Many a jest had Francisca to bear, after this evening, from her sister, in consequence of a new taste that seized her, for constant rides on the Paseo, and nightly visits to parties or the theatre, in her unsuccessful endeavors to again meet with the gallant of the governor’s ball, who never since had been absent from her mind.
But she was not soon destined to enjoy this pleasure, which was now the great hope of her life. For with all the impetuosity and ardor of her nature and climate, she had yielded to this acquaintance of a night, the rich and inappreciable treasure of her fond heart’s first love.
My fair readers may charge Francisca with want of modesty, or proper maiden delicacy, in thus yielding her young affections to the first assault; but they will unfairly judge her, and do wrong to the devoted, passionate, and enthusiastic daughters of the torrid zone, whose blood, scorning the well-regulated, curbed, and restrained pulsations of their more northern sisterhood, flows, flashes, bounds through their veins, with the impetuosity of an Alpine torrent, but with the depth and strength of a mighty river.
Their heart is in reality the seat of their life; all else, prudence, judgment, selfishness, every thing, bows to its dictates; but in this love they are constant, devoted, self-sacrificing, changing their feelings but with life.
[1] Hermanita cara, mi alma—Dear sister, my soul.
I heed not the monarch, I fear not the law; I’ve a compass to steer by, A dagger to draw. Song.
In a secluded cove, formed by a bend in a small river, that empties its waters into the sea a few miles from Havana, whose mouth, bare thirty yards in width, would scarce be discovered by a stranger, or casual observer, so rankly and luxuriously do the mangrove-bushes grow upon its banks, and even in the water, that sailing within a hundred feet of the shore, no break or indentation is visible in the line of vegetation, lay at anchor one of the most beautiful and symmetrical top-sail schooners that ever left the port of Baltimore.
The great tautness and beautiful proportion of her masts, the length of her black fore-yards, the care displayed in the furl of her sails, and the tautness and accuracy with which her rigging was set up, would have convinced one at a distance that she was a man-of-war; this impression would have been strengthened, upon a nearer approach, by the fresh coat of jet-black paint upon her splendidly modeled hull, and the appearance of seven pieces of bright brass ordnance; one a long eighteen, on a pivot amidships, the others short carronades, three a side, ranged along her spotless deck, holy-stoned until it was as white as chalk; the ornamental awning stretched fore and aft, the neatness and care with which the running gear was stopped and flemished down, and the bright polish of all the metal work inboard, also indicated the authority and discipline of the pennant.