Part 11 (1/2)
”Ah! Norwegian. Good sailors.”
”Deserted at Rio?” he asked then, with a laugh, as if he expected, as a matter of course, an answer in the affirmative.
”Shall I play for you?” he asked presently.
”No money.”
”Here's a guinea on account of your wages on board the 'Stars and Stripes,' for Valparaiso and Chinchas!” he cried, with a laugh that was heard above the surrounding din; and flinging a gold piece on the table, he lost it.
He turned, and putting his hand to his mouth, shouted--
”One more on account!” and another gold piece shared the fate of the first.
”One more on account!” there came again, and with the same result.
Salve had by this time had about enough of this free-and-easy and undesired playing on his account. The man's face, moreover, with all its joviality, by no means attracted him, and he shouted to him in a sharply-protesting tone--
”Play for yourself, Yankee.”
The American seemed not to be able to hear on that side, for he repeated, coolly nodding to him--
”One more on account!”
Salve's patience was exhausted. He had been sitting all this time squeezed up in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the bench and the wall with people on both sides of him, preventing his getting out; but now grasping his neighbour violently by the shoulder, he sprang all at once across the table and over to the unabashed Yankee, with an irresistible feeling that, come what might, he would get out into the freedom of the open air once more.
Just then there came from the furthest room a cry of ”police.” The lights in that room were at once extinguished; and a moment after, those in the room where Salve was on the point of falling foul of the American (who, to his great surprise, found him all of a sudden confronting him) went out also.
Their hostile relations, however, were almost immediately turned into friendly ones. For Salve, who had seen the landlord making a rush towards him, felt himself suddenly, in the midst of the confusion caused by the darkness, seized by two men and forced towards a door leading in another direction than that in which he saw the stream was setting, and which no doubt was the way out.
”Help, Yankee! there's some villany on here; the small door to the right!” he shouted, with great presence of mind, and at the same moment the door was slammed behind him. A handkerchief was tied over his mouth; he was tripped up and brought heavily to the ground, where his feet and hands were tied, and he was then shot into a dark side-room, which seemed to be at the back of a press, that was unlatched to pa.s.s him through.
”H'm!” said the Yankee coolly, to himself. ”I am not going to lose his pay, if I know it,” and he set out accordingly in search of the police, with whom he had no outstanding account.
Salve was certain he had heard the senorita's voice whispering in the outer room; and not long after he heard the latch in the press raised, and she stood before him with a light. She looked at him mischievously, and spilt some oil out of the lamp on to his face with a little scornful laugh. But her expression changed then to that of a tigress burning for revenge that is compelled to put off the gratification of her fury, and she darted out again, clapping down the latch behind her.
Salve lay tightly bound with his hands behind his back. But his cat-like suppleness enabled him eventually to wriggle his sheath-knife out of his breast pocket, and he found no great difficulty then in freeing himself from his bonds.
He stood now with his knife in his hand and listened.
Before long he heard the American's voice, with the police, and they appeared to be searching. He shouted to them; and the next moment he was released.
”He is one of our crew--belongs to the Stars and Stripes,” said the American, arresting Salve, who, as long as he got out of this accursed town now, did not care in what capacity it might be, and offered no opposition.
”You have not improved your beauty, my lad,” said his rescuer, derisively, as he held up the light to his face.
”I should like to have one word with the tavern-keeper before I go,”
said Salve.