To satisfy myself that none of these fellows were sent in pursuit of Demetria, I asked our Italian captain who they were and how long they had been on board, and was much relieved to hear that they were fugitives—rebels probably—and had all been concealed for the past three or four days in the ship, waiting to get away from Montevideo.
Towards evening it came on very rough, the wind veering to the south and blowing half a gale, a very favourable wind, as it happened, to take us across this unlovely “Silver Sea,” as the poets of the Plata insist on calling it, with its villainous, brick-red, chopping waves, so disagreeable to bad sailors. Paquíta and Demetria suffered agonies, so that I was obliged to keep with them a good deal. I very imprudently told them not to be alarmed, that it was nothing—only seasickness—and I verily believe they both hated me with all their hearts for a little while in consequence. Fortunately I had anticipated these harrowing scenes, and had provided a bottle of champagne for the occasion; and after I had consumed two or three glassfuls to encourage them, showing how easy this kind of medicine is to take, I prevailed on them to drink the remainder. At length, about ten o’clock in the evening, they began to suspect that their malady was not going to prove fatal, and, seeing them so much better, I went up to get some fresh air. There at the stern still sat the stoical old gaucho, looking extremely miserable.
“Good evening, old comrade,” said I; “will you smoke a cigar?”
“Young master, you seem to have a good heart,” he returned, shaking his head at the proffered cigar, “do, for God’s sake, get me a little rum. I am dying for something to warm my inside and stop my head from going round like a top, but nothing can I get from these jabbering foreign brutes on board.”
“Yes, why not, my old friend,” said I, and, going to the master of the boat, I succeeded in getting a pint of rum in a bottle.
The old fellow clutched it with eager delight and took a long draught. “Ah!” he said, patting first the bottle, then his stomach, “this puts new life into a man! Will this voyage never end, master? When I am on horseback I can forget that I am old, but these cursed waves remind me that I have lived many years.”
I lit my cigar and sat down to have a talk with him.
“Ah, with you foreigners it is just the same—land or water,” he continued. “You can even smoke—what a calm head and quiet stomach you must have! But what puzzles me is this, señor; how you, a foreigner, come to be travelling with native women. Now, there is that beautiful young señora with the violet eyes, who can she be?”
“She is my wife, old man,” said I, laughing, a little amused at his curiosity.
“Ah, you are married then—so young? She is beautiful, graceful, well educated, the daughter of wealthy parents, no doubt, but frail, frail, señor; and some day, not a very distant day—but why should I predict sorrow to a gay heart? Only her face, señor, is strange to me; it does not recall the features of any Oriental family I know.”
“That is easily explained,” I said, surprised at his shrewdness, “she is an Argentine, not an Oriental.”
“Ah, that explains it,” he said, taking another long pull at the bottle. “As for the other señora with you, I need not ask you who she is.”
“Why, who is she?” I returned.
“A Peralta, if there ever was one,” he returned confidently.
His reply disturbed me not a little, for, after all my precautions, this old man had perhaps been sent to follow Demetria.
“Yes,” he continued, with an evident pride in his knowledge of families and faces which tended to allay my suspicions; “a Peralta and not a Madariaga, nor a Sanchez, nor a Zelaya, nor an Ibarra. Do I not know a Peralta when I see one?” And here he laughed scornfully at the absurdity of such an idea.
“Tell me,” I said, “how do you know a Peralta?”
“The question!” he exclaimed. “You are a Frenchman or a German from over the sea, and do not understand these things. Have I borne arms forty years in my country’s service not to know a Peralta! On earth they are with me; if I go to Heaven I meet them there, and in Hell I see them; for when have I charged into the hottest of the fight and have not found a Peralta there before me? But I am speaking of the past, señor; for now I am also like one that has been left on the field forgotten—left for the vultures and foxes. You will no longer find them walking on the earth; only where men have rushed together sword in hand you will find their bones. Ah, friend!” And here, overcome with sad memories, the ancient warrior took another drink from his bottle.
“They cannot all be dead,” said I, “if, as you imagine, the señora travelling with me is a Peralta.”
“As I imagine!” he repeated scornfully. “Do I not know what I am talking about, young sir? They are dead, I tell you—dead as the past, dead as Oriental independence and honour. Did I not ride into the fight at Gil de los Medanos with the last of the Peraltas, Calixto, when he received his baptism of blood? Fifteen years old, señor, only fifteen, when he galloped into the fight, for he had the light heart, the brave spirit, and the hand swift to strike of a Peralta. And after the fight our colonel, Santa Coloma, who was killed the other day at San Paulo, embraced the boy before all the troops. He is dead, señor, and with
