by L. A. Meyer
"Señor, I must protest!" says Higgins, stepping between us.
The Lieutenant turns to Higgins. "What? You are now protective of your girl divers? How benevolent of you. When we met before, I thought you said they were ... expendable." His eyes are hooded as he looks about our deck. "But no matter. I am here to tell you that my Captain will expect 15 percent of whatever amount you sell your cargo for. I will direct you into the market area, where you will dispose of the sponges, and I will keep an eye on the proceeding and then will expect immediate payment. Otherwise, you will not leave this harbor."
"Ah," I say, unable to resist, "la mordida, the bribe, the little bite, as we who know Spanish ways call it."
"Or you could call it port fees. Call it what you want, chica. You there, get your men into a boat and start rowing this ship over to that dock right there."
Higgins nods to John Thomas and our lifeboat is put in. A bowline is fastened to the bowsprit of the Nancy B., and the oars are manned.
I suspect that this man resents being sent to do this trifling little job and he is smarting under the indignity of it all. Males and their sense of worth and honor, I swear. I decide to play upon that.
"You serve your master well...muchacho," I say, putting on the Lawson Peabody Look and bringing the full force of it to bear upon him.
He stiffens. Stung by my calling him "boy," and by the snickers of his men who have overheard this little exchange, he whirls around and puts his face in mine. I keep the Look in place and hold his gaze as he hisses at me, "My name is Juan Carlos Cisneros y Siquieros, Lieutenant in His Most Catholic Majesty's Royal Navy. You will address me as such in the future, unless you wish to have this ilthy boat impounded. Comprende, puta?"
"Does your mother know how you treat helpless muchachas, Juan Carlos?" I puff up and ask. "And how you call them foul names? Does she?"
"You dare to stain the name of my sainted mother with your whore's tongue?" he replies, taken aback by the turn in the exchange.
"Does she? I should think she would be a little ashamed of you, Juan Carlos," I say. Well steamed now, I poke my finger in his chest. "She would, if she thought she had raised you right."
He makes a choking sound and lifts his hand as if to strike me across the face for my impudence, and I, not taking my eyes off his for even an instant, put my chin in the air and get ready for the blow.
But it does not come. Instead, Dr. Sebastian speaks up. "Do not strike her, Señor. I will lodge a protest with the United States consul. I am a well-known and respected scientist and my words carry weight and there will be some degree of trouble for you."
Juan Carlos glowers and looks over at the Doctor.
"And in return, I will give my assistant a sound beating and advise her to watch her tongue when she is speaking to a Spanish gentleman."
That defuses the situation. Male honor is served. Lieutenant Cisneros lowers his hand, but I can tell he is still furious.
"I am done with this! Tell your peones to put their backs into it. Get this stinking boat over to that dock. Now!"
"Por supuesto, Teniente Cisneros," I purr with a slight, mocking curtsy. "Sin duda."
He turns abruptly away, to supervise getting us into port.
Davy, Tink, John Thomas, and McGee bend to their task and the Nancy B. is towed into her berth and tied up. We find ourselves moored next to a huge market plaza. Very convenient, I'm thinking, and almost worth the 15 percent gouge.
"There is the sponge exchange. You will sell yours there," says the Spanish officer. "Make it quick. I grow quickly bored with the small doings of common tradesmen. I have better things to do."
I nod to Higgins and he bounds over to deal with the sponge factotum. The Lieutenant goes with him, and after speaking to the sponge merchant, no doubt to make sure he gets his proper cut, he then ducks into a nearby tavern.
Ah-ha.
After my rigging has been stripped clean of dried-out sponge, which is delivered to market and sold, Higgins returns with the money the sponges brought. Not much—three hundred and fifty pesos—but not too bad. It will pay for several nights on the town for me and my crew.
"Best count out the bribe money, Higgins, for I see our taxman is returning," I say. Lieutenant Cisneros has left the tavern and, after checking with the sponge merchant on how much he paid us, is heading back to the wharf. "Put it in my hand. I want to be the one to give it to him."
When his boots again thump on my deck, I see that Juan Carlos has recovered his male pride, his precious machismo. Nothing like a few slugs of rum to restore your manhood, eh, hombre?
