A Middy in Command Part 20

"Thank you!" I said. "I suppose I ought to feel very much obliged to you, but somehow I do not. This disaster has absolutely ruined my prospects in the service, so you might just as well have killed me outright. And, by the way, why have you spared me? Your surgeon informed me that you spare only those who join you. I hope you don't antic.i.p.ate the possibility that I shall join you?"

My companion laughed heartily, yet there was a slight ring of bitterness methought in his laugh. "No," he said, "I have not spared you in the hope that you will join us; we have managed thus far to do fairly well without your a.s.sistance, and I am sanguine enough to believe that, even should you decline to throw in your lot with us, we shall continue to rub along after a fas.h.i.+on without it. No, that was not my reason for sparing you. By the by, what is your name, if I may presume to ask? It is rather awkward to be entertaining a guest whose name, even, one does not know."

"My name," I answered, "is Grenvile--Richard Grenvile, and I am a lieutenant in his Britannic Majesty's navy."

"Quite so!" remarked my companion caustically, "I guessed as much from your uniform. You bear a good name, young sir, a very good name. Are you one of the Devon Grenviles?"

"Yes," I answered, "I am Devon all through, on both sides. My mother was a Carew, which is another good old Devons.h.i.+re family."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Ricardo, as he called himself, with a quick indrawing of his breath, as though what I had said had hurt him, though how it should have done so was quite inexplicable. "I could have sworn it!

Lucy Carew! Boy, you are the living image of your mother! I recognised the likeness the moment that we came face to face, when you boarded us; and I have three times spared your life on that account--twice while the fight was in progress, and again when my people would have heaved your still breathing body to the sharks!"

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "is it possible that you can ever have known my mother?"

"Ay," answered Ricardo, "extraordinary as it may appear to you, I once knew your mother well. However," he broke off hurriedly, "this is not the moment in which to become reminiscent; your wound is troubling you, I can see. I will call Fonseca to dress it afresh; meanwhile, be under no apprehension as to your safety. I will protect you with my own life, if necessary, although I do not think it will quite come to that."

And, so saying, he left the cabin, to return a few minutes later, accompanied by the surgeon and his a.s.sistant, Francois, the mulatto boy.

With the utmost care on the part of Fonseca, and to the accompaniment of sundry maledictions in Spanish, muttered under his breath by Ricardo as I involuntarily winced now and then during the process, my wound was laid bare and carefully examined. It was by this time terribly inflamed and horribly painful, and I seemed to gather, from the grave and anxious look on Fonseca's face, that he regarded it as somewhat serious. He said nothing, however, but gave it a very thorough fomentation, dressed it, and carefully bound it up again. This done he administered a sleeping draught, and left me in charge of Francois, to whom he gave certain whispered instructions which I could not catch. When he presently retired, Ricardo followed him out of the cabin, and I saw him no more that night, for the sleeping draught, though somewhat long in operating, had its effect at last, and I sank into a feverish, troubled sleep, in which I was vexed by all sorts of fantastic fancies, in some of which my mother and the man Ricardo seemed to be a.s.sociated together most incongruously. Then there were moments when I seemed to awake to find Ricardo and Fonseca bending over me anxiously, and others in which I appeared to be sitting up in my cot and talking the veriest nonsense to Francois, who, on such occasions, seemed to be entreating me, with tears in his eyes, to lie down again and remain quiet. Then ensued further phantasmagoria of the most extravagant description, of which I subsequently remembered little or nothing save that I seemed to be consumed with fever, that liquid fire was rus.h.i.+ng through my veins instead of blood, and that I was continually tormented by an unquenchable thirst.

This state of discomfort endured for ages--apparently; in reality, however, it lasted only a week, at the end of which period I emerged from my delirium to find myself comfortably, nay, luxuriously, disposed upon a large bed in a s.p.a.cious room overlooking an extensive garden, gorgeous with strange and brilliant-hued flowers and fragrant with their mingled perfumes, which sloped very gently down to a sandy beach, beyond which was visible, through the wide-open cas.e.m.e.nts of the apartment, a wide stretch of landlocked water, in the centre of which floated the hull of a vessel that I had no difficulty in identifying as the _Barracouta_. The room which I occupied was elegantly furnished. Its walls were decorated with several oil paintings that, to my uneducated eye at least, appeared to be exceedingly good, and dotted about the room here and there were little tables upon each of which stood a vase of magnificent flowers. This was the scene upon which my eyes opened as I awoke from the first natural sleep that had visited me since that disastrous day when I had been struck down upon the deck of the pirate brig, and I lay for some minutes motionless, drinking in the beauty and the delight of it all, and revelling lazily in the sensation of relief from pain and fever that I was now enjoying.

Then, as I unconsciously sighed with excess of pleasure, I became aware of a slight movement beside the bed, and, glancing round, I perceived a middle-aged negress bending over me and looking anxiously into my eyes.

