"Ay, ay; yes, sir; oh! certainly; of course, sir; good-bye, shipmates; good-bye, sir;" shouted we, right and left, in reply to the divers charges, injunctions and parting salutations, as the boat pushed off.
"Now let fall, my men, give way," continued Bill. "By lightning! Frank, _pre_haps we wont have a spree!"
The ship's cousin replied only by an expressive pantomime.
Two Bowery clerks, driving a fast trotting-horse up the Third Avenue, may, in a measure, realize the feeling of intense pleasure which we experienced at this time.
Away we went in crack style, till, as we neared the mole, Langley gave the order "unrow;" six oar-blades instantly glittered in the sun, the bow-man seized his boat-hook, and our stout crew forced our way through the jam of ship and shore-boats to the landing stairs, saluted by a volley of oaths and interjections, selected with no great care from the vocabularies of almost every European and African language.
There is no place in the world which will seem, at first sight, more strange and foreign to a home-bred New Englander than the mole at Matanzas. It attracted even our eyes, which had last looked upon the picturesque groups in the streets and upon the quay of Valetta. Sunday is a holiday in Cuba, and a motley crowd had assembled under the cover of the immense shed which is built on the mole. Upon a pile of sugar-boxes near us were seated a group of Dutch sailors, gravely smoking, and sagely keeping silent, in striking contrast with a knot of Frenchmen, who were all talking at once and gesticulating like madmen. Here stalked a grave Austrian from Trieste, and yonder a laughing, lively Greek promenaded arm-in-arm with a Maltese. Hamburghers and Danes, Swedes and Russians, John Bulls by scores, Paddies without number, Neapolitans, Sicilians and Mexicans, all were there, each with fellows and some one to talk to. A group of emigrants, just landed from the Canary Islands, were keeping watch over their goods, and were looking with great interest and many earnest remarks upon this first appearance of their new home. Not far from them a collection of newly imported African negroes, naked, save a strip of cloth about their loins, were rivaling in volubility and extravagance of gesture even the Frenchmen. Native islanders, from the mountains, in picturesque, brigand-like dresses, with long knives stuck jauntily in their girdles, gazed with stupid wonder at the crowd of foreigners. Soldiers from the barracks, with most ferocious looking whiskers and mustaches, very humbly offered for sale little bunches of paper cigaritos. Black fruit women, whose whole dress consisted of a single petticoat of most laconic Fanny Ellslerish brevity, invited the passer by, in terms of the most affectionate endearment, to purchase their oranges, melons, and bananas. Young Spanish bloods, with shirt-bosoms bellying out like a maintop-sail in a gale, stalked along with great consequence, quizzing the strangers. Children, even of ten years of age, and of both sexes and all colors, naked as Job when he came into the world, excited the attention of no one but greenhorns like myself. Down East molasses drogher skippers, who, notwithstanding the climate, clothed themselves in their go-ashore long-napped black beaver hats, stiff, coarse broadcloth coats, thick, high bombazine stocks and cowhide boots, landed from their two-oared unpainted yawls, and ascended the stairs with the air of an admiral of the blue. Uniforms of Spanish, American, French and English navy officers were thickly scattered amidst the crowd, and here and there, making for itself a clear channel wherever it went, rolled the stalwart form of the Yankee tar.