The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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      “A plague of all this finery!” growled Dawson. “How long may it be, think you, Señor, ere we can quit this palace and get to one of those posadas you promised us?”

      Don Sanchez hunched his shoulders for all reply and turned away to hide his mortification. And now a girl comes up with a biggin of water on her head, a broken comb in her hand, and a ragged cloth on her arm that looked as if it had never been washed since it left the loom, and sets them down on a bench, with a grin at Moll; but she, though not over-nice, turns away with a pout of disgust, and then we to get a breath of fresh air to a hole in the wall on the windward side, where we stand all dumb with disappointment and dread until we are called down to dinner. But before going down Don Sanchez warns us to stand on our best behaviour, as these Spaniards, for all their rude seeming, were of a particularly punctilious, ticklish disposition, and that we might come badly out of this business if we happened to displease them.

      “I cannot see reason in that, Señor,” says Dawson; “for the less we please ’em, the sooner they are likely to send us hence, and so the better for us.”

      “As you please,” replies the Don, “but my warning is to your advantage.”

      Down we go, and there stands Don Lopez with a dozen choice friends, all the raggedest, dirty villains in the world; and they saluting us, we return their civility with a very fair pretence and take the seats offered us—they standing until we are set. Then they sit down, and each man lugs out a knife from his waist-cloth. The cauldron, filled with a mess of kid stewed in a multitude of onions, is fetched from the fire, and, being set upon a smooth board, is slid down the table to our host, who, after picking out some titbits for us, serves himself, and so slides it back, each man in turn picking out a morsel on the end of his knife. Bearing in mind Don Sanchez’s warning, we do our best to eat of this dish; but, Heaven knows! with little relish, and mighty glad when the cauldron is empty and that part of the performance ended. Then the bones being swept from the table, a huge skin of wine is set before Don Lopez, and he serves us each with about a quart in an odd-shaped vessel with a spout, which Don Sanchez and his countrymen use by holding it above their heads and letting the wine spurt into their mouths; but we, being unused to this fashion, preferred rather to suck it out of the spout, which seemed to them as odd a mode as theirs was to us. However, better wine, drink it how you may, there is none than the wine of these parts, and this reconciling us considerably to our condition, we listened with content to their singing of ditties, which they did very well for such rude fellows, to the music of a guitar and a tambourine. And so when our pots came to be replenished a second time, we were all mighty merry and agreeable save Jack Dawson, who never could take his liquor like any other man, but must fall into some extravagant humour, and he, I perceived, regarded some of the company with a very sour, jealous eye because, being warmed with drink, they fell to casting glances at Moll with a certain degree of familiarity. Especially there was one fellow with a hook nose, who stirred his bile exceedingly, sitting with his elbows on the table and his jaws in his hands, and would scarcely shift his eyes from Moll. And since he could not make his displeasure understood in words, and so give vent to it and be done, Jack sat there in sullen silence watching for an opportunity to show his resentment in some other fashion. The other saw this well enough, but would not desist, and so these two sat fronting each other like two dogs ready to fly at each other’s throats. At length, the hook-nosed rascal, growing bolder with his liquor, rises as if to reach for his wine pot, and stretching across the table, chucks Moll under the chin with his grimy fingers. At this Jack flinging out his great fist with all the force of contained passion, catches the other right in the middle of the face, with such effect that the fellow flies clean back over his bench, his head striking the pavement with a crash. Then, in an instant, all his fellows spring to their feet, and a dozen long knives flash out from their sheaths.

      CHAPTER IX.

      Of the manner in which we escaped pretty fairly out of the hands of Señor Don Lopez and his brigands.

      Up starts Jack Dawson, catching Moll by the arm and his joint stool by the leg, and stepping back a pace or two not to be taken in the flank, he swings his stool ready to dash the brains out of the first that nears him. And I do likewise, making the same show of valour with my stool, but cutting a poor figure beside Dawson’s mighty presence.

      Seeing their fellow laid out for dead on the floor, with his hook nose smashed most horridly into his face, the others had no stomach to meet the same fate, but with their Spanish cunning began to spread out that so they might attack us on all sides; and surely this had done our business but that Don Lopez, flinging himself before us with his knife raised high, cries out at the top of his voice, “Rekbah!”—a word of their own language, I am told, taken from the Moorish, and signifying that whosoever shall outrage the laws of hospitality under his roof shall be his enemy to the death. And at this word every man stood still as if by inchantment, and let fall his weapon. Then in the same high voice he gives them an harangue, showing them that Dawson was in the right to avenge an insult offered his daughter, and the other justly served for his offence to us. “For his offence to me as the host of these strangers,” adds he, “Jose shall answer to me hereafter if he live; if he be dead, his body shall be flung to the vultures of the gorge, and his name be never uttered again beneath this roof.”

      “I bear no grudges, not I,” says Dawson, when Don Sanchez gave him the English of this. “If he live, let his nose be set; and if dead, let him be buried decently in a churchyard. But hark ye, Señor, lest we fall out again and come out worse the next bout, do pray ask his worship if we may not be accommodated with a guide to take us on our way at once. We have yet two hours of daylight before us, there’s not a cloud in the sky, and with such a moon as we had the night before last, we may get on well enough.”

      Poor Moll, who was all of a shake with the terror of another catastrophe, added her prayers to Dawson’s, and Don Sanchez with a profusion of civilities laid the proposal before Don Lopez, who, though professing the utmost regret to lose us so soon, consented to gratify our wish, adding that his mules were so well accustomed to the road that they could make the journey as well in the dark as in broad day.

      “Well, then,” says Dawson, when this was told us, “let us settle the business at once, and be off.”

      And now, when Don Sanchez proposed to pay for the service of our guides, it was curious to see how every rascal at the table craned forward to watch the upshot. Don Lopez makes a pretence of leaving the payment to Don Sanchez’s generosity; and he, not behindhand in courtesy, lugs out his purse and begs the other to pay himself. Whereupon, with more apologies, Don Lopez empties the money on the table and carefully counts it, and there being but about a score of gold pieces and some silver, he shakes his head and says a few words to Don Sanchez in a very reproachful tone of remonstrance, to which our Don replies by turning all the trifles out of his pocket, one after the other, to prove that he has no money.

      “I thought as much,” growls Jack in my ear. “A pretty nest of hornets we’re fallen into.” The company, seeing there was no more to be got out of Don Sanchez, began to murmur and cast their eyes at us; whereupon Dawson, seeing how the land lay, stands up and empties his pockets on the table, and I likewise; but betwixt us there was no more than some French pennies and a few odds and ends of no value at all. Fetching a deep sigh, Don Lopez takes all these possessions into a heap before him, and tells Don Sanchez that he cannot believe persons of our quality could travel with so little, that he feels convinced Don Sanchez must have dropped a purse on the way, and that until it is found he can on no account allow us to leave the neighbourhood.

      “This comes of being so mighty fine!” says Dawson, when Don Sanchez had explained matters. “Had we travelled as became our condition, this brigand would never have ensnared us hither. And if they won’t believe your story, Señor, I can’t blame ’em; for I would have sworn you СКАЧАТЬ