The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California

"Shall we two go it alone, Captain?"

"I was just going to ask the favour, Captain."

The other "captain" nodded and grinned under his long hook nose, to the banker and others at hand, as much as to say, "Now I have my gentleman precisely in the corner I have been driving him to."

It was the Englishman's turn to cut.

"How's the play?" he inquired.

"Will you venture all?" the highwayman leader returned in a mocking way.

"Why should I not? You have so far afforded me so much hearty entertainment that I am entirely at your disposal."

Don Aníbal made a grimace not unlike that when the marvellous shot had allowed the last speaker to drop out of the swing of his navaja.

"Even in case I risk the whole heap?" resumed Matasiete, laying his long fingers out on the pillar of gold coin before him.

"As your lordship desires, though it is a mistake."

"How so?"

"Because I am in luck's way lately," returned Mr. Gladsden, significantly. "You always lose pitted against me."

"Do you really think that run will last?"

"I am willing to wager on it," was the reply, in the determined tone of an Englishman to whom, indeed, a bet is the ultima ratio.

"¡Caray!" exclaimed the arch-bandit, piqued, "Your remark decides me, all goes on the dos de espadas, two of spades. Is it a go?"

The Spanish-Americans are fine players, they lose or gain ever so large sums without wincing. As the spectators uttered a cry of admiration for him who was more or less their lion, Gladsden resolved to prove that he could gamble as well as the best of them.

"Señor Don Aníbal, you'll excuse the rest," he said, impudently, like a man who pretty well knew that he had not a friend in the crowd, as he presented his adversary, in all senses of the word, with the cards; "do you mind shuffling them yourself?"

"What for, Señor?" holding his hands away.

"Oh, it is not merely because I believe you good at shuffling, but because things are getting serious, and it is important after all that has taken place between us that you should be convinced that I play fair, and that nothing but my better fortune thwarts you."

Don Stefano turned pale; several of the guests whispered to one another, probably seeing that twenty to one on a ground of their own choosing was rather contrary to the character of a blue-blooded caballero. One of them even lifted up his voice, saying:

"He acts like a perfect gentleman."

Gladsden bowed to him, though he fully believed he recognised in him the suggester on a memorable occasion that the author of the death of the late Pepillo Santa Maria should be roasted alive.

Captain de Luna also bowed, but to his opponent, took the cards, shuffled them, and presented them with grace. Gladsden laid the cards on the board, and turning to no one in particular, said:

"Do me the honour to cut them, Señor."

Someone obeyed the request, and the English player began to deal. A deathlike stillness reigned at once as by enchantment in the drawing room so well peopled. Spite of their villainy, the spectators of the coolness of the Englishman alone in the tiger's lair were impressed by it in his favour, and, though the most of them, such as appertained directly to Matasiete's band, at least, would have fallen on him without reluctance on the road back to Guaymas, here they registered a vow to let him have a good show of fun for his money without interference.

Don Aníbal had staked on the two of spades; the other sought to produce the five of clubs (cinco de Bastos) to win; in other words, that card ought to come out of the pack to him before his adversary received the one he called to appear. But after quite twenty of the parallelograms of pasteboard had been thrown on the table one after another, neither of the two cards designated had appeared; but everyone felt they were on the nick.

At the moment when Gladsden was about to show the face of a card between his fingers, the captain of banditti, and of the so-called Chilian cutter, checked his action, saying —

"Stay half a minute, please."

"What's your pleasure?"

"Perhaps to give you one. Did not I hear don Stefano say something about your looking out to buy a pleasure vessel?"

"I even thought that I might make a yacht of – "

"Of the goleta in the port, of the Burlonilla– of my vessel?"

"There is no other worth a biscuit, certainly! Why the question now?" inquired the European with some surprise.

"I tell you what; if you will consent, I will add the Little Joker, all standing, to my pile, against twenty-five thousand dollars. What do you say to that proposition?"

CHAPTER IX.

THE WAY LAYERS

"What do I say to that offer?" returned Gladsden; "That it is a queer one, not to say a mad one! Señor, I am morally certain that you would lose your ship."

"You mean, you refuse," triumphantly, whilst the auditors smiled flatteringly on their leader for having "bluffed" the foreigner.

