Then happened, Señor, a very wonderful marvel! Suddenly the sails of the ship filled and bellied out as though a strong wind were blowing; and then, before the eyes of the Inquisitor, the ship went sailing away along the wall of the chamber--the Mulata laughing wickedly as she swung the tiller and steered it upon its course! Slowly it went at first, and then more and more rapidly, until, being come to the wall at the end of the chamber, it sailed right on into and through the solid stone and mortar--the Mulata still laughing wickedly as she stood there steering at the ship's stern! And then the wall closed whole and solid again behind the ship, and only a little echoing sound of that wicked laughter was heard in the chamber--and the ship had vanished, and the Mulata was out of her prison and gone!
The Inquisitor, Señor, who had seen this devil's miracle, immediately lost all his senses and became a madman and was put into a mad-house: where, till death gave peace to him, he raved always of a beautiful woman in a great ship that sailed through stone walls and across the solid land. As for the Mulata, nothing more ever was heard of her. But it was generally known that her master the devil had claimed her for his own.
This story is entirely true, Señor--as is proved by the fact that the Inquisition building, in which all these wonders happened, still is standing. It is the Escuela de Medicina, now.
It is an unwise thing, Señor, and there also is wickedness in it, to make a vow to the Blessed Virgin--or, for that matter, to the smallest saint in the whole calendar--and not to fulfil that vow when the Blessed Virgin, or the saint, as the case may be, has performed punctually all that the vow was made for: and so this gentleman of whom I now am speaking found out for himself, and most uncomfortably, when he died with an unfulfilled vow on his shoulders--and had to take some of the time that he otherwise would have spent pleasantly in heaven among the angels in order to do after he was dead what he had promised to do, and what he most certainly ought to have done, while he still was alive.
The name of this gentleman who so badly neglected his duty, Señor, was Don Tristan de Alculer; and he was a humble but honorable Spanish merchant who came from the Filipinas to live here in the City of Mexico; and he came in the time when the Viceroy was the Marqués de Villa Manrique, and most likely as the result of that Viceroy's doings and orderings: because the Marqués de Villa Manrique gave great attention to enlarging the trade with the East through the Filipinas--as was found out by the English corsairs, so that Don Francisco Draco, who was the greatest pirate of all of them, was able to capture a galleon laden almost to sinking with nothing but silver and gold.