Time was, these little ports of the Canal de Guaniguanico had been pretty prosperous, as bases for pirates: but it was a fleeting prosperity. There came the heroic attack of an American squadron under Captain Allen, in 1823, on the Bay of Sejuapo, their headquarters. From that blow (although it took many years to take full effect) the industry never really recovered: it dwindled and dwindled, like hand-weaving. One could make money much faster in a city like Havana, and with less risk (if less respectably). Piracy had long since ceased to pay, and should have been scrapped years ago: but a vocational tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased to be economic, in a decadent form. Now, Santa Lucia—and piracy—continued to exist because they always had: but for no other reason. Such a haul as the Clorinda did not come once in a blue moon. Every year the amount of land under cultivation dwindled, and the pirate schooners were abandoned to rot against the wharves or ignominiously sold as traders. The young men left for Havana or the United States. The maidens yawned. The local grandees increased in dignity as their numbers and property dwindled: an idyllic, simple-minded country community, oblivious of the outer world and of its own approaching oblivion.
“I don’t think I should like to live here,” John decided, when they got back to the ship.
Meanwhile the cargo had been unloaded onto the quay: and after the siesta a crowd of about a hundred people gathered round, poking and discussing. The auction was about to begin. Captain Jonsen tramped about rather in the way of everybody, but especially annoying the mate by shouting contrary directions every minute. The latter had a ledger, and a number of labels with numbers on them which he was pasting onto the various bales and packages. The sailors were building a kind of temporary stage—the thing was to be done in style.
Every moment the crowd increased. Because they all talked Spanish it was a pantomime to the children: like puppets acting, not like real people moving and talking. So they discovered what a fascinating game it is to watch foreigners, whose very simplest words mean nothing to you, and try to guess what they are about.
Moreover, these were all such funny-looking people: they moved about as if they were kings, and spat all the time, and smoked thin black cigars, the blue smoke of which ascended from their enormous hats as from censers.
At one moment there was a diversion—the crowd suddenly gaped, and there staggered onto the stage the whole crew of the schooner carrying a huge pair of scales: it was always on the point of being too much for them, and running suddenly away with them in another direction.
There were quite a number of ladies in the crowd—old ones, they seemed to the children. Some were thin and dried up, like monkeys: but most were fat, and one was fatter than all of them and treated with the greatest respect (perhaps for her moustache). She was the wife of the Chief Magistrate—Señora del Illustrious Juzgado del Municipal de Santa Lucia, to give her her title. She had a rocking-chair of suitable strength and width, which was carried by a short squinting negro and set in the very middle of the scene, right in front of the platform. There she throned herself: and the negro stood behind her, holding a violet silk sunshade over her head.
No one can doubt that she immediately became the most noticeable thing in the picture.
She had a powerful bass voice, and when she uttered some jocundity (as she repeatedly did), everyone heard it, however much they were chattering among themselves.
The children, as was their custom, wormed their way without any excess of civility through the crowd and grouped themselves round her throne.
The captain either did not know, or suddenly refused to know, a single word of Spanish: so the auctioneering devolved on the mate. The latter mounted the stage: and with a great assumption of competence began.
But auctioneering is an art: it is as easy to write a sonnet in a foreign tongue as to conduct a successful auction. One must have at one’s command eloquence without a hitch: the faculty of kindling an audience, amusing them, castigating them, converting them, till they rattle out increments as a camp-meeting rattles out Amens: till they totally forget the worth (and even the nature) of the lot, and begin to take a real pride in a long run of bidding—as a champion does in a long break at billiards.
This little Viennese had been to a good school, it is true: for he had once resided in Wales, where one sees auctioneering in its finest flower. In Welsh, or English, or even in his native tongue, he could have acquitted himself fairly well: but in Spanish, just that margin of power was lacking to him. The audience remained stern, cold, critical, bidding grudgingly.
As if this language difficulty were not in itself enough, there sat that overpowering old dame on her throne, distracting with her jokes whatever vestige of attention he might otherwise have managed to arouse.
When the third lot of coffee came to be dealt with, there was even the beginning of a rather nasty row. The children were highly scandalised: they had never seen grownups being rude to one another before. The captain had undertaken the weighing: and it was something to do with a habit he had of leaning against the scales while he read them. Being shortsighted, he could see the figures much more clearly like that: but it displeased the buyers, and they had a lot to say about it.
The captain, mortified, wrung his hands, and began to answer them in Danish. They rejoined in Spanish even more stingingly. He stumped off in a sulk:
