Steel Belt; or, The Three Masted Goleta. A Tale of Boston Bay

by J. H. Ingraham

  Don Basilio colored and was confused! How could he refuse? The Governor's wish was a command. Donna Elena's was no less so. Yet, with forty men quartered between decks, how could he safely entertain a party on board without their presence being detected; especially as ladies would be of the party who are famous for finding out secrets? He bowed in acquiescence and left his excellency's presence, feeling he had been caught in his own trap; for he had given strict orders to admit no one on board while in port, save the custom-house officer, who when he had gone below stumbled over a small bag of gold which Basilio, knowing his species, had purposely dropped across the step of the companion way. The man took it up and quite quite forgot there was any way leading below. '

  On reaching his vessel Don Basilio consulted with Isidoro, his faithful friend and officer, and it was decided to let the party come on board; and on pretence of showing the governor how the goleta worked propose to run a short distance out of the harbor beyond the Moro.

  The Governor-General and party appeared, in all, including himself, six gentlemen, one of them Don Praticia Garcia and another a priest; and five ladies, Donna Elena Garcia being one of the number. The Governor readily consented to the proposal to run a little ways out of the harbor as the day was fine and a steady six knot wind blowing, and the anchor was weighed and they set sail.

  `Now,' said Basilio to Isidoro in a low tone, `if any discovery is made I have the whole party in my power. I shall not return into the harbor but send the ladies, unless Donna Elena will consent to share my fortunes as my bride, on shore in a boat, keeping the Governor-General and his aids my prisoners.'

  This bold plan he spoke of to Isidoro with a coolness and quiet of manner that was in striking contrast with the daring character of the deed he contemplated.

  But the good star of the Governor-General or the evil star of Don Basilio prevailed to defeat this well-conceived plan of abduction. As the goleta was flying, like a tri-winged bird beneath the overhanging battlements of the Moro Castle with the open sea all before her, they were startled by a loud hail through a trumpet from the skyey height above their heads, commanding the goleta to heave too!

  Surprised at this order, Don Basilio who was engaged in a delightful tete-a-tete with Donna Elena at once obeyed it; and at the same time saying in an under tone to his lieu- tenant,

  `This looks suspicious. Go below and bid the lads be ready to come on deck at a stamp of my foot. I fear mischief.'

  A barge from the castle well filled with soldiers with the captain of the fortress in her, put off and came alongside. His countenance was stern and menacing.

  `Your excellency,' he said as he stepped on deck, speaking in a loud tone, `you have been betrayed! This vessel is a pirate! I take possession of her in the King's name. And I congratulate your excellency and the party present on their escape from the basest lieutenant! '

  `'T is false!' cried Don Basilio indignantly. `I am no pirate!'

  `Seize him!' cried the Governor-General after the captain of the Castle had said in haughty reply, that two pirates who were at work in chains upon the ramparts had given him the information as they saw the captain upon her deck.

  The soldiers had began to board the goleta from the barge when Don Basilio finding affairs had reached a crisis, went below seized his arms, shouted to his men, who led by isidoro poured upon deck cutlass in hand through the companion-way, steerage, main-hatch and fore-castle. The astonishment or the gentlemen who found themselves prisoners, and the soldiers who found themselves confronted by thrice their number of fierce, daring looking young men, cannot be describ ed. There was no resistance. Don Basilio had the victory in his own hand.

  `I am no pirate, I fling the word back with scorn into your teeth, senor captain!' he cried. `I am, your excellency, a patriot! I am a foe to the Spanish rule and would see the fair island of Cuba free! To this I am devoted— I and these men! To this we are sworn. To aid this cause this vessel was constructed! No, senores, I am no free-booter! You are in my power. Ladies, be not alarmed. You shall be set on shore with these gentlemen in the castle's boat now alongside. Gentlemen, you will assist them in and follow yourselves. The boat may return for the soldiers. Nay here is one passing which will hold them.

  The boat which was a lugger, pulled by six men, and capable of holding twenty, was hailed and ordered along side. The soldiers were disarmed and made to enter her, which they did without urging. The ladies, save Donna Elena, had been assisted into the boat. Don Basilio took her hand. She did not withdraw it.

