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 mustache). 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), every one 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 welclass="underline" 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 scandalized: they had never seen grown-ups 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 short-sighted, 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: they could all conduct his affairs without him, if they weren’t prepared to treat him with a little consideration.
But who would be less partial? The mate, angry, maintained that to elect one of the buyers was equally objectionable.
Thereon an earthquake began in the fat old lady, and gradually gathered enough force to lift her onto her feet. She took John by the shoulders, and pushed him before her to the scales. Then in a few witty, ringing words she suggested her solution— he should do the weighing.
The audience were pleased: but as soon as John understood he went very red, and wanted to escape. The rest of the children, on the other hand, were eaten with envy.
“Mayn’t I help too?” piped Rachel.
The despairing mate thought he saw just a forlorn hope in this. While John was being instructed, he gathered the other children: and out of the heap of miscellaneous clothing rigged them all out in a sort of fancy dress. Then he gave them the samples to carry round, and the sale began anew.
It had now assumed rather the character of a parochial bazaar. Even the Vicar was present — though less well shaved than he would have been in England, and cunninger-looking. He was one of the only buyers.
The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and minced and pranced and tugged each other’s turbans. But the crowd was a Latin one, not Nordic: and their endearing tricks failed altogether to arouse any interest. The sale went worse than ever.
There was only one exception, and that was the important old lady. Once her attention had been called (by her own act) to the children, it fixed itself on one of them, on Edward. She drew him to her bosom, like a mother in melodrama, and with her hairy mouth gave him three resounding kisses.
Edward could no more have struggled than if caught by a boa. Moreover, the portentous woman fascinated him, as if she had been a boa indeed. He lay in her arms limp, self-conscious, and dejected: but without active thought of escape.
And so the business went on: on the one hand the unheeded drone of the mate, on the other the great creature still keeping up her witticisms, still dominating everything: all of a sudden remembering Edward, and giving him a couple of kisses like so many bombs: then clean forgetting all about him: then remembering him again, and hugging him: then dropping her salts: then nearly dropping Edward: then suddenly twisting round to launch a dart into the crowd behind her — she was the despair of that unhappy auctioneer, who saw lot after lot fall for a tenth of its value, or even find no bidder at all.
Captain Jonsen, however, had his own idea of how to enliven a parochial bazaar that is proving a frost. He went on board, and mixed several gallons of that potion known in alcoholic circles as Hangman’s Blood (which is compounded of rum, gin, brandy, and porter). Innocent (merely beery) as it looks, refreshing as it tastes, it has the property of increasing rather than allaying thirst, and so, once it has made a breach, soon demolishes the whole fort.
This he poured out into mugs, merely remarking that it was a noted English cordial, and gave it to the children to distribute among the crowd.
At once the Cubans began to show more interest in them than when they came bearing samples of arrowroot: and with their popularity their happiness increased, and like rococo Ganymedekins and Hebelettes they darted about the crowd, distributing the enticing poison to all who would.
When he saw what was on foot, the mate wiped his mouth in despair.
“ Oh you fool!” he groaned.
But the captain himself was highly pleased with his ruse: kept rubbing his hands, and grinning, and winking.
“That’ll liven ’em, eh?”
“Wait and see!” was all the mate let himself say. “You just wait and see!”