be much incensed against me. The gloomy Cuban at once rushed upon me, as if he would have taken me into his arms.
“The Inglesito of Rio Medio!” he said. “Ha, ha! Much have I heard of you. Much of the senor’s valiance! Many tales! That foul eater of the carrion of the priests wishes your life! Ah, but let him beware! I shall save you, Señor – I, Don Vincente Salazar.”
He presented me with the room – a remarkably bare place but for his properties: silver branch candlesticks, a silver chafing-dish as large as a basin. They might have been chased by Cellini – one used to find things like that in Cuba in those days, and Salazar was the person to have them. Afterwards, at the time of the first insurrection, his eight-mule harness was sold for four thousand pounds in Paris – by reason of the gold and pearls upon it. The atmosphere, he explained, was fetid, but his man was coming to burn sandal-wood and beat the air with fans.
“And to-morrow!” he said, his eyes rolling. Suddenly he stopped. “Señor,” he said, “is it true that my venerated friend, my more than father, has been murdered – at the instigation of that fiend? Is it true that the senorita has disappeared? These tales are told.”
I said it was very true.
“They shall be avenged,” he declared, “to-morrow! I shall seek out the senorita. I shall find her. I shall find her! For me she was destined by my venerable friend.”
He snatched a black velvet jacket from the table and put it on.
“Afterwards, Señor, you shall relate. Have no fear. I shall save you. I shall save all men oppressed by this scourge of the land. For the moment afford me the opportunity to meditate.” He crossed his arms, and dropped his round head. “Alas, yes!” he meditated.
Suddenly he waved towards the door. “Señor,” he said swiftly, “I must have air; I stifle. Come with me to the corridor…”
He went towards the window giving on to the patio; he stood in the shadow, his arms folded, his head hanging dejectedly. At the moment it grew suddenly dark, as if a veil had been thrown over a lamp. The sun had set outside the walls. A drum began to beat. Down below in the obscurity the crowd separated into three strings and moved slowly towards the barren tunnels. Under our feet the white shirts disappeared; the ragged crowd gravitated to the left; the small children strung into the square cage-door. The drum beat again and the crowd hurried. Then there was a clang of closing grilles and lights began to show behind the bars from deep recesses. In a little time there was a repulsive hash of heads and limbs to be seen under the arches vanishing a long way within, and a little light washed across the gravel of the patio from within.
“Señor,” the Cuban said suddenly, “I will pronounce his panegyric. He was a man of a great gentleness, of an inevitable nobility, of an invariable courtesy. Where, in this degenerate age, shall we find the like!” He stopped to breathe a sound of intense exasperation.
“When I think of these Irish…” he said. “Of that O’Brien…” A servant was arranging the shining room that we had left. Salazar interrupted himself to give some orders about a banquet, then returned to me. “I tell you I am here for introducing my knife to the spine of some sort of Madrid embustero, a man who was insolent to my amiga Clara. Do you believe that for that this O’Brien, by the influence of the priests whose soles he licks with his tongue, has had me inclosed for many months? Because he feared me! Aha! I was about to expose him to the noble don who is now dead! I was about to wed the Señorita who has disappeared. But to-morrow… I shall expose his intrigue to the Captain-General. You, Señor, shall be my witness! I extend my protection to you…” He crossed his arms and spoke with much deliberation. “Señor, this Irishman incommodes me, Don Vincente Salazar de Valdepeñas y Forli…” He nodded his head expressively. “Señor, we offered these Irish the shelter of our robe for that your Government was making martyrs of them who were good Christians, and it behoves us to act in despite of your Government, who are heretics and not to be tolerated upon God’s Christian earth. But, Señor, if they incommoded your Government as they do us, I do not wonder that there was a desire to remove them. Señor, the life of that man is not worth the price of eight mules, which is the price I have paid for my release. I might walk free at this moment, but it is not fitting that I should slink away under cover of darkness. I shall go out in the daylight with my carriage. And I will have an offering to show my friends who, like me, are incommoded by this…” The man was a monomaniac; but it struck me that, if I had been O’Brien, I should have felt uncomfortable.
In the dark of the corridor a long shape appeared, lounging. The Cuban beside me started hospitably forward.
“Vamos,” he said briskly; “to the banquet…” He waved his hand towards the shining door and stood aside. We entered.
The other man was undoubtedly the Nova Scotian mate of the Thames, the man who had dissuaded me from following Carlos on the day we sailed into Kingston Harbour. He was chewing a toothpick, and at the ruminant motion of his knife-jaws I seemed to see him, sitting naked to the waist in his bunk, instead of upright there in red trousers and a blue shirt – an immense lank-length of each. I pieced his history together in a sort of flash. He was the true Nikola el Escoces; his name was Nichols, and he came from Nova Scotia. He had been the chief of O’Brien’s Lugareños. He surveyed me now with a twinkle in his eyes, his yellow jaws as shiny-shaven as of old; his arms as much like a semaphore. He said mockingly: