g away during
the quarrel, in a half prance, half shuffle, and trying very hard not
to look scared. He was no stranger to the port, it seems, and in his
distress was able to make tracks straight for Mariani's billiard-room
and grog-shop near the bazaar. That unspeakable vagabond, Mariani, who
had known the man and had ministered to his vices in one or two other
places, kissed the ground, in a manner of speaking, before him, and
shut him up with a supply of bottles in an upstairs room of his infamous
hovel. It appears he was under some hazy apprehension as to his personal
safety, and wished to be concealed. However, Mariani told me a long time
after (when he came on board one day to dun my steward for the price
of some cigars) that he would have done more for him without asking
any questions, from gratitude for some unholy favour received very
many years ago--as far as I could make out. He thumped twice his brawny
chest, rolled enormous black-and-white eyes glistening with tears:
"Antonio never forget--Antonio never forget!" What was the precise
nature of the immoral obligation I never learned, but be it what it may,
he had every facility given him to remain under lock and key, with a
chair, a table, a mattress in a corner, and a litter of fallen plaster
on the floor, in an irrational state of funk, and keeping up his pecker
with such tonics as Mariani dispensed. This lasted till the evening of
the third day, when, after letting out a few horrible screams, he found
himself compelled to seek safety in flight from a legion of centipedes.
He burst the door open, made one leap for dear life down the crazy
little stairway, landed bodily on Mariani's stomach, picked himself up,
and bolted like a rabbit into the streets. The police plucked him off
a garbage-heap in the early morning. At first he had a notion they were
carrying him off to be hanged, and fought for liberty like a hero, but
when I sat down by his bed he had been very quiet for two days. His lean
bronzed head, with white moustaches, looked fine and calm on the pillow,
like the head of a war-worn soldier with a child-like soul, had it not
been for a hint of spectral alarm that lurked in the blank glitter of
his glance, resembling a nondescript form of a terror crouching silently
behind a pane of glass. He was so extremely calm, that I began to
indulge in the eccentric hope of hearing something explanatory of the
famous affair from his point of view. Why I longed to go