"Give me Captain Morello's money and I will leave this dirty scow," he says, his hand out.
I dump the coins into his palm, being very careful not to touch him. "La mordida, muchacho del marinero," I say. "Take it on your knees to la rata gorda, who is so much, much bigger than you, el ratón chico."
The little mouse does not take the bait. Instead he picks a small gold piece from the pile in his hand and holds it before my face. "You got the price for your sponges, but what is the price for you, chiquita? Hmmm? Ten pesos for an hour, down below, hey?"
"Were I for sale, it would certainly not be for ten pesos, Señor," I reply, nose in air. "Is our business concluded? If so, please leave my ship."
"Your ship? Ah ... and I thought you were a simple sponge diver."
Damn, I think, instantly regretting my words, I'm risking our cover.
"It is my only home, which is why I refer to it so," I say, and cast down the eyes.
"Ha!" he says, apparently satisfied with that and pleased with the sight of my bowed head. "But we shall see about you later, believe me. You have not seen the last of me yet."
We watch him go off in the San Cristobal's boat, to return to his ship.
"Well, that was intense," observes Dr. Sebastian. "Perhaps you should not have baited him so. He could cause us trouble."
"I couldn't help myself, he was so insufferably arrogant," I say in my defense. "But then, I have met much worse ... and he is very good-looking."
"You've got to get over that someday, Miss," says Higgins, "equating good looks with good character."
"Oh, I know, Higgins," I say, with a heavy sigh. "I have only to look at Flashby—handsome as a god but rotten to the core. So I know, but still ... Enough of Lieutenant Cis-neros and all his ilk. Get everyone paid up and then let's hit this town."
Higgins sets up at the mess table and doles out the coins from our sponge sale. John Thomas and Smasher McGee scoop up their pay and head off to Havana's lower depths. "Back in two days, you swabs!" I shout after their rapidly retreating forms. "Or I'll leave you here and I mean it!"
Jim Tanner lost the draw and so will remain with the ship this day and night. Due to health, Joannie is confined to quarters against all her protests, and Daniel has elected to stay with her. Good lad, I'm thinking. And Jemimah has appeared on deck with the bag of her possessions over her shoulder.
I had directed Higgins to give her not only her share of the sponge take, but also her regular pay for the time she had spent with us, without deductions.
"So, Jemimah," I say, as she goes to the gangway, "if you do not come back to us, enjoy your freedom. I know it was late in coming, but it should still be sweet."
She puts her dark gaze upon me. "I thank you, girl, for what you done for me. I will now go see what I will see." Joannie and Daniel stand next to her, pouting. She reaches out her hand and ruffles both of their heads. "You two be good, now, y'hear?"
"But you ain't told us what all happened to Brother Rabbit and Brother Fox and Brother Bear, Jemimah," wails Joannie. "Brother Fox had Brother Rabbit in the cook pot and ... and you just can't leave him there. You can't just go and not come back!"
"Oh, child, someone else'll tell you them old stories. Your Aunt Jemimah's gotta go now. Gotta go and see what's out there."
She turns and steps off the Nancy B. and disappears into the marketplace crowd.
I shoo the kids
back into my cabin. "You two, clean up this room. Dust every surface. I'll inspect with a white glove when I get back, and woe to your backsides should I find any smudge. Tomorrow you may be allowed off if I find all well."
I know they did not want to see Jemimah going away forever, so it's best their bodies and minds are occupied.
Dr. Sebastian has dressed and gone off to meet with both his scientific and his intelligence contacts.
Davy and Tink are spruced up and ready to go.
I stick my finger into Davy's chest and say, "You're a married man now, Davy, and you've got to be good, for Annie's sake."
"But I ain't a married man, Jacky," says Tink, grinning. "And I mean to have some fun."
"We'll see about that." I sniff. "But for now, let us go off together and see what this city has to offer what's left of the Dread Brotherhood of HMS Dolphin."
And away we go into Ciudad de la Habana.