  `Do you despise me? Do you believe me to be a pirate?' he said impassionately.

  `No,' was her firm reply, while tears filled her fine dark eyes.

  `Will you remember me?' he said, tenderly.

  `In my heart, even though we meet no more!'

  `May I hope?'

  `When you prove to me you are only a patriot. '

  `This I may do. You should be a patriot by these words! Your uncle was one!'

  `If you were only a patriot, Don Basilio, I should deem you still an honorable man!'

  `Then believe me honorable. I am only a foe to tyranny!'

  `Then I do not ask you to forget me.'

  `We shall meet again. God bless you, noble Senora!'

  Don Patricio being impatient at this whispered interview with his daughter, he pressed her hand to his lips, and she entered the boat. The Governor General who had been detained last by Isidoro, who addressed him, was about to follow when Don Basilio said, with an ironical smile

  `You, Senor Governor-General are to be my guest to dinner. I cannot let you depart fasting.'

  `Do you dare detain me?' cried his excellency; and drawing his sword to defend himself he sprung to the opposite gangway and leaped into the lugger among the soldiers who at the same moment pushed her off. Don Basilio was about to leap after him, when Isidoro caught him.

  `It would be madness! You will fall short of the boat into the water and be beaten to death with their oars. We must let him escape this time. Before we could put off an armed boat they would be out of our reach. See with what speed both boats are pulling towards the Moro.

  Don Basilio was convinced that to attempt to retake his prisoner would be folly. He saw also that now that the party were no longer on board, his vessel would become a target for the guns of the castle as soon as they could be brought to bear upon it.

  `We must put up with this defeat! Yet he escapes me not! I will wait my time. We must now take care of ourselves. This little affair has been witnessed from the battlements and there are soldiers now ranged upon them. The captain of the fortress shouts for them to fire their musketry down upon our decks. Below every man that can be spared. We must now run the gauntlet. There it comes.'

  His voice, while he was speaking, was drowned by the roar of musketry and the humming and rattling of bullets upon the deck and among the rigging. The helmsman fell dead at his post. Basilio sprung to his place. The goleta was moving about five knots with a flowing sheet, and standing out to sea. A second discharge followed. Only a few shot struck the vessel's deck splintering the planks as they ploughed their angry way across their smooth surface.

  `In a few moments more and we shall be out of reach of this hail-storm,' coolly said the young patriot chief; but it will be only to exchange it for cannon-shot. There goes an eighteen pounder. The shot flies a hundred feet above our main-truck and strikes a half a mile ahead! We must not run out so far as to come within range, but creep along shore. By this means we will escape their heavy guns. The smaller pieces they will depress, perhaps, so as to make some of their shot tell. But this can't be helped. We must let them do their best and we will do ours, Isidoro.'

  The goleta instead of standing boldly out as she had done hauled her wind and hugged the shore so as to keep under the shot of the great guns of the castle. When this manoeuvre was understood at the fortress they ceased firing the heavy cannon which sent the balls too high, and depressing some sixes at an angle of forty-five degrees began to f
ire. But the goleta was each moment changing her situation and after ten minutes firing but two shot had struck her: one entering her main-hatchway and wounding two men; the other passing through the mizzen. She was now out of range, though the firing ceased not for a quarter of an hour afterwards. A man of war brig was now despatched out of the harbor in chase. But the goleta out-sailed her three to two, and night setting in favored her escape. The third day afterwards the three-masted schooner was anchored in a secret bayou concealed by trees that penetrated the land as far as the base of the Vermilion Tower, in the shadow of which she lay protected and defying discovery.

  Don Basilio remamed quiet a few months until the affair should have passed over, and then in disguise by land visited Havana with the double purpose in view of seeking the hand of Donna Elena and planning a way to get the Governor-General into his hands. Here he discovered that the pirates who had denounced him were of the party from whom he had once escaped in his shallop.

