The following are the names of those who escaped with me in the longboat:
Marc Hislop, mate,
Thomas Lambourne, second mate,
Francis Probart, carpenter,
John Thomas Burnett, ship's cook,
Edward Carlton,
Henry Warren,
Hugh Chute,
Matthew Hipkin,
William Wilkins, usually called "Boy Bill."
As the morning light came in, there appeared to the south-westward a vast bank of mist or cloud which shrouded half the sky, and assumed a variety of beautiful tints when the rising sun shone on it—yellow and saffron, deepening into purple and blue as its masses changed in the contrary currents of air; while to the eastward, in the quarter of the sun's ascension, the rippling ocean shone as if covered with tremulous and glittering plates of mingled gold and green.
A ration of rum-and-water in equal proportions was now served round to each man—the leathern cover of a bung being our only cup, as we had omitted a drinking vessel among our hastily-collected stores. Half of a biscuit given to each constituted our breakfast, and with hope dawning with the day in our hearts, we shipped our oars and pulled stoutly toward the west.
Tom Lambourne steered: the sea was smooth, the wind light, and in our favor; so ere long the mast was shipped, and a sail hoisted to lessen the labor of the rowers.
We were anxious for the dense bank of purple cloud to clear away, that we might have a more extensive view of the horizon, and perhaps discover a sail, but the envious vapor seemed to darken and to roll before us, or rather before the wind that bore us after it.
About mid-day, when we were pausing on our oars, breathless and panting with heat, drenched with perspiration, which ran into our eyes and trickled down our breasts; and when visions of iced water and bitter beer came tantalizingly to memory—for sea and sky were equally hot, as the former seemed to welter and become oily under the blaze of the latter—a sharp-winged bird that skimmed past us suddenly caught the hollow eye of Hislop, who, I thought, was sleeping.
"Do you see that bird, Tom," he exclaimed, half starting up from the stern-sheets; "it is a man-of-war bird!"
"What then, sir?"
"We must be near land," replied the mate.
"Land!" reiterated every one in the boat, their voices expressing joy, surprise, or incredulity.
"Is it Brazil?" asked Tattooed Tom, with amazement in his singular face.
"I do not think so," said Hislop, passing a hand wearily and reflectively over his pale forehead. "Brazil—it is impossible, by the last reckoning I made before that Spaniard wounded me. But Heaven only knows where we may have drifted to since then!"
"The wind and currents may have taken us many hundred miles from where the last observation was made," added Carlton.
"But I am convinced that we are near land—look at the sea-wrack that passes us now; and we must be out of the track of the Gulfweed," continued the mate with confidence.
"And may I never see the Nore again, if that ain't land now, looming right a-head through the fog-bank!" exclaimed Tom, starting up, and shading his eyes from the sun with both hands as he peered intently westward.
As the reader may imagine, we all gazed anxiously enough in the direction indicated by the old seaman, and a swell of rapture rose in the breasts of all when something in the form of a headland or bluff could be distinctly seen right ahead, bearing due west, about seven miles distant, standing out from the bank of vapor, or looming like a darker shadow within it.
This appearance never changed in outline, but remained stationary, and every moment became more defined and confirmed.
Exclamations of joy now broke from us, and we congratulated each other on making the land so soon and so unexpectedly, without enduring the miseries which so frequently fall to the lot of those who are cast away, as we were, in an open boat at sea.
"But what land is it?" was the general inquiry.
Another allowance of grog was served round; the oars were again shipped, we bent our backs and breasts sturdily to the task, and at every stroke almost lifted the boat clean out of the shining water in our eagerness to reach this suddenly discovered shore.
This had such an effect upon Marc Hislop, that though weak and sinking as he had been, he begged that he might be allowed to steer the boat a little way, while Tom Lambourne kept a bright look-out ahead, to watch for any ripple or surf that might indicate the locality of a treacherous coral reef, as such might prove dangerous to a large and heavily laden craft like ours.
With every stroke of the bending oars the land seemed to rise higher and more high.
Ere long we could make out its form clearly. It was bold, rocky, and mountainous, and as the mist dispersed or rose upward into mid air, we could see the dark brown of the bluff, and some trees of strange aspect, with drooping foliage on its summit, were clearly defined, as they stood between us and the blue sky beyond.
We soon made out distinctly that it was a large island. The shore was somewhat level to the north-east, and in the centre towered an almost perpendicular mountain of vast height, the sides of which seemed covered with furze, gorse, and brushwood.