"Oh, no, since you insist on it," replied the latter, coldly, though he felt his heart contract within him; "but since I have set out to show I can play cards, I'll sell you the present turn up for ten thousand!"

"Don't! Don't do anything of the sort!" interrupted the host, turning pale. "I'll give you fifteen thousand for it myself!"

"Thank you; but now, since an outsider has intervened, I must stick to it myself."

"You are very right," remarked Captain Matasiete, with a scowl and an angry glance at the banker; "for it is the right one."

Gladsden had tossed the card down without looking at it.

"Cinco de Basto!" exclaimed all the lookers-on in the one voice. "Prodigious! What a splendid game!"

"You were right, right along, about your luck —at cards!" observed don Aníbal, with the most genial smile he could beam with. "The Little Joker is yours."

Gladsden had truly won, for there was the requisite card before him. He had been inwardly persuaded when he vaunted so boldly that he was bound to lose, and had only accepted his mortal enemy's challenge out of recklessness. The emotion he experienced in payment of his false glory was so deep for a couple of moments that he was like one stunned, and stared, still, with no possibility to get out a word.

In that brief interval the banker had conferred with the bandit-gambler, and to some purpose, moreover, for the latter loudly set to felicitating the Englishman on his continued good fortune; and, as at the end of his speech don Stefano put before him the corner of a sheet of paper, on which he had hastily written some lines, he went on to say:

"Gaming debts must be settled in four-and-twenty hours. Here is the transfer of my property in the Chilian goleta, the Little Joker, as she floats at this moment, with all she holds, in consideration of the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, which I hereby acknowledge, before all this honourable company, to have received!"

As Gladsden, from the tone and the railing glances of more than one hearer of this pretty little presentation speech, conceived no doubt whatever that he would never be let set foot on the deck of the Burlonilla, even if he reached Guaymas intact, he made no to-do about accepting the paper, and merely faltered a simple remonstrance at what he had said being taken too seriously.

"Oh, don't be scrupulous," said don Stefano, with a kind of pride in his friend, "the sum which our Chilian gentleman has lost against you, though apparently no joking matter, is nothing to him in reality. I know something of his pecuniary standing, and I assure you, if he will pardon the breach of banking confidence, that don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna y Almagro y Pizarro de Cortes has not suffered the least injury in purse!"

He hardly had the title pat himself, but nobody noticed the error, or cared to correct it.

It was, perhaps, pardonable in the loser, after all the fine words, to be glum, but a mournfulness infested the entire assembly, and the few gentlemen whom Gladsden charitably looked upon as innocent neighbours, merchants, or planters, oozed away gradually. Then the remainder, in more probability the allies or sworn adherents of the salteador leader, went forth in a mass.

The banker offered to house the English guest till morning, and he pretended to accept the offer, which had the result of precipitating the farewell of don Aníbal, alias Matasiete. Thereupon, alone with don Stefano, the Englishman refused a nightcap of French brandy, and as his servant, a man engaged at Guaymas, had entered to receive his orders for the night, he seemed suddenly to have gone right round to the other point of the compass, and said resolutely:

"Ruben, we are going at once back to town. While I come down and wait at the gate, bring the mules!"

Don Stefano began a courteous remonstrance, but the Englishman, after having stood undaunted among a score of bandits, was not going to be prevailed on by one single opponent. So he smiled knowingly, and replied,

"I never sleep in the house of a friend, or in a strange bed. I have infallibly the nightmare – one of those bad sleeps, my dear banker, when a man fires off his revolver, and lays about him with the leg of a table so as to inflict damages that would make your quickest accountant sit up overnight to reckon. You had better let me go."

Don Stefano still mumbled something.

"Perhaps I shall overtake our dear don Aníbal on the road, and if we do meet the chances are that the time will be short for the rest of the way to him, for I want to make myself very agreeable to your honourable friend."

There was a mighty muster of servants, though it was better than three in the morning, at the door, and Gladsden who saw that the two mules were coming round in the courtyard, in charge of his faithful man, seriously contemplated seizing don Stefano by the collar and holding him as a buckler, whilst he cowed the domestics with his revolver and rushed for the saddle. But his host made no sign, and so the Englishman mounted and rode out into the road without any bar.

