A Mainsail Haul/Don Alfonso's Treasure Hunt
DON ALFONSO'S TREASURE HUNT
NOW in the old days, before steam, there was a young Spanish buck who lived in Trinidad, and his name was Don Alfonso. Now Trinidad is known, in a way of speaking, among sailormen, as Hell's Lid, or Number One Hatch, by reason of its being very hot there. They've a great place there, which they show to folk, where it's like a cauldron of pitch. It bubbles pitch out of the earth, all black and hot, and you see great slimy workings, all across, like ropes being coiled inside. And talk about smell there!—talk of brimstone!—why, it's like a cattle-ship gone derelict, that's what that place is like.
Now by reason of the heat there, the folk of those parts—a lot of Spaniards mostly, Dagoes and that—they don't do nothing but just sit around. When they turn out of a morning they get some yellow paper and some leaf tobacco, and they rolls what they calls cigarellers and sticks them in their ears like pens. That's their day's work, that is—rolling them yellow cigarellers. Well, then, they set around and they smokes—big men, too, most of them—and they put flowers in their hats—red roses and that—and that's how they pass their time.
Now this Don Alfonso he was a terror, he was; for they've got a licker in those parts. If you put some of it on a piece of paint-work—and this is gospel that I'm giving you—that paint it comes off like you was using turps. Now Don Alfonso he was a terror at that licker—and that's the sort of Dago-boy Alfonso was.
Now Alfonso's mother was a widow, and he was her only child, like in the play.
Now one time, when Don Alfonso was in the pulperia (that's Spanish for grog-shop), he was a-bluin' down that licker the same as you or I would be bluin' beer. And there was a gang of Dagoes there, and all of them chewing the rag, and all of them going for the vino—that's the Spanish name for wine—v-i-n-o. It's red wine, vino is; they give it you in port to save water.
Now among them fancy Dagoes there was a young Eye-talian who'd been treasure-hunting, looking for buried treasure, in that Blue Nose ship which went among the islands. Looking for gold, he'd been, gold that was buried by the pirates. They're a gay crew, them Blue Nose fellers. What'd the pirates bury treasure for? Not them. It stands to reason. Did you ever see a shellback go reeving his dollars down a rabbit-warren? It stands to reason. Golden dollar coins indeed. Bury them customs fellers if you like. Now this young Dago, he was coming it proud about that treasure. In one of them Tortugas, he was saying, or off of the Chagres, or if not there among them smelly Samballs, there's tons of it lying in a foot of sand with a skellinton on the top. They used to kill a nigger, he was saying, when they buried their blunt, so's his ghost would keep away thieves. There's a sight of thieves, ain't there, in them smelly Samballs? An' niggers ain't got no ghosts, not that I ever heard.
Oh, he was getting gay about that buried treasure. Gold there was, and silver dollars and golden jewels, and I don't know what all. "And I knows the place," he says, "where it's all lying," and out he pulls a chart with a red crost on it, like in them Deadwood Dicky books. And what with the vino and that there licker, he got them Dagoes strung on a line. So the end of it was that Don Alfonso he came down with the blunt. And that gang of Dagoes they charters a brigantine—she'd a Bible name to her, as is these Dagoes' way—and off they sails a galley-vaunting looking for gold with a skellinton on the top. Now one dusk, just as they was getting out the lamps and going forward with the kettle, they spies a land ahead and sings out "Land, O!" By dark they was within a mile of shore, hove-to off of a light-house that was burning a red flare. Now the old man he comes to Alfonso, and he says, "I dunno what land this may be. There's no land due to us this week by my account. And that red flare there; there's no light burning a flare nearer here than Sydney." "Let go your anchor," says Don Alfonso, "for land there is, and where there's land there's rum. And lower away your dinghy, for I'm going in for a drink. You can take her in, mister, with two of the hands, and then lay aboard till I whistle." So they lower the dinghy, and Don Alfonso takes some cigarellers, and ashore he goes for that there licker.
Now when he sets foot ashore, and the boat was gone off, Don Alfonso he walks up the quay in search of a pulperia. And it was a strange land he was in, and that's the truth. Quiet it was, and the little white houses still as corfins, and only a lamp or two burning, and never a sound nor a song. Oh, a glad lad was Don Alfonso when he sees a nice little calaboosa lying to leeward, with a red lamp burning in the stoop. So in he goes for a dram—into the grog-house, into a little room with a fire lit and a little red man behind the bar. Now it was a caution was that there room, for instead of there bein' casks like beer or vino casks, there was only corfins. And the little red man he gives a grin, and he gives the glad hand to Don Alfonso, and he sets them up along the bar, and Alfonso lights a cigareller. So then the Don drinks, and the little red man says, "Salue." And the little red man drinks, and Alfonso says, "Drink hearty." And then they drinks two and two together. Then Alfonso sings some sort of a Dago song, and the little red man he plays a tune on the bones, and then they sets them up again and has more bones and more singing. Then Alfonso says, "It's time I was gettin' aboard"; but the little man says, "Oh, it's early days yet—the licker lies with you." So every time Alfonso tries to go, the little red man says that. Till at last, at dawn, the little red man turned into a little red cock and crowed like a cock in the ox yard. And immejitly the corfins all burst into skellintons, and the bar broke into bits, and the licker blew up like corpse-lights—like blue fire, the same as in the scripters. And the next thing Don Alfonso knowed he was lying on the beach with a head on him full of mill-wheels and the mill working overtime.
So he gets up and sticks his head in the surf, and blows his whistle for the boat to come. But not a sign of a boat puts in, and not a sign of a hand shows aboard, neither smoke nor nothin'. So when he'd blew for maybe an hour he sees a old skellinton of a boat lying bilged on the sand. And he went off in her, paddling with the rudder, and he got alongside before she actually sank.
Now, when he gets alongside, that there brigantine was all rusty and rotted and all grown green with grass. And flowers were growing on the deck, and barnacles were a foot thick below the water. The gulls had nested in her sails, and the ropes drifted in the wind like flags, and a big red rose-bush was twisted up the tiller. And there in the grass, with daisies and such, were the lanky white bones of all them Dagoes. They lay where they'd died, with the vino casks near by and a pannikin of tin that they'd been using as a dicebox. They was dead white bones, the whole crew—dead of waiting for Don Alfonso while he was drinking with the little red man.
So Don Alfonso he kneels and he prays, and "Oh," he says, "that I might die too, and me the cause of these here whited bones, and all from my love of licker! Never again will I touch rum," he says. "If I reach home," he says—he was praying, you must mind—"you'll see I never will." And he hacks through the cable with an axe and runs up the rotten jib by pully-hauly.
Long he was sailing, living on dew and gulls' eggs, sailing with them white bones in that there blossoming old hulk. But at long last he comes to Port of Spain and signals for a pilot, and brings up just as sun was sinking. Thirty long years had he been gone, and he was an old man when he brought the whited bones home. But his old mother was alive, and they lived happily ever after. But never any licker would he drink, except only dew or milk—he was that changed from what he was.