  His love was now seemingly more successful than his conspiracy. Of Donna Elena, finding her as he believed—a true patriot, he had unbosomed himself. He made her the confidant of his name, fortune and plans; plans which he had not even yet revealed to his sister or mother. She promised to favor him and aid him. But she advised delay both in love and vengeance, and to this he consented with impatience. At length she told him that if he would bring his vessel round to Havana on a certain day he might take her away in it as his bride to his home, and also bear off the Governor-General as his captive.

  To this plan, though replete with danger Basilio consented; and leaving Havana taking a tender adieu of Donna Elena, he crossed the island to the Vermilion tower. Here he found that his mother had just died. After a suitable time of mourning, he prepared his goleta for sea and informed his sister that he was going to Havana to bring home a bride! He had now been absent several days over the time he had set; and it was to watch for his return from this two-fold expedition of love and filial revenge that Donna Anita had mounted to the summit of the tower.

  CHAPTER VI.

  The distant sail which Jose and his mistress had been watching from the top of the `Traitor's Tower,' had now got abreast of the narrow entrance to the Bay, and was about four miles from them. She was distinctly made out to be a polacca of two masts, and much smaller and a heavier sailer than the goleta.

  `Although it is not El Cinto, senora,' said Jose, when it was plain that it was a stranger, `yet as it is making for the passage into the Bay, perhaps she bears some message from Don Basilio to you.'

  `She can only be a messenger of evil tidings, if she bear not my brother,' said the maiden sorrowfully.

  `She is running direct for the Needle rock, as if she knew the channel. Now if she hauls her wind and puts her helm hard down and runs sharp eastward after she passes the Penas she has some one to pilot who has been in here before. See, my lady! She keeps the channel like an arrow. Now watch her! She has doubled the Needle, and look! See how she turns towards us her broadside and stretches easterly. They are friends! They are friends! Now she keeps away and stands in again to clear the Tiger Rock! There is no mistaking her, Donna Anita! There are friends on board if the vessel is unknown to us.'

  `All this only increases my anxicty and fears' That any of my brother's companions should return in another vessel tells me that danger has befallen him and his. See, she displays a flag.'

  She caught up the glass and looked earnestly. The stranger had now got within the chain of rocks that stretch from one headland nearly to the other across the Bay, and was almost two miles off, standing in under a flowing sheet.

  `What do you make out of the colours, senora? ' asked the old man eagerly.

  `It is the Spanish ensign, with Basilio's penant flying above it. It is lowered again! Hoist the answering signal, Jose. It is my brother. He is safe!'

  In a few minutes a blue and scarlet answering flag was fluttering upon the flag-staff above the tower. With a countenance rediant with joy Donna Anita cried to the old man,

  `Come, Jose, let us fly to the beach and there meet them. I would embrace him the earliest moment.'

  `I fear Don Basilio has had some difficulty, returning in another and inferior craft,' said Jose looking grave.

  `We shall soon hear. Let us hasten to the shore. By the time we reach the end of the path by the water, she will have come to an anchor.'

  With a rapid step they descended from the tower, into the court or patio; and thence by a gate, opening on the side of the Bay, she struck into the forest, closely followed by old Jose, whose less agile limbs could with difficulty keep pace with her swift progress. The way led first through a thick wood, then wound along a precipice for a hundred yards, then descending into a dark ravine, through which it followed the banks of the bayon in which the goleta had been secreted; and after a little while it thence emerged beneath a terrace of gigantic rocks, upon the open beach, upon a level with the blue waters of the bay.

  On reaching the beach Donna Anita saw the vessel only half a mile distant standing in towards the deep water at the mouth of the bayon. She had not brought the spy-glass and vainly strained her eyes to catch a glimpse of her brother upon the polacca's deck!

  Like a huge-winged bird stooping to her nest the vessel as she came near folded her canvass, swept gracefully round and dropt her anchor within a hundred fathoms of the shore where they stood. Donna Anita could see nothing of her brother.

  `Where is he? Do you see him, good Jose?'

  `No, by my faith, senora, I see him not. I behold Don Isidoro, and many more familiar faces. But I discover not Don Basilie. Peradventure he is in the cabin.'