He reasoned, therefore, that he would be attacked on the highway by the bandits on their return to cut his throat in the villa, since don Stefano's servitors were above the business.

Hence he was rather relieved than startled, about an hour before sunrise, when he heard a couple of gunshots not far ahead of him and his man. The latter was so frightened, or so much of an accomplice in the ambush, that he belabored his mule, turned and vanished in the darkness, increasing his speed with a shout of terror as there rushed after him a horseman who had just passed Gladsden with the dizzy rapidity of a meteor, screaming, "Muerte, hombre– murder ahead man!"

Pretty well on the alert, and his eyes quite accustomed to the darkness, to say nothing of the night breeze off the sea having blown away the last trace of the long stay in the heated room, Gladsden divined that the fugitive had been mistaken for himself, and had been fired upon by his own chosen assassins.

There was a clump of trees ahead, from around which the fleeing cavalier had come. On the instant, Gladsden imagined a trick. He flung himself off his mule, to whose flank he applied a stroke of his whip, which started it off not leisurely, and lay down, half across the road. He had his revolver ready in his hand. There was a yellow stripe in his riding cloak, which made him tolerably distinguishable in the gloom.

Way layers have good eyes. Two men, advancing on foot, speedily spied this stumbling block, and were so flattered by that evidence, as they conceived it, to the goodness of their aim, that they forbore to delay to recharge their guns which they carried easily "at the trail." One of them was more eager than the other to examine the prey, and threw himself before the second. Gladsden judged this an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one bullet, on the expectation of the missile perforating the foremost and then burying itself in his comrade. He waited only long enough to see his teeth gleaming in a savage and gleeful smile, and pulled the trigger.

The robber uttered a scream of pain and surprise, and fell back upon his mate, who instinctively pushed him aside so that he measured his length in the deep water cart furrows. The other, paralysed with fear, was not at all disenchanted by seeing the supposed victim of their double shots rise and present the revolver of which one chamber had furnished a quietus to his friend, whilst he said, having seen the man's face in the flash —

"Good morning, Master Ignacio, otherwise the lieutenant of our dear acquaintance, don String of names, chief of the bandoleros, and skipper of the Little Joker. If you will just give me the address of your sister, so that I can deliver your last dying message, and that of your dear brother, Pepillo, I shall require nothing further before I rid me of your company!"

Ignacio gave a howl of rage which exemplified the reason for his nickname of "the Mountain Cat," at facing the avowed witness of his brother's decease, the probable slayer, but the revolver daunted him, and the allusion to his sister riveted him to the spot, so that he did not budge, even so much as an eye, to look at his companion who gave a last groan in the rut.

As Mr. Gladsden had no notion of ever again bestowing so much of his time on this nocturnal cavalier, he now designed to inform him about the inheritance of his brother bandit. With a quick transition of feeling, the hearer ejaculated a prayer, luckily short, and springing on the speaker dragged him into the thicket at the roadside.

"Oh, gentleman!" he cried, "You must not be seen by the others. They line the road to the town. You will surely be killed even running the gauntlet, though we believed you would be stifled in your own bedroom at don Stefano's, but you shall not be harmed now! I swear it!" he added vehemently. "You are under the charge of the Saints; your escape from our bullets showed that!"

Gladsden did not trouble just then to undeceive him in his conceit about the horseman who had drawn the fire of the ambuscade.

"Come! You are not so bad a fellow, I grant!"

"And you are a brave heart, Señor. I watched you close while you played the captain disguised."

"Oh, were you there? Now well, I won't say fraternal love would make you help me, but there is a prospect of a bushel of pearls, for your sister, the orphans, and yourself, and, in faith – as you would say – I honestly believe you had better be my safe guide to the port! What say you?"

"It's a bargain, Señor. Besides – " (here he could not help laughing heartily, though in a low tone) "with me you can trick that humbug, the captain, lovely!"

"In what way? Will he not burst with vexation if I slip past his dogs unhurt?"

"He will with disappointment when you sail away in the Burlonilla."

"I believe that."

"And that you may do, with my help, if we are on the alert! I am the chief officer of that barque."

