I had never beheld so strange a figure as that Portuguese skipper. His face was little more than that of a skull, the flesh of which resembled the skin of an old drum where it is darkened by the beating of the sticks; it lay in ridges, as though badly pasted on, and these ridges looked to have become iron-hard through exposure to the weather. His eyes were large, intensely black, and horribly deep sunk, and glowed with what might well have been the fire of fever. Don Lazarillo pronounced some words, haughtily motioning to me; on which the Portuguese skipper gave me such a bow as a skeleton would make, and I pulled off my hat. Then the Spaniard addressed Mariana, who, accosting me in his extraordinary English, said that Don Lazarillo desired to know if it should be left to him to conduct this business of their quitting the schooner. I answered, "Certainly." I had no wish to interfere at all; nor could I be of the slightest use to them, not knowing a syllable of their tongues. On this Don Lazarillo took the Portuguese skipper into the cabin, and with them went the cook.
After a few moments I heard the sound of a cork drawn; this was followed by much animated conversation; but I did not choose to show myself at the skylight under which they were seated, and their accents reached my ear faintly. I said to Butler, with a smile:
"I hope the Don isn't conspiring with the Portugal man to seize the schooner."
"Lord bless ye, Mr. Portlack," he answered with a grin. "How many of the likes of them chaps in the boat over the side down there would be needed for such a job as that?"
And a grimy, wretched brace of men they were; yellow as mustard, and dark for want of soap, clad in costumes of rags, the lower extremities of which were kept together by being thrust into half-Wellington boots, bronzed with brine.
They were squatting in the bottom of the boat like monkeys, and their manner of looking upward was exactly that of monkeys--swift, their gleaming eyes restless, and a queer puckering of their leather lips that seemed a grin. They understood me, and one answered, "Bahia."
I tried them with one or two more questions, but to no purpose. After the lapse of some twenty minutes Mariana came out of the cabin, and said that Don Lazarillo begged I would be so good as to send two seamen below to convey his effects into the boat.