University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.
A denoucment and catastrophe, and Robin Day loses the favour of
the Intendant, and is packed off to a fort for safe-keeping.

And so ended the story; which—told with an
appearance of great simplicity and truth—seemed,
notwithstanding my disbelief of it, to carry conviction
to the mind of Colonel Aubrey, and to remove
all the suspicious he had begun to entertain in relation
to the real fate of his unfortunate brother. He
returned immediately to the subject of the wreck,
and asked a multitude of questions, to all which
Brown replied with so much readiness that it was
impossible not to believe that, upon this point of
his history, he was uttering at least some truth.

To the Intendant all his answers seemed as natural
as they were affecting; and having concluded his
melancholy inquisition, he turned to a servant, who
was near him, and bade him go fetch the Señorita
Isabel, “that she might see with her own eyes the
man who”—But what else he said I heard not;
being so horrified at the idea of the young lady being
brought into the room while Brown was in it,
that all my senses deserted me, and I stood such a
picture of consternation, that Colonel Aubrey, starting
from the gloom into which he had fallen, asked
“what ailed me, and if I were sick?” Before I
could stammer out a reply—and, in truth, I know

not what I intended to reply—the anticipated catastrophe
had arrived; the young Isabel had entered
the room, and cast her eyes upon Captain Brown;
who, astonished out of his prudence, ripped out a
hasty oath, with an equally profane addition;—
“D—n my blood!” he cried, “we goes to h—ll
now in a hurricane!” As for Isabel, whose recollections
were perhaps stimulated by Brown's voice,
she immediately uttered a shriek and threw herself
into the Intendant's arms, crying, “El Gato! El
Gato!—It is the villain himself!”

Great was the confusion produced by this turn of
events, so unexpected by all but unhappy me. Even
Colonel Aubrey looked petrified for a moment;
though, the next, he ordered the soldiers, who had
brought Brown in, to secure him, which they did,
Brown submitting with a very good grace; but all
the while protesting he was “no more El Gato, as
they call'd him, than he was Davy Jones himself.”

“We shall inquire into that, as well as other
things,” quoth the Intendant, turning from Brown
to me, whom he regarded with a stern countenance.

“So! young man!” he cried: “you concealed
from me your knowledge of this man, of his acts,
and character! pretended not to know in him the
ruffian from whom you had rescued my daughter!”

“Alas, sir,” I cried,” if you will allow me to explain.”

“We will allow you an opportunity to do so at
another moment. At present —”

But he was interrupted by Isabel, who starting
from her terrors, caught him by the hand, exclaiming
eagerly, “Oh, my dear father, the young gentleman
is innocent. If I had only told you all, at
first!—”

“Hah!” cried the Intendant, bending a scowling

eye even upon her—“have you, too, united with
him to deceive me?”

The fair Isabel stammered out an excuse—“she
could explain all—she always meant to explain all.”
The Intendant arrested her further speech, by a look
full of the most penetrating inquiry, which he immediately
after extended to me. Then waving
Isabel imperiously to silence, he directed the soldiers
to carry Brown to the fort, and guard him
well. “And you, señor,” he added, addressing
himself to me,” will do me the favour to accompany
them, and lodge to-night with your companions.”

“Appearances, as well as your suspicions, are
against me, señor,” I said, gathering hope from the
assurance that I left a friend behind me in the beautiful
Isabel: “but I trust yet to convince you I am
only the most unlucky person in the world, and
nothing worse.”

And with these words, and a stolen glance at Isabel,
who looked the picture of grief and humiliation,
I stole—or sneaked, which is perhaps the proper
word—out of the room and house, in which, a few
moments before, I had felt so proud and romantic;
and followed, with Brown, (who, instead of expressing
compunction for being the cause of my present,
as of nearly every other, misfortune, indulged sundry
hearty execrations upon what he called my disobedience
of orders in not passing him off for Mr.
John Smith only,) to the fortress, which I justly regarded
as a prison. At its gates, I met my friend and
commander, Captain Dicky, returning to the mansion
whence I had been so ignominiously banished; and
informing him in a few words of my mishap, I authorised,
and indeed begged him, since no other
course now remained to me, to acquaint Colonel

Aubrey with the whole history of my connection
with Captain Brown, to convince him I was not in
reality the accomplice, but the victim of that worthy
personage. I had no idea, at the moment, that he
could have any other reason for his severity than the
suspicion of my being a knave and the confederate of
Brown. Had I been a little older and wiser, I might
have seen an additional cause in an equally natural
and more painful apprehension, awakened by the
good understanding that seemed to exist between the
fair Isabel and myself.