"Which is no more Chilian than you are an honest man."

"Pardon me, Señor! I am honest on occasion, and I will deliver you up the ship if I may still retain my post aboard."

"It strikes me, man, that it is you who are making conditions."

But the Englishman, who realised all the danger of his situation, had not used an angry tone. The bold and merry rogue accordingly proceeded.

"¡Caramba! What is there strange in that? I save your life; you safeguard my neck! Besides, on land, here, I am not afraid of our judges; but on the sea, if the American naval officers catch us, I have always counted it as certain that I should hang!"

"I am with you there!"

"Let me go with you, there, Señor! I will not only pilot you to the town, but do so on the cutter, and take you to the pearl store, surely, steadfastly, under your honour's direction!"

"Your cool impudence is much to my taste. See, day is peeping. Lead on! And if we reach the town without having to burn powder or take the edge off a knife, you have excellent hopes of being my lieutenant on the cocky little craft."

"She's a beauty! But, silence! They come, and will tread on poor Ricardo; so, away!"

CHAPTER X.

THE PEARL DIVER'S PRICE

However placid our adventurous Englishman might seem to be, he was a man, like another, to be dazzled by the play of his fancy, rendering almost palpable to his mind all the jewelled dreams of The Arabian Nights, where pearls and other sea gems play so brilliant a part, and are measured out in bushels by the heroes of those prodigious tales.

Now that he owned a fleet vessel, nothing seemed easier than to realise all these visions, and to succeed in obtaining the treasure indicated by Pepillo, so that, like another Aladdin, his fortune would enable him to eclipse even the dons of the European stock exchanges.

The first thing had been to obtain indisputable command of the ship. So he went to the port governor, a military man, who was incorruptible, and would, he could see, stand no nonsense from the robber chief and his more or less public allies; Colonel Fontoro stamped the transfer paper of the late owner of the Burlonilla, and authorised captain Gladsden to defend his property against all illegal claimants.

There were a score of American or English sailors knocking about at the port. Gladsden selected eight, added a North American Negro as a colour line, a Chinaman for cook, a Karnak to help in the diving, and a Valparaisan boy for the cabin. Ignacio he allowed to be his lieutenant "on trial," but protected himself by giving the second mate, Jem Holdfast, a Bristol man, a sealed order to take command in event of his absence for twenty-four hours without notice, or the American acting suspiciously.

There was a lack of the most important desideratum in his peculiar quest, pearl divers; Ignacio did not pretend to be expert, like his brother-in-law had been, spite of overmuch assurance in most pretensions, and the Karnak was doubtful.

As those waters were wont to have furnished a bountiful harvest of pearls to Spain – up to 1530 from the conquest, a million dollars worth had been sent home officially, heaven only knowing what supplement the tyrants had smuggled to the Jews of Barcelona, Cadiz, Lisbon, and Oporto – Gladsden cherished the hope that he would pick up some Indian, versed by innate inheritance, skilful and strong, if not any too honest. Though the pearl fishery on the West Coast was practically exhausted in the seventeenth century, still a few essay it "for their own hand." It is not impossible that notable pearls are still picked up, and secretly disposed of, as only the other day (1883, to be exact) one was found in the Bay of Panama, so large as to rank among the few celebrated gems of historical note.

The search for a diver was fruitless to Gladsden. The Indians, no doubt, scented a little coolie catching in the wind, where so rakish a vessel was concerned, and had no inclination to be carried to Ceylon and set to work at coffee planting during an engagement of 99 years.

Besides, with so ugly an enemy, the captain of bandoleros hatching a scheme to recover his property, with which don Jorge Federico was more and more delighted, so that he wondered it had ever been valued at only twenty thousand dollars, he ought already to have sailed. He determined to weigh, therefore, spite of his unsupplied want, obeying the rude alternative.

On the eve, while the men were putting the finishing touches to the seagoing trim, while captain Gladsden was in the cabin, lolling back in a Windsor (Connecticut) chair, smoking and seeing Gladsden Hall rising in a vast estate of new purchase like Chatsworth itself, the South American page came to the doorsill, and announced the arrival alongside of a strange gentleman, with the last provisions of fresh vegetables and water.