"_Bueno_! The senor is himself again at last!" she exclaimed in accents of great satisfaction as she placed her cool hand upon my brow for a moment, and then proceeded to smooth my rebellious locks with a tenderness that was almost caressing. "Yes," she continued, "the fever has quite gone, and now the senor has nought to do save to get well and strong again as soon as possible." She spoke in Spanish, and her accent and manner were those of one who had been accustomed all her life to a.s.sociate with cultured people.

"Who are you, pray?" I demanded in the same language, "and where am I?"

"I am Mammy," she answered, "the old nurse of the senorita, and Senor Ricardo's housekeeper. And you are now in Senor Ricardo's own house-- ay, and in his own room, too! What is the young English senor to Senor Ricardo, I wonder, that he should be cared for thus?"

I scarcely knew whether this last remark was in the nature of a soliloquy, or whether I was to take it as a question addressed to me, but I treated it as the latter, and replied:

"I really do not know, Mammy, but--stop a moment; let me think--yes--I seem to remember--or did I dream it?--that Captain Ricardo said he-- had--once known my mother! But, no, that cannot be possible, I must have dreamed it--and yet--no--that part of it scarcely seems to be a dream!"

"No matter, no matter," answered Mammy musingly; "we shall doubtless know the truth sooner or later. Now, senor, it is past the time when you ought to have taken your medicine, but you were sleeping so peacefully that I could not bring myself to wake you. Take it now; it is a sovereign remedy for all kinds of fever; I never yet knew it to fail; and then, if you are thirsty, you may have just one gla.s.s of sangaree!"

I took the potion and swallowed it obediently; it had an intensely but not altogether disagreeable bitter taste; and then I quaffed the generous tumbler of sangaree that the old lady handed me. Oh, that sangaree! I had never tasted it before, and though I have often since then drunk the beverage I have never again enjoyed a draught so much as I did that particular one; it was precisely my idea of nectar!

"Aha!" quoth the old woman as she watched the keen enjoyment with which I emptied the tumbler, "the senor likes that? Good! he shall have some more a little later. Now I must go and see to the making of some broth for the senor; it is his strength that we must now build up."

And, so saying, the old nurse glided softly out of the room, leaving me to enjoy the glorious scene that was framed by the wide-open window at the foot of my bed.

I had lain thus for perhaps five minutes when the door of the room again opened, and there entered a young girl of some sixteen years of age-- that was her actual age, I subsequently learned, but she looked quite two years older,--who came to the side of the bed and stood looking down upon me with large, l.u.s.trous eyes that beamed with pity and tenderness.

Then, as she laid her cool, soft hand very gently upon my forehead, she said, in the softest, sweetest voice to which I have ever listened:

"Oh, Senor Grenvile, it is good to see you looking so very much better.

You will recover now; but there was a time--ah, how long ago it seems, yet it was but yesterday!--when we all thought that you would never live to see the light of another day. It was Mammy, and her wonderful knowledge of medicine, that saved you. Had not the captain realised your critical state, and driven the men to incredible exertions to get the s.h.i.+p into harbour quickly, you could not have lived!"

"Senorita," said I, "how can I sufficiently thank you for the kind interest you exhibit in an unfortunate prisoner--for that, I suppose, is what I am--"

"No, senor, oh no; you are quite mistaken!" interjected my companion.

"At least," she corrected herself, "you are mistaken in the character of your imprisonment. That you certainly are a prisoner, in a sense, is quite true; but I hope--that is, I--do--not think--you will find your imprisonment very intolerable."

"All imprisonment, whatever its character, must be intolerable, it seems to me," I grumbled. Then, checking myself, I exclaimed: "But do not let us talk about myself. Do you mind telling me who you are? Your face seems familiar to me, somehow, yet I am certain that I have never before seen you. Are you, by any chance, Captain Ricardo's daughter?"

The girl's face clouded somewhat as she answered: "No; oh no, I am not Captain Ricardo's daughter! I am an orphan; I have never known what it is to have either father or mother, and I am a prisoner--like yourself, yet I do not find my state by any means intolerable. Captain Ricardo has been kindness itself to me, indeed he could not have been more kind to me had I really been his daughter."

"Ah," said I, "I am glad to hear it, for your sake! He seems a strange man, a very curious commingling of good and evil traits of character-- kind and gentle to you--and, thus far, to me--yet relentlessly cruel and bloodthirsty in the prosecution of his accursed calling. And your name, senorita, will you not tell me that?"

"Oh, yes, certainly! Why should I not?" answered my companion. "I am called Lotta--Carlotta Josefa Candelaria Dolores de Guzman. And your name is d.i.c.k, is it not?"

"Why, certainly it is!" I exclaimed. "But how in the world did you know that?"

"Because," she answered, "when you were brought ash.o.r.e yesterday, Captain Ricardo sent for me, and said: 'This young fellow is d.i.c.k Grenvile, the son of a once very dear friend of mine; and I want you, Lotta, and Mammy, to do your utmost to nurse him back to health and strength again.'"

