LITMIR.BIZ

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and the authorities attend a little to police matters, our salteador takes a summersault aboard his dainty craft, and goes slaving, pirating, or, at the least, pearl fishing. If these guests are out of the same cask, by George! I am going to pass a pleasant evening!"

      But there arose no question of the sale of the Burlonilla, or of anything connected with business. That was put off till the morrow, after the Spanish-American custom.

      But there did come up a topic of general interest – gaming. The American-Hispanics are inveterate gamblers; it is their dominant passion. After having chatted and drank, amid the consumption of innumerable cigars, someone proposed a monte, a suggestion thrown out only to be caught at a bound with enthusiasm.

      Other friends of don Stefano had dropped in, so that the Englishman found more than a corporal's guard arrayed against him. The collection now was composed of upwards of a score.

      A table happened to have the orthodox green cloth upon it, where the social "tiger" is prone to roam: new cards, sealed, of course, were brought in, and the sport began.

      Without being positively a player, Mr. Gladsden had the blood in his veins of his grandfather, who was a noted card player, a contemporary of Fox and Selwyn. Besides, he understood that he might offend if he stood aloof.

      The stakes were, at the outset, moderate, but gradually swelling, they soon attained staggering proportions, some of the points running up to a hundred and even a hundred and fifty ounces. The consequence was that in less than a couple of hours almost all the tilters were cleaned out, and had to become mere lookers-on. At midnight chance – if it were chance – arranged it that only two players were facing each other: don Aníbal of the Cortes Family, as he called himself at present, and Mr. Gladsden. The gallery, as the surrounding bystanders of a game are styled, cooped the pair in so that the European could not easily have withdrawn. All the time the master of the goleta had been a loser, and the Englishman having been luck favoured, was on the contrary supplied with considerable funds, which elicited many a covetous glance.

      "Why!" ejaculated the pretended Chilian, with admirably feigned surprise, "We two are left facing one another."

      "So we are!" returned Mr. Gladsden, thinking, with all the possible mischances, he was more agreeably placed here vis-à-vis with the gentleman of the night, than clinging on a bar outside the top of a tower fifty feet high.

      "Shall we two go it alone, Captain?"

      "I was just going to ask the favour, Captain."

      The other "captain" nodded and grinned under his long hook nose, to the banker and others at hand, as much as to say, "Now I have my gentleman precisely in the corner I have been driving him to."

      It was the Englishman's turn to cut.

      "How's the play?" he inquired.

      "Will you venture all?" the highwayman leader returned in a mocking way.

      "Why should I not? You have so far afforded me so much hearty entertainment that I am entirely at your disposal."

      Don Aníbal made a grimace not unlike that when the marvellous shot had allowed the last speaker to drop out of the swing of his navaja.

      "Even in case I risk the whole heap?" resumed Matasiete, laying his long fingers out on the pillar of gold coin before him.

      "As your lordship desires, though it is a mistake."

      "How so?"

      "Because I am in luck's way lately," returned Mr. Gladsden, significantly. "You always lose pitted against me."

      "Do you really think that run will last?"

      "I am willing to wager on it," was the reply, in the determined tone of an Englishman to whom, indeed, a bet is the ultima ratio.

      "¡Caray!" exclaimed the arch-bandit, piqued, "Your remark decides me, all goes on the dos de espadas, two of spades. Is it a go?"

      The Spanish-Americans are fine players, they lose or gain ever so large sums without wincing. As the spectators uttered a cry of admiration for him who was more or less their lion, Gladsden resolved to prove that he could gamble as well as the best of them.

      "Señor Don Aníbal, you'll excuse the rest," he said, impudently, like a man who pretty well knew that he had not a friend in the crowd, as he presented his adversary, in all senses of the word, with the cards; "do you mind shuffling them yourself?"

      "What for, Señor?" holding his hands away.

      "Oh, it is not merely because I believe you good at shuffling, but because things are getting serious, and it is important after all that has taken place between us that you should be convinced that I play fair, and that nothing but my better fortune thwarts you."

      Don Stefano turned pale; several of the guests whispered to one another, probably seeing that twenty to one on a ground of their own choosing was rather contrary to the character of a blue-blooded caballero. One of them even lifted up his voice, saying:

      "He acts like a perfect gentleman."

      Gladsden bowed to him, though he fully believed he recognised in him the suggester on a memorable occasion that the author of the death of the late Pepillo Santa Maria should be roasted alive.

      Captain de Luna also bowed, but to his opponent, took the cards, shuffled them, and presented them with grace. Gladsden laid the cards on the board, and turning to no one in particular, said:

      "Do me the honour to cut them, Señor."

      Someone obeyed the request, and the English player began to deal. A deathlike stillness reigned at once as by enchantment in the drawing room so well peopled. Spite of their villainy, the spectators of the coolness of the Englishman alone in the tiger's lair were impressed by it in his favour, and, though the most of them, such as appertained directly to Matasiete's band, at least, would have fallen on him without reluctance on the road back to Guaymas, here they registered a vow to let him have a good show of fun for his money without interference.

      Don Aníbal had staked on the two of spades; the other sought to produce the five of clubs (cinco de Bastos) to win; in other words, that card ought to come out of the pack to him before his adversary received the one he called to appear. But after quite twenty of the parallelograms of pasteboard had been thrown on the table one after another, neither of the two cards designated had appeared; but everyone felt they were on the nick.

      At the moment when Gladsden was about to show the face of a card between his fingers, the captain of banditti, and of the so-called Chilian cutter, checked his action, saying —

      "Stay half a minute, please."

      "What's your pleasure?"

      "Perhaps to give you one. Did not I hear don Stefano say something about your looking out to buy a pleasure vessel?"

      "I even thought that I might make a yacht of – "

      "Of the goleta in the port, of the Burlonilla– of my vessel?"

      "There is no other worth a biscuit, certainly! Why the question now?" inquired the European with some surprise.

      "I tell you what; if you will consent, I will add the Little Joker, all standing, to my pile, against twenty-five thousand dollars. What do you say to that proposition?"

      CHAPTER IX.

      THE WAY LAYERS

      "What do I say to that offer?" returned Gladsden; "That it is a queer one, not to say a mad one! Señor, I am morally certain that you would lose your ship."

      "You mean, you refuse," triumphantly, whilst the auditors smiled flatteringly on their leader for having "bluffed" the foreigner.

      "Oh, no, since you insist on it," replied the latter, coldly, though he felt his heart contract within him; "but since I have set out to show I can play cards, I'll sell you the present turn up for ten thousand!"

      "Don't! Don't do anything of the sort!" interrupted the host, turning pale. "I'll give you fifteen thousand for it myself!"

      Конец

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