The tables were well served. There were strange drinks especially provided for foreign sailors. A dandy sailor from Bilboa could have been supplied there with a helada. People drank stout there, as at Greenwich; or brown gueuse, as at Antwerp.
Masters of vessels who came from long voyages and privateersmen sometimes appeared at the captains’ table, where they exchanged news. “How are sugars? That commission is only for small lots.—The brown kinds, however, are going off. Three thousand bags of East India, and five hundred hogsheads of Sagua.—Take my word, the opposition will end by defeating Villèle.—What about indigo? Only seven serons of Guatemala changed hands.—The Nanino-Julia is in the roads; a pretty three-master from Brittany.—The two cities of La Plata are at loggerheads again.—When Monte Video gets fat, Buenos Aires grows lean.—It has been found necessary to transfer the cargo of the Regina-Cœli, which has been condemned at Callao.—Cocoas go off briskly.—Caraque bags are quoted at one hundred and thirty-four, and Trinidad’s at seventy-three.—It appears that at the review in the Champ de Mars, the people cried, ‘Down with the ministers!’—The raw salt Saladeros hides are selling—ox-hides at sixty francs, and cows’ at forty-eight.—Have they passed the Balkan?—What is Diebitsch about?—Aniseed is in demand at San Francisco. Plagniol olive oil is quiet.—Gruyère cheese, in bulk, is thirty-two francs the quintal.—Well, is Leon XII dead?” etc., etc.
All these things were talked about and commented on aloud. At the table of the customhouse and coastguard officers they spoke in a lower key.
Matters of police and revenue on the coast and in the ports require, in fact, a little more privacy, and a little less clearness in the conversation.
The sea-captains’ table was presided over by an old captain of a large vessel, M. Gertrais-Gaboureau. M. Gertrais-Gaboureau could hardly be regarded as a man; he was rather a living barometer. His long life at sea had given him a surprising power of prognosticating the state of the weather. He seemed to issue a decree for the weather tomorrow. He sounded the winds, and felt the pulse, as it were, of the tides. He might be imagined requesting the clouds to show their tongue—that is to say, their forked lightnings. He was the physician of the wave, the breeze, and the squall. The ocean was his patient. He had travelled round the world like a doctor going his visits, examining every kind of climate in its good and bad condition. He was profoundly versed in the pathology of the seasons. Sometimes he would be heard delivering himself in this fashion—“The barometer descended in to three degrees below tempest point.” He was a sailor from real love of the sea. He hated England as much as he liked the ocean. He had carefully studied English seamanship, and considered himself to have discovered its weak point. He would explain how the Sovereign of differed from the Royal William of , and from the Victory of . He compared their build as to their forecastles and quarterdecks. He looked back with regret to the towers upon the deck, and the funnel-shaped tops of the Great Harry of —probably regarding them from the point of view of convenient lodging-places for French cannonballs. In his eyes, nations only existed for their naval institutions. He indulged in some odd figures of speech on this subject. He considered the term “The Trinity House” as sufficiently indicating England. The “Northern Commissioners” were in like manner synonymous in his mind with Scotland; the “Ballast Board,” with Ireland. He was full of nautical information. He was, in himself, a marine alphabet and almanac, a tariff and low-water mark, all combined. He knew by heart all the lighthouse dues—particularly those of the English coast—one penny per ton for passing before this; one farthing before that. He would tell you that the Small Rock Light which once used to burn two hundred gallons of oil, now consumes fifteen hundred. Once, aboard ship, he was attacked by a dangerous disease, and was believed to be dying. The crew assembled round his hammock, and in the midst of his groans and agony he addressed the chief carpenter with the words, “You had better make a mortise in each side of the main caps, and put in a bit of iron to help pass the top ropes through.” His habit of command had given to his countenance an expression of authority.
It was rare that the subjects of conversation at the captains’ table and at that of the customhouse men were the same. This, however, did happen to be the case in the first days of that month of February to which the course of this history has now brought us. The three-master Tamaulipas, Captain Zuela, arrived from Chile, and bound thither again, was the theme of discussion at both tables.
At the captains’ table they were talking of her cargo; and at that of the customhouse people, of certain circumstances connected with her recent proceedings.
Captain Zuela, of Copiapo, was partly a Chilean and partly a Columbian. He had taken a part in the War of Independence in a true independent fashion, adhering sometimes to Bolivar, sometimes to Morillo, according as he had found it to his interest. He had enriched himself by serving all causes. No man in the world could have been more Bourbonist, more Bonapartist, more absolutist, more liberal, more atheistical, or more devoutly catholic. He belonged to that great and renowned party which may be called the Lucrative party. From time to time he made his appearance in France on commercial voyages; and if report spoke truly, he willingly gave a passage to fugitives of any kind—bankrupts or political refugees, it was all the same to him, provided they could pay.