"And you and Mammy have been doing so with marvellously satisfactory results," said I. "And that, I suppose, accounts for the fact of your face seeming familiar to me; I probably saw you once or twice during my delirium?"

"Yes," she admitted, "you certainly did see me--once or twice."

"Well, Lotta--I suppose I may call you Lotta, may I not? Senorita sounds so very formal, does it not?" I suggested.

"Oh, yes, certainly!" a.s.sented my companion. "And I may call you d.i.c.k, may I not? Senor sounds so very formal, does it not?" Her quaint mimicry of my earnestness of manner was irresistibly droll.

"Of course you may," I agreed eagerly. "Well, Lotta--now, let me remember--what was it I was about to say? Oh, yes, of course--how came you to be a prisoner in the power of this man Ricardo?"

"Very simply, yet in a manner that you would scarcely credit," was the reply. "You must know that my mother died just after I was born, my father when I was just two years old. Up to then Mammy had looked after me, but when my father died his estates were taken in charge by some people whom my father had appointed to look after them--what do you call those people--?"

"Trustees, we call them in England," I suggested.

"Yes," a.s.sented Lotta, "they were my father's trustees, and my guardians, empowered to look after my interests and manage the estates until I should arrive at the age of eighteen. When I was seven years of age the trustees decided to send me over to Old Spain to be educated, and I accordingly went, in charge of the wife of one of them, with Mammy to look after me. I was educated at the convent of Santa Clara, in Seville, where I remained until my fourteenth birthday, when I was taken out of the convent and placed on board a s.h.i.+p bound to Havana, my guardians having decided that I had received as much education as was necessary, and that the time had arrived when I ought to return to Cuba and take my place as mistress of my household and owner of the vast estate of which I was the heiress. Then a terrible misfortune befell us: the s.h.i.+p on board which I was a pa.s.senger caught fire, and was utterly destroyed, and everybody was obliged to take refuge in the boats. Then, to add still further to our misery, a gale sprang up, and the boats became separated. We suffered dreadfully during that gale, and were several times in the greatest danger of being drowned. Then, when the gale was over, the sailors in our boat knew not in which direction to steer, and so we went drifting aimlessly hither and thither, not knowing where we were going, but hoping, day after day, that a s.h.i.+p would come in sight and pick us up. And very soon our food and water became exhausted, and our sufferings intensified to such an extent that some of the men went mad and threw themselves into the sea.

As for me, I became so weak at last that I lost consciousness, and did not again revive until I found myself on board the _Barracouta_, with Mammy looking after me. We arrived here before I was well enough to walk, and here I have remained ever since, that is to say, nearly two years."

"Well," I exclaimed, "that is a most extraordinary story, extraordinary not only from the fact of your having been the heroine of such a terrible adventure, but even more so from the circ.u.mstance that you were rescued and have been taken care of ever since by Ricardo. One would have thought that it would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to have callously left you all to perish. How many of your boat's crew were alive when he picked you up?"

"Only two sailors, and Mammy, and myself," answered Lotta; "and I afterwards heard that the sailors had joined Ricardo."

"And have you never had any desire to escape and seek the protection of your guardians?" demanded I.

"Only at very rare intervals, and even then the feeling was not very strong," was the extraordinary answer. "You see," Lotta explained, "I am perfectly happy where I am. This is a most lovely spot in which to live, the most lovely that I have ever seen; and Ricardo is kindness itself to me during the rare periods when he is 'at home', as he calls it. I have never expressed a wish that he has not gratified, I have every possible comfort, and, what with my guitar, my garden, my morning and evening swim, and making clothes for myself, I find so much occupation that I do not know what it is to have a wearisome moment.

And, now that you have come to be a companion to me, I cannot think of anything else to wish for."

The charming _naivete_ of this remark fairly took my breath away; but I was careful that the girl should not be allowed to guess, from my manner, that she had said anything in the least remarkable. Before I could reply, the sound of approaching footsteps became audible, and Lotta remarked:

"Now, here comes Fonseca, and I suppose I shall have to go. But I will come back again when he leaves you."

As she rose to her feet the door opened, and the Spanish surgeon entered.

"Good morning, senorita!" he exclaimed. "How is our patient? Vastly better, Mammy tells me. I see she is busy preparing some broth for Senor Grenvile, but he must not have it until I have thoroughly satisfied myself that it would be good for him. Well, senor," as he seated himself on the side of the bed and laid his fingers upon my pulse, "you are looking rather more like a living being than you were twenty-four hours ago. Mammy's medicines are simply marvellous, I will say that for them, although the old witch will not tell me of what they are composed. Um! yes; eyes bright--almost too bright--pulse strong but decidedly too quick. You have been talking too much. That will not do.

The senorita"--she had slipped out of the room by this time--"must either stay away, or not talk to you. Now, let me look at your wound."

And he proceeded very carefully to remove the dressings.