  `I fear the worst. Their countenances are sad! I dare not ask! See, they are letting down a boat! Isidoro and others jump into it! My brother is not of the number. He is slain! He is lost to me forever!

  `Nay, take comfort, Donna Anita! The boat is pulling rapidly towards us. We shall soon know!'

  `I know all already! My heart tells me I have no brother. Speak, Isidoro!' she cried rushing into the water as the boat grounded within a few feet of the beach. `Where is Don Basilio? Where is my brother? Why do I not see him with you? And this strange vessel that you return in! Oh! for the love of heaven torture me not by those sad looks! Speak. Tell me he is dead, and pierce my own bosom.'

  `Don Basilio, lady is not dead. He lives, but is a captive.'

  `Do you say truly that he is not dead but is a captive? Do you dare come back and tell the sister of Don Basilio this? Captive and you have left him. Base coward! Were I a man senor Isidoro, you should not live to tell the tale of your master's captivity twice!'

  `Lady, I am here by his command! Every effort that could be made by man was made to rescue him, but in vain. If you will give me leave I will relate to you the circumstances, as he desired me to do!' and Isidoro stepping on shore walked with her as she paced impetuously up and down the hard white beach.

  `Then he sent you to me! Where does he lie imprisoned?'

  `In the Moro Castle, I grieve to say.'

  `And by whom was this done?'

  `By the Governor-General.'

  `I feared this. I suspected much of this. I knew Basilio meditated avenging our father's bloody death. I had prayed him to let vengeance remain in God's hands. But he never answered me openly but looked dark and menacing. I have feared this. So he made an attempt upon the Governor's life!'

  `No, senora, not upon his life but upon his liberty. He has long been forming a scheme to get him into his power.'

  `A conspiracy. Then will he perish!' she cried clasping her hands in agony. But go on! Let me hear all. For I would know how to act—what steps to take, for Basilio shall not lie in chains while I am free.'

  `The circumstances are briefly these, senora; for he desired me to make you fully acquainted with them. He left here twelve days ago for the double purpose of bringing home as his bride the daughter of Don Pa tricia Garcia and with whom he had become deeply enamored in his first visit to Havana, and as p
risoner his Excelleucy the Governor-General. '

  `Do I hear you, Don Isidoro?'

  `You hear rightly. He had communicated his plan to surprise the Governor to Donna Elena his betrothed who professed herself a warm patriot.'

  `And was she not?'

  `Hear the issue, senora. She entered into his scheme, and promised to aid it by giving a party to the Governor-General; and while he was there to open a secret gate in her father's garden, admitting Don Basilio and his associates. A carriage was to be in waiting to convey both herself and the Governor to the sea-shore, where a boat would take them on board the goleta, which I was to keep lying too off the land within three miles of the city. This plan would have been feasible and would have been successful, if the treachery to which Don Basilio is now the victim, had not stepped in.'

  `Treachery! By whom?'

  `You shall shortly learn, senora. Don Basilio came hither in accordance with the plan between himself and Donna Elena, to man the goleta and proceed to Havana. Twelve days ago he parted from you for this purpose.

  `Only as he told me to bring back a beautiful bride. I knew nothing of all this deep conspiracy, nor his intentions against the governor! Now who was this traitor?'

  `It was none other than Dona Alena, the very lady he had expected to make his wife, and whom he had made a co-partner in his conspiracy!'

  `Is it possible this woman betrayed him?'

  `You shall hear, Senora. We came in sight of Havanna just at sunset, and then shortened sail standing off, so that we might run under the land in the dark. It was the night on which Dona Alena was to give the ball to the Governor-general. Every thing was favorable. As soon as it was dark enough to run into the land, Don Basilio disembarked in a solitary place near the ruins of the old San Mateo, not three miles from the city. He found in waiting, a carriage which, Pablo, one of our men, who had been left behind for the purpose, had driven to the beach to receive him. With six men brave and true, two of them mounted behind and two before, and the other two in the carriage with him, all well armed, he started for the city, which he entered by the Pasco. In a few words, he entered by the private gate, the gardens of the Casa, leaving the coach without and privately met Dona Alena, who was expecting him.