We sample the fare at a few small taverns near the docks—and since neither Tink nor Davy have been in a Spanish port before, I get to introduce the tapas, small, bite-sized bits of food laid out on the bar. And we enjoy them all— well, almost all—they both proclaim themselves disgusted when they see me chew up the little baby octopus, pickled and laced with olive oil and spices. Hey, Dr. Sebastian says they're just clams with legs, so there.
After leaving the last tavern, we find a great arena with many flags all about it and discover that it will host a bullfight, and we decide to attend. Though the boys enjoy it, I don't really. My sympathies lie entirely with the poor bull, who I know ain't got a chance. And the matadors remind me too much of that strutting Lieutenant Juan Carlos Cis-neros y Siquieros. The pageant starts off with the bull being let into the ring. What he finds there, aside from a crowd screaming for his blood, are two picadors, brightly costumed men holding sharp lances, astride horses specially padded to protect them from the bull's horns—the horses that is. The picadors' legs are left unprotected, I suppose for the element of danger. As the bull, already enraged from the beating he has taken in the stall, trots around the ring, the picadors ride up next to him and prick his back with their spears. Blood flows, the bull is sufficently angered, and the matador, bearing his red cape, enters the ring.
I heave a great sigh. It all takes me back to my youth in Cheapside, when the Rooster Charlie Gang and I would go to bull baitings, to work the crowds gathered there. Those proceedings didn't even have a trace of the bloody elegance of this Spanish bullfight where there is a chance that the bull out there could get lucky and the matador could get himself gored right proper and good for him. No, in London the poor bull was just tied to a stake and dogs—big bulldogs and mastiffs and such—were sent in to rip the poor beast apart. Never saw the sport in that, no I didn't. I mean, at the end, the poor helpless bull could only fall to his knees and bawl out his anguish as the dogs ripped out his throat. No, no sport at all—it was all just blood lust. But the crowds did drink a lot of gin and got worked up, so we were sometimes able to beg some tips for running betting slips, and maybe manage to pick a few pockets, too.
I have often wondered how people, even educated, highborn people, could excuse that kind of cruelty to animals. Maybe it goes back to that thing in the Bible where God gave man dominion over the beasts of the ield—I remember Pap Beam reciting that one to me when he and his boys had a rope around my neck and were preparing to string me up—and how the Church holds that animals ain't got souls, which I believe is wrong. I think animals got souls just like us ... and better ones than the ones we got, generally.
I shake myself out of that reverie and return myself to the present. Back here in Cuba, blood is spilled and the bull at last lies dead on the ground, gaily be-ribboned banderillas sticking out of his back. Trumpets blare, the matador parades around twitching his bum, and the ears and tail of the vanquished bull are cut off and presented to some simpering mantilla-clad señorita in the bleachers, and that is that. End of bull, end of contest. Come on, lads, let's get out of here.
We leave the arena and get back out into the plaza and cast about for the next thing to do. There are crowds in the town square and the mood is most festive. I like it. I like it a lot.
"Hey, how 'bout that over there?" asks Davy. I look and see from its sign over the door that it is a tavern called Café Americano, and I see many men going in and some coming out. Hmmmm ... I had overheard talk of this place in the last tavern. Apparently it is a very popular spot.
"Later, lads. We'll come back with my fiddle and whistle and maybe give 'em a few tunes, but right now, let's soak up some more of the local color. The Spanish lands do have their charms, you know. Ah! What's that?"
That is a large building at the side of the square, with many people pouring into it, mostly men. There are posters to either side of the doorway and they proclaim that a certain event is going to take place there.
"C'mon, let's go!" I crow to my mates and lead them into the place. Ah, yes, there's nothing I like better than goin' into a likely spot with my bully boys at my back!
It's a big circular room with a fenced-in pit area. There are tiers of seats all around. Most of the seats are taken, but I manage to elbow my way to the front. Hey, I'm a girl and that gives me some privileges. Davy and Tink worm their way in to stand beside me. I see that the sand in the pit has been raked clean of yesterday's blood and smoothed out. We settle in and wait for the main events. Small girls and boys come bearing trays of wine, rum, and tapas, and we take some and flip coins onto the trays in payment.
At the end of the pit are two closed doors, and a man with a sash across his chest stands in front of them, his arms crossed. Two men sit at a table next to the ring, with an hourglass between them—they will be the judges of the matches. It seems everything is in readiness.