Elsewhere its dusky and copper-colored rocks started sheer out of the sea, whose waters formed a zone of snow-white surf around their base.
We headed the boat to the north-east, where the shore seemed more approachable, and as we pulled along it, but keeping fully three miles off, when the land opened, we saw high crags, deep ravines, shady woods and dells in the interior, though no appearance of houses, of wigwams, or of inhabitants.
Many speculations were now ventured as to what island this might be.
"May it not be land that has never before been discovered?" I suggested with a glow of pleasure, in the anticipation of being among the first to tread an unexplored and hitherto unknown shore. Hislop smiled and shook his head.
Henry Warren, who had been an old South-sea whaler, suggested that it was the island Grando, but Hislop assured us that this was impossible. In the first place, by the position of the sun, he could see that we were not so far south as the parallel of Port San Giorgio on the Brazilian shore; and in the second, the existence of such an island was doubted.
"Can it be Trinidad Island—Tristan da Cunha, or the Rocks of Martin Vaz?" asked Tom Lambourne.
"If the latter," replied Hislop, "we should now be in south latitude 20° 27', but this land in no way answers to the aspect of the Martin Vaz Rocks."
"Did you ever see them, sir?" asked several.
"No; but they are described by La Perouse as appearing like five distinct headlands." After pausing and pondering for a moment, he suddenly added, with confidence, "It is the Island of Alphonso de Albuquerque!"
"How do you know?" I inquired.
"By the appearance of that cliff, and the mountain inland."
"You have been here before?" asked Probart.
"Never; but I know it to be Alphonso by that cliff on the north, and the mountain too, which were particularly described in a Spanish book I lost in the Eugenie. The mountain is a peak which the author says resembles—did any of you ever see a place like it before?"
"It is as like Tenny Reef from the port of Santa Cruz, as one egg is like another!" exclaimed Tom Lambourne.
"Exactly, Tom, that is what the Spanish author likens it to, though he does not use the simile. So if it is the island of Alphonso, we are now somewhere in south latitude 37° 6', and west longitude 12° 2'. Pull southward, my lads, the shore opens a bit beyond that headland. We shall find a smooth beach probably within the bight yonder."
"Anyway we're not in pilot's water," added Tom, laughing; "give way, mates—stretch out."
We pulled with a hearty will, and ere long were close in shore—so close that our larboard oars seemed almost to touch the rocks which rose sheer from the sea, like mighty cyclopean walls, but covered with the greenest moss; they overhung and overshadowed the dark, deep water that washed their base, and as they shielded us from the fierce noonday heat of the sun, we found the partial coolness refreshing and delightful.
As Hislop had foreseen, on rounding the bluff, the shore receded inward, and through a line of white surf, like that which boils over the bar at a river's mouth, we dashed into a beautiful little bay, the sandy beach of which was shaded by groves of bright green trees.
Still we saw no trace of inhabitants; but selecting a small creek which was almost concealed by trees that grew, like mangroves, close to the edge of the water, we ran our boat in, moored her securely, where none were likely to find her save ourselves, and then all sprang joyously ashore—at least all save Hislop and Billy the cabin boy, who remained to attend him, while we went on an exploring expedition in search of natives or whatever might turn up next.
We had some dread of savages, and being totally unarmed, we penetrated inland with more anxiety than pleasure at first; but ere long we became convinced that the island was totally destitute of human inhabitants.
No vestige of wigwam or hut, of road or path, nor even of the smallest track or trail (save such as the wild goats made) was visible anywhere, and thus we became impressed with new emotions of wonder and awe, in treading a soil where man lived not—where no human foot seemed to have trod, and where only the hum of insect life stirred the solitude of that wild island of the South Atlantic.
For a considerable distance we traversed flat ground that was covered with sedge grass, interspersed by shrubs of bright green. Beyond this level plain rose a series of ridges covered by trees, and those ridges formed the first slope of the great mountain, which was some thousand feet in height, and also of the great bluff we had first descried at sea.
We found Alphonso to be the largest of a group of three islands. It is a mass of rock nearly twelve miles in circumference. The other two are cavernous and inaccessible, and every approach to them is dangerous and difficult, in consequence of the foaming of the sea about them, so that during the weary days of our sojourn there, we made no attempt to explore them, lest the longboat—in our circumstances a priceless property—might be swamped or dashed to pieces.
Hislop informed me that he had read somewhere that in the month of March, 1506—the same year in which the great Columbus died—two adventurers of Spain or Portugal, named Tristan da Cunha and Alphonso de Albuquerque, sailed for the Indies on a voyage of discovery, with fourteen great caravels.