It was nearly night when I entered the fort; where
the appearance of Captain Brown excited a good
deal of curiosity among the Spaniards of the garrison,
who crowded around to view a rogue bearing a
name so formidable and renowned as El Gato; but
I thought they expressed greater admiration than
horror at the sight of him. Nor were there any
greater pains taken to secure him from flight or mischief
than to clap a pair of light manacles upon his
wrists; after which, he was suffered to ramble up and
down the fort, conversing with the soldiers of the
garrison, (which was not a numerous or particularly
well disciplined one,) and with the prisoners—Skipper
Duck and his comrades, who were not fettered
at all, and a number of convicts—degraded soldiers—
who idled about, each with a cannon ball chained to
his leg.

My first care, upon entering the fort, was to look
for little Tommy; but the Governor had sent for
him, and he was already gone. I then sought out
and found my companions in arms, the Bloody Volunteers,
who sat retired, like Milton's philosopher
devils, not yet entirely cured of their suspicions and
fears of Spanish faith and South American gold mines.
I did all I could to convince them their apprehensions

were groundless, and that they would, in all probability,
be, in a day or two, released and furnished
with guides to conduct them to Mobile: but, by and
by, growing weary of arguing with men who had
made their minds up to their own opinions, and
tiring the sooner, perhaps, that I was in a very melancholy
and contemplative mood, I walked away
from them to a corner, where I could sit by myself,
and build castles in the moon, which was rising over
the bay, and changing a leaden twilight into a night
of silver.

My meditations were soon broken in upon by
Brown, who opened the conversation by assuring me
with sundry oaths, he had a regard for me, and meant
to help me out of my present difficulties. He then
showed me that his manacles were loose; and swearing
he was “not going to stay to be strung up by that
blasted old skurmudgeon, Aubrey, whom he had
help'd to a fortune, curse him,” he informed me that
he designed making his escape from the fort, and,
out of his friendship for me, would restore me to
liberty also.

I was astonished at what seemed the audacity of
such a design, and asked how he could hope to break
from a garrisoned fort, with centries at the gates and
along the walls? He replied, that “the garrison
was nothing—the officers were all dressing for a
ball, which the Intendant was to give them that
evening—” (“Alas!” thought I; “but for this vile
Brown, I might have had the honour of dancing
with the charming Isabel!”)—“half the soldiers
had already slipped away to seek their own diversions;
as for the centries, the lubbers would go to
sleep, as soon as the officers were off;” and finally,
he assured me he had friends in the fort, who would
make escape an easy matter. I asked what was to

be done, after escaping? was he to fly back to the
Indians again? or abscond about the town to be discovered
and again imprisoned? Upon which he
invoked a blessing on my brain of mud and molasses,
as he called it, and told me he had struck up a
league with his old friend Duck, “who was Tim
Duck, for all his blasted lies to the governor,” and
that they were to escape together in the Jumping
Jenny, which was lying hard by the fort.

Although I listened to this account not without
interest, I felt my curiosity moved by the reference
to Skipper Duck, as connected with the subject of
the Sally Ann; and I could not help asking him,
“if there was then no truth in what he had told
Colonel Aubrey?” “All a blasted yarn,” said he,
“from beginning to end.” “But you were mate
of the schooner, and must know whether she really
foundered or not—and whether the fate of Colonel
Aubrey's brother was as you represented it.”
“What's that your business?” said he, sharply:
“stick to things that concern you, sink me; and
stand ready for cutting loose from the fort, whenever
I gives the order.”

I told Captain Brown, “I had no objections to
his making his escape, if he could, and that nothing
would give me more satisfaction than to be certain
I should never more see him again in the world;
that as to escaping with him, I had no intentions
that way at all: I was under no fears of being strung
up by Colonel Aubrey, as he professed to be; and
was content to remain where I was.—In short, I
told him I would not fly with him. Upon which,
he called me sundry hard names, swore, with a diabolical
grin, that when I knew him better, I would
find the first thing for a first lieutenant to do was to
obey orders, and then, to my great satisfaction, left

me to my meditations, and to my castle-building,
which, as it is always a seductive employment, and
was then the most agreeable one I could engage in,
I continued for an hour longer; at which period my
fancies began to flag, and my head to nod with all
the grace of a Chinese Mandarin's, in the face of her
ladyship the moon.