"Did you lads ever go to the cockfights at MacMillan's back in Cheapside, when you were kids?" I ask.
Now, I had seen lots of cockfights back in London when I was runnin' with the Rooster Charlie Gang, and I gotta say they didn't bother me as much as the bull baiting ... or the bear baiting. After all, they were just chickens and doomed for the pot anyway and sometimes us orphans were able to pick up the bodies of the defeated birds. We would take them and wrap them in discarded clay from the potters and then roast them next to the blacksmith's fires till they were done. The clay took the feathers off and then we could pick at the bits of meat, which were wondrous good. Hey, I wasn't raised up proper, so sod off.
"Ah, yes," says Tink, and Davy nods in agreement. "Good pickin's there. Well worth the trouble of sneakin' through the Shankys' turf to get in."
The Shanky Boys were the biggest, meanest gang of street urchins in London, and we generally tried to stay well out of their way. I was glad to find, early in my days as a ship's boy on the Dolphin, that neither Tink nor Davy had been a Shanky, 'cause they were a nasty bunch. Tink, it turned out, had belonged to the Royal Street Rounders, and Davy to the King's Own Cavaliers. We all gave our gangs rough and glorious names, I guess to give us a bit of pride, knowin' that to the good people of London the whole lot of us weren't worth a handful of dirt. But once inside MacMillan's, it was neutral territory, with truce 'tween the gangs, like, 'cause if we got in a fight and raised a ruckus, we'd all get tossed out, and where would the profit be in that for any of us?
"Then we prolly saw each other there, sometimes, me bein' wi' the Rooster Charlie bunch," I says, fallin' back into the old Cockney way o' talkin', as I always do when I'm wi' me mates, or really scared or excited about somethin'.
"Aye," says Davy. "I knew Charlie, but I wouldna noticed you, being a stupid little rag of a girl like you was."
I give him an elbow and I'm about to frost him with a Lawson Peabody Look and comment on how I might've been little, but I warn't stupid, and ain't it strange how things work out sometimes, Common Seaman Jones, when—
"Hey," says Tink. "Looks like it's gonna start."
Sure enough, a trumpet blares a short trill and the doors behin
d the red-sashed man swing open and two men walk out, each clasping a gamecock to his chest. When the men get out into the open, one walks clockwise around the edge of the pit, while the other walks in the other direction.
The man in the red sash speaks up and points to one of the chickens. "Behold ... El Conquistador!" The man holding that particular fighter lifts him up for the scrutiny of the crowd and there are great cheers. El Conquistador has had both his cockscomb and his wattles cut off, making him more fit for battle. He also wears silver spurs over his natural ones—the ones he was born with are a scant half-inch long, while the silver ones are a full two inches and are razor sharp, with needle points. This cock is mainly black with some streaks of white, while the other has streaks of red in his feathers.
Red Sash points to the contender and says, "El Caballero!" and there are cheers for The Cowboy, as well. He, too, is in fighting trim—no cockscomb, no wattles.
"Engage!" The handlers stand facing each other, and holding their gamecocks tightly, they shove them together to get them really mad and in a mood to fight. It works. The cocks crow out their battle cries and struggle to get at each other. Then the men kneel down and wait for the call. There is a rush to get in last-minute bets, and I spot a man nearby naming the odds and taking bets. It seems El Conquistador is the heavy favorite. I hold up two fingers and cry out, "Dos pesos al Conquistador!"
I do like to be part of the action wherever I find myself.
The oddsmaker nods and writes a note on a tiny piece of paper and hands it to me. I give him my two coins and wait for the battle to begin.
"Fight!" shouts Red Sash. The judges turn over the sand glass and the handlers release their birds and step back.
The cocks fly at each other, wings wildly beating, necks stretched out and reaching for the other's throat, while their legs pump furiously trying to plunge their silver spurs into any part of their adversary. Neither succeeds right off, so they step back and strut for a moment, sizing up the enemy, and then they're back at it in a flurry of feathers and cackles. The crowd roars, and so do I. Come on, Conquistador, get him!
