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Updated: May 1, 2025
He spoke in Spanish, and Franci replied in the same language, with a faint voice expressive of acute suffering. "I am very sick, Patron. I go to my bed in a desolated condition." "Come here, and let me look at you!" said the Skipper, imperatively. "Am I a dog, to fetch drink for this beggar brat?" was Franci's next remark, in a more vigorous tone. "Was it for this that I left San Mateo?
"What is the matter with him?" asked the boy, looking after Franci. "I think him slightly a fool," was the reply, as the Skipper puffed leisurely at his cigar. "His parents, worthy people, desired him to be a sailor, but that he can never be. The best sailor is one born for that, and for no other thing; also, a sailor can be made, though not of so fine quality; but of Franci, no.
Drink wine, eat peaches and ice-cream all days, all time. My sister wear gold clothes, trimmed diamonds, when she do her washing. Yes! Like to go there?" and he bent over Lena with an enchanting smile. "Why do you tell such lies?" asked John, whom Franci had not observed, as he was lying in one of the schooner's boats, with a monkey on either arm.
The favourite shells were the conches, of all sizes and varieties, from the huge pink-lipped Tritons of the "Triumph of Galatea," down to fairy things, many-whorled, rainbow-tinted, which were included in the "handful for five cents" which Franci joyously proclaimed at intervals, when he thought the children looked wistful and needed cheering up, since they could not have all they saw.
Franci and Rento had charge of the deck exhibition, but the Skipper kept his station at the head of the gang-plank, and while courteously receiving his visitors, with a word of welcome for each, he looked often up the road to see if his little friend was coming.
It was always a trial to Franci to know that the old miser, as he called Mr. Endymion, was in the cabin, and that he, Franci, must keep watch on deck while this withered anatomy sat on the cabin chairs and drank with the Patron. Franci's way of keeping watch was to lie at full length on the deck with his feet in the air, smoking cigarettes.
"Señor!" said Franci, putting his beautiful head over the rail. "Bring me here the child, hear thou!" "Si, Señor," said Franci. He went forward, and pulling aside a pile of canvas that lay carelessly heaped together in a corner of the deck, disclosed the boy John, curled up in a ball, with one monkey in his arms, and the other sitting on his shoulder.
Good voyage, old 'Nautilus! Go all to the bottom with my blessing, and I dance on the wharf, and marry the pretty Lena, and get all the old miser's money, and wear velvet coats. Ah! Franci, my handsome little boy, why did you let them send you to sea, hearts of stone that they were! You, born to shine, to adorn, to break the hearts of maidens! Why? tell me that!"
"You ever lay a hand on that boy, and it's the last you lay on anybody, understand that?" "Oh, yays!" said Franci, gently, as he pulled John out of the tangle of canvas and ropes. "But I am 'most killed all my life with looking at your ugly face, you old she monkey! A little more killing make not much difference to me."
She would sit very demurely on the after-deck, apparently absorbed in the shells and corals that lay spread before her; and by-and-by, it might be, Franci, who did not suffer from shyness, would venture on something more definite than admiring glances.
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