I ain't never going
to forgit the day he gave us Portia's speech. We were just under
the tropic, and the day was a scorcher. There was mostly men folk
aboard, and we lay around the deck in our pajamas, while Billy--
Gaston Maundeville, dressed in striped red and white pajamas--clum
up in that bally pulpit, with the ship's Shakespeare in his hands,
an' let us have--'The quality o' mercy isn't strained; it droppeth
as the genteel dew from heavun.' Laugh, I tell you I was sore with
it. Lord, how we guyed him! An' the more we guyed and the more we
laughed, the more serious he got and the madder he grew. He said
he was interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines."
And so the Captain ran through that wild, fiery tale--of fighting
and loving, buccaneering and conspiring; mandolins tinkling,
knives clicking; oaths mingling with sonnets, and spilled wine
with spilled blood. He told them of Isham's knife duel with the
Mexican lieutenant, their left wrists lashed together; of the
"battle of the thirty" in the pitch dark of the Custom House
cellar; of Senora Estrada's love for Isham; and all the roll and
plunge of action that make up the story of "In Defiance of
Authority."
At the end, Blix's little eyes were snapping like sparks; Condy's
face was flaming, his hands were cold, and he was shifting his
weight from foot to foot, like an excited thoroughbred horse.
"Heavens and earth, what a yarn!" he exclaimed almost in a
whisper.
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