Part 10 (2/2)

Later on in the evening she came tripping over to him with a coquettish smile, and after the custom of the country offered him a cigarette, which she had begun to smoke herself. When he rather ungallantly declined it, she exclaimed furiously, stamping her foot--

”Senor!”

But she recovered herself in a moment, and said laughing, with at all events apparent good-nature, something which meant that she understood that this might perhaps not be a custom in his country.

Salve felt much relieved when her brother came home, and told him that the meeting he was waiting for was to take place on the following evening.

CHAPTER XV.

It was into a badly-lighted tavern, with two or three rooms leading out of one another, that his friend then conducted him. Men of the most various social positions, many with a military look, and in half-threadbare uniforms, filled the inner rooms; and in the outer one he had seen upon entering a number of seafaring men, who looked like Americans, and who nodded to him on the strength of his sailor's dress.

There were several women, more or less well dressed, moving about among them, and others standing with eager faces over the gambling-table in the inner room. All were drinking acachacas, and the whole place was pervaded with a cloud of tobacco-smoke, out of which there came a deafening clamour of talk.

Salve had a seat found for him by his friend at a long table, amongst a number of bronzed, bearded men, with large hats, leather breeches, and spurs, whose company he by no means cared about. They looked like mounted bullock-drivers, such as he had seen at Monte Video, or still more, perhaps, like brigands, or banditti.

”They belong to Mendez's volunteer corps,” whispered Federigo, as he presented him then to the chief of the party, who sat at the top of the table--a powerful fellow, with a weather-beaten complexion, heavy black mustachios, and a pair of small active eyes, which, more than once afterwards, when Salve was not looking, were turned critically upon him.

Every now and then they clinked their gla.s.ses together to some party toast; but otherwise they were quiet enough at first. People of the same calibre sat round other tables in the immediate neighbourhood; and at another were intermingled well-dressed persons from the town, who were carrying on a whispered conversation, and who appeared anxious.

The shouting, and the noise, and the laughter kept increasing. There were already drunken faces at the table, and in several directions quarrelling and the sound of blows were beginning to be heard. Federigo, who seemed to be known to many in the rooms, had mixed with the crowd, and Salve's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help.

He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from them with a whole skin, and he felt in his breast-pocket to see that his knife was there.

One of the North Americans who had nodded to him, in virtue of his sailor's dress, when he entered, came over to him now and asked him to come and sit with them; but as he rather felt himself under Federigo's charge, he declined just then. Shortly after, to his surprise, he saw the senorita standing at the gaming-table, with her head, which was all he could see, beautifully dressed; and he observed that the eyes of the keeper of the tavern--a tall, lean Portuguese, with a long, sallow face, and hardly any hair on his head, who himself presided at the table--were turned towards her continually with a look of humble, tender concern.

She was playing excitedly, and losing every time. At last she stopped, in evident irritation, and beckoned him to one side, with a certain authority, in spite of his having the table to attend to.

They spoke eagerly together, and Salve caught a rapid glance directed towards himself by the senorita, which he did not at all like. She was unnaturally pale; and he saw that she finally gave the other her hand, which he kissed with an enraptured expression, and she then disappeared from the room.

The landlord's face beamed the whole evening afterwards, and he bowed politely to Federigo as he pa.s.sed the table. The latter, the next time he came near Salve, whispered rather scornfully--

”I believe my sister has bartered away her soul this evening, and promised to marry that old money-bag there who keeps the tavern.

Congratulate us, _amigo mio_!”

Salve observed that the said money-bag conferred now more than once with the man at the head of his own table, and was apparently making terms with him; and that the latter also, when he thought he was not observed, glanced over at himself in a way that was very far from putting him at his ease.

The American who had spoken to him before--a tall, athletic-looking man, with a fair beard round a hard Yankee face, and with a remnant of gold lace on the sleeve of his jacket--had since been at the gaming-table, and had been losing one doubloon after another.

”They don't play fair, my lad!” he cried in English to Salve, to whom he seemed anxious to make up.

”I daresay not,” was the reply; ”it's a vile den.”

”What country do you hail from?”

”Norway.”

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