Gladsden was in no good humour at the interruption, especially as he conjectured that the newcomer was an emissary of the ex-skipper of the pretty cotter. He was, therefore, about to rejoin that the cabin boy and the uninvited caller might go to Hades in company, when the party mentioned, probably of an impatient temperament, or too pressed by the urgency of his case to stand on ceremony, caught the boy by the waist belt, tossed him aside, and, leaping into the cabin, said as easily as one could imagine and with a winning smile: —

"Be good enough to overlook the manner of my arrival, sir Captain, but I must speak with you."

Without any invitation he sat himself down on a locker, and pulling out tobacco and paper from his sash at the waist, proceeded to roll up a cigarette.

Rather taken aback by this abrupt intrusion, the Englishman took a long stare at the speaker, who did not show in the least that the attention was burdensome. Then he smiled, with a reflection which he did not care just then to express. When the cigarette was made and lit, the stranger, half hiding his handsome young face in a cloud of smoke, leant towards his compulsory host with a somewhat mocking air, and began: —

"Señor Capitán, I am of the opinion that, though you should reckon me up by the hour together in the comprehensive style you are doing, that would in no way enlighten you as to who I am."

"That is just where you are out, my friend," returned Gladsden, with some Triumph. "It is I who know more about you than you do of me, or rather it is you who are more in my debt than ever I hope I shall be in yours."

It was the turn for the young Mexican to evince surprise, but he bore the shock very well.

"There is an error, sir," he responded, after reflecting, whilst he regarded the frank, hardy features over against him, repaying his mocking air with a derisive expression which was full of fun, though. "I have never seen you before."

"That is true, perhaps. At the time when we were face to face there was the ugly head of a red Indian thrust between, a head, by the way, in which I lodged a bullet, thanks to which your hair remains on yours."

"Oh!" exclaimed Benito Bustamente, in a gush of joy and amazement. "Was it you whose shot rang in my ear like the voice of a delivering archangel when that murderous savage's knife was hovering over my heart in order to precipitate the death which his envenomed darts had failed to inflict? How can I thank you?"

He sprang forward, let the cigar fly from his fine teeth, and seizing the Englishman's hand, carried it effusively to his lips.

"Well, there, have done, do stop it, my good fellow!" said the other, embarrassed, "I am heartily glad I saved the life of so graceful a caballero, and more. I cannot say now, particularly, if your present errand has anything to do with the occurrence which culminated in placing you, mighty pale and 'gone' looking, at the mercy of that scalping fiend."

"Something to do with it? All, all!" cried Benito.

They exchanged stories. When the Mexican explained how his despair had goaded him into taking up the trail of Dolores, though ill fitted to combat a horde of ruffians, the Englishman stayed him.

"I was on the same track," said he, "how singular! We might have fallen foul of one another, and had a pretty mincing and slashing duet in the thicket, that stormy night. Well, such a fatal blunder was not in the books."

"Thank heaven! To proceed," went on Benito; "I found Dolores sheltered from the rain in a hollow tree. She was like the dead, speechless, inflexible, cold; but fortunately I carried the means of resuscitating her. When she had been so revivified, I left her to await my return with the steed I proposed stealing from a frightened herd which could be seen by the lightning glare around the base of that Mound Tower. The robbers were within the pile, I could move bodily; to my amazement, I spied, on looking up, a man suspended as by a thread from the top of the cylinder of brick. There, in another part, I recognised another visage, hideous, demoniacally grinning, hovering over this doomed wretch. A knife soon glittered in the hand of the cruel scoundrel. I knew the peculiar profile, the thin lips, the chin and hooknose nearly meeting. It was don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna, as he called himself, the visitor at don José's, suspected then to be affiliated to the salteador. I hesitated not a moment. I could not stay your fall, Señor, but I was bound to revenge it, I fired with the untried gun, which handsomely did its work, and the scream of don Aníbal, whose beauty I had marred, was my reward and an alarm to his gang. But I had time to select a horse, stampede the others, gallop to Dolores' refuge, place her on the saddlebow, and flee round the terrified animals over the prairie. When our flight became slower by fatigue, I lassoed a second horse for Dolores, and we two rode easily on to Guaymas."