Then he went on triumphantly: “We have fifteen ships and the French twenty smaller vessels. If they were all ours we should not want so many. Forty ships and plenty of brave hearts on board!”
Just as the spark creeps from one piece of timber to the next, the enthusiasm that fired Marcial’s one eye lighted up both my master’s, though dimmed by age. “But the Señorito” (Lord Nelson), added the sailor, “will bring up a great many men too. That is the sort of performance I enjoy: plenty of timbers to fire at, and plenty of gunpowder-smoke to warm the air when it is cold.”
I forgot to mention that Marcial, like most sailors, used a vocabulary of the most wonderful and mongrel character, for it seems to be a habit among seamen of every nation to disfigure their mother tongue to the verge of caricature. By examining the nautical terms used by sailors we perceive that most of them are corruptions of more usual terms, modified to suit their eager and hasty temperament trained by circumstances to abridge all the functions of existence and particularly speech. Hearing them talk it has sometimes occurred to me that sailors find the tongue an organ that they would gladly dispense with.
Marcial, for instance, turned verbs into nouns and nouns into verbs without consulting the authorities. He applied nautical terms to every action and movement, and identified the ideas of a man and a ship, fancying that there was some analogy between their limbs and parts. He would say in speaking of the loss of his eye that his larboard porthole was closed, and explained the amputation of his arm by saying that he had been left minus his starboard cat-head. His heart he called his courage-hold and his stomach his breadbasket. These terms sailors at any rate could understand; but he had others, the offspring of his own inventive genius of which he alone understood the meaning or could appreciate the force. He had words of his own coining for doubting a statement, for feeling sad; getting drunk he always called “putting on your coat” among a number of other fantastical idioms; and the derivation of this particular phrase will never occur to my readers without my explaining to them that the English sailors had acquired among the Spaniards the nickname of “Greatcoats,” so that when he called getting drunk “putting your coat on” a recondite allusion was implied to the favorite vice of the enemy. He had the most extraordinary nicknames for foreign admirals; Nelson he called the Señorito, implying a certain amount of respect for him; Collingwood was Tio Calambre, (Uncle Cramp) which he believed to be an equivalent for the English name; Jervis he called—as the English did too—The Old Fox; Calder was known as Tio Perol (Uncle Boiler) from an association of the name Calder with caldera, a kettle, and by an entirely different process he dubbed Villeneuve, the Admiral of the united fleets, with the name of “Monsieur Corneta,” borrowed from some play he had once seen acted at Madrid. In fact, when reporting the conversations I can recall, I must perforce translate his wonderful phraseology into more ordinary language, to avoid going into long and tiresome explanations.
To proceed, Doña Francisca, devoutly crossing herself, answered angrily:
“Forty ships! Good Heavens! it is tempting Providence; and there will be at least forty thousand guns for the enemies to kill each other.”
“Ah! but Monsieur Corneta keeps the courage-hold well filled!” exclaimed Marcial, striking his breast. “We shall laugh at the Greatcoats this time. It will not be Cape St. Vincent over again.”
“And you must not forget,” added my master eagerly recurring to his favorite hobby, “that if Admiral Córdova had only ordered the San José and the Mejicano to tack to port, Captain Jervis would not now be rejoicing in the title of Earl St. Vincent. Of that you may be very certain, and I have ample evidence to show that if we had gone to port the day would have been ours.”
“Ours!” exclaimed Doña Francisca scornfully. “As if you could have done more. To hear these fire-eaters it would seem as if they wanted to conquer the world, and as to going to sea—it appears that their shoulders are not broad enough to bear the blows of the English.”
“No,” said Marcial resolutely and clenching his fist defiantly. “If it were not for their cunning and knavery … ! We got out against them with a bold front, defying them like men, with our flag hoisted and clean hands. The English never sail wide, they always steal up and surprise us, choosing heavy seas and stormy weather. That is how it was at the Straits, when we were made to pay so dearly. We were sailing on quite confidingly, for no one expected to be trapped even by a heretic dog of a Moor, much less by an Englishman who does the polite thing in a Christian fashion.—But no, an enemy who sneaks up to fight is not a Christian—he is a highwayman. Well now, just fancy, señora,” and he turned to Doña Francisca to engage her attention and goodwill, “we were going out of Cádiz to help the French fleet which was driven into Algeciras by the English.—It is four years ago now, and to this day it makes me so angry that my blood boils as I think of it. I was on board the Real Cárlos, 112 guns, commanded by Ezguerra, and we had with us the San Hermenegildo, 112 guns too, the San Fernando, the Argonauta, the San Agustín, and the frigate Sabina. We were joined by the French squadron of four men-of-war, three frigates and a brigantine, and all sailed out of Algeciras for Cádiz at twelve o’clock at noon; and as
