, my padre, I was so busy attending to the schooner, and afterward
going below to break the sad news to my lovely dark-eyed passenger of
the loss of her mother, that I had no time to devote to the ship.
Pedillo, however, told me that he heard a good deal of frantic
shrieking, and prayers, and cursing, with, for a little while, the
renewed clank of the chain-pumps, but after that we had got too far to
windward to hear more. About midnight, though, Pedillo and some of the
watch thought they saw a white shower of foam like a breaking wave, and
a great commotion in the water, but that was all. So, you see, what
really became of that old craft we do not positively know; though for a
long time afterward I read the marine lists very attentively, yet I
never saw any accounts of her arrival at her destination.

"Perhaps," added Captain Brand, with a peculiar smile, as he lit a fresh
cigar, "her arrival may have escaped my notice, as I hope it may, though
I think not."

Don Ignacio intimated, by waving his fore finger to and fro, that such a
hope had no possible foundation in fact; and he stated, too, that he
knew the underwriters had paid the full insurance on the missing ship.

"Ah! well, that seems to settle the matter, truly," murmured the
captain, as if he had long entertained painful doubts on the subject,
and now his mind was finally relieved.

"But, _hico mio_! Son of mine! _La Senorita_--hiccough--with the
almond-shaped eyes--_Santissima!_--hic--how did she bear the--death of
her--hic--mother?"

"_Por Dios, padre!_ there was a scene which would have drawn tears from
a--"

"Pirate," suggested the doctor.

The padre blubbered outright, and his round, tipsy eyes nearly popped
out of his head.

"Ay, _monsieur_, even from mine! But to go back a little. When I had got
all snug on board the schooner, I went below, and moved softly on tiptoe
along the passage to the door of my beautiful cabin.

"You remember, _amigo_," said the narrator, turning toward Don Ignacio,
"how that cabin was fitted, and how much it cost to do it. I think you
paid the bill for me? No?"

Oh yes, Captain Brand was quite right. Don Ignacio remembered it well,
and the bill was a thousand gold ounces, sixteen thousand hard silver
dollars; and by no means dear at that, for the Don never allowed any
body to cheat _him_.

"Cheats himself, though, sometimes. Don't charge more than the usual
commission."

The one-eyed usurer looked wicked at this