During this expedition they found three great islands which they named after Tristan da Cunha, and elsewhere three others, which were named from Alphonso, who, after their fleet had been scattered by a great tempest, sailed through the Mozambique channel. He discovered many seas, isles, and channels hitherto unknown to the Portuguese or Spaniards, and ultimately reached the Indies, of which he became viceroy for Ferdinand the Catholic, and died in 1515, holding that office.
It is very strange that since that remote period, no European country has turned these islands to any account, as they do not lie more than fifty leagues from the general track of the shipping bound for the coast of Coromandel or the Chinese seas, and in time of war would form a useful and important rendezvous for a fleet.
They lie exactly in that portion of the wide and mighty ocean where it was fabled and believed a great continent would yet be found.
The three isles of Tristan da Cunha, which lie some hundred miles distant, have now a mixed some hundred miles distant, have now a mixed population of English, Portuguese, and mulattoes; and a strong garrison was maintained there during the captivity of the Emperor Napoleon at St. Helena.
Being thus cast away upon a shore so far from the general track of ships, we resolved to make preparations for a probable residence of some time—to build a hut wherein to store our provisions, and to use every means for adding to our stock, by angling in the creeks, which seemed to abound with fish, and by hunting in the woods, which teemed with goats and boars running wild; by collecting birds' eggs, as the cliffs seemed to be literally alive with petrels, albatrosses, and sea-hens; and all these exertions were the more necessary as none could foresee the probable length of our sojourn there.
A ship might heave in sight to-morrow; but a year might pass before one came near enough to be attracted by our signs.
We resolved to have a signal-post erected on the mountain top, a beacon-fire prepared, and amid these and many other deliberations, the night closed in and found us tolerably contented with our island, and even disposed to be merry over misfortunes that we could not control.
But considerable speculation was excited when Billy Wilkins the cabin boy, who had been in pursuit of a little kid along the beach, returned to us, dragging after him a long spar which he had found among the layers of shingles, bright shells, and dusky weeds, deposited by the sea; and on examination this spar proved to be one of the lower studding-sail booms of the Eugenie, and the same which had parted from the brig and fallen overboard with Antonio on the eventful evening of his punishment!
"It is our own property," said Billy, "and may be useful when we have a fire to light."
"Boy Bill, we have a better use for it than burning," said Tattooed Tom; "'tis the mast for our signal-post, already made to hand, and we'll step it on the hill-top to-morrow."
For that night we bivouacked under a large tree, the name and genus of which were alike unknown to us. At times some were conversing, some slept, others lay waking and thinking, with the murmur of the shining sea, close by, in their ears; and I could see the stars of the Southern Cross shining with wonderful brilliance at the verge of the watery horizon.
The novelty of our situation kept me long awake, and with my head pillowed on a bundle of dry seaweed, with the sail of the longboat spread over us as an impromptu tent and for protection from the dew, I lay in meditation and full of melancholy thoughts ere sleep came upon me, and with it confused dreams of the burning ship, of my secluded home, and of
"——the schoolboy spot,
We long remember, though there long forgot."
Again I was at Eton! Again I saw the smooth green playing-fields alive with ardent schoolboys in the merry summer sunshine; and again I heard the clamor of their young voices and the balls rattling on bat and wicket; again I heard the pleasant green leaves rustle in the old woods of the Tudor times; or again I was in the shady quadrangles where the monotonous hum of many classes poring over their studies stole through the mullioned windows on the ambient air; and in my dreaming ear that "drowsy hum" seemed strangely to mingle with the chafing of the surge upon "th' unnumbered pebbles" of the lonely shore close by.
At last overcome by weariness, by lassitude and toil, I slept soundly.
My old tutor at Eton used to say, quoting some "wise saw," that "a lazy boy made a lazy man, just as a crooked sapling makes a crooked tree."
It was fortunate for me, however, while on the island of Alphonso, that my habits were those of activity, and that I was never lymphatic by nature.
After dawn next morning we set about the erection of a hut, though we had no other tools than a small hatchet and our clasp-knives. With these we cut or tore down a great number of large branches, and stuck them in the earth, selecting a place where two angles of impending rock conveniently enough formed two solid walls for our edifice, leaving us but two others to erect.
As Tom Lambourne said, "the fellow who cannot use a hammer or axe, is only half a man," so we all worked hard with such implements as we had, until our hut was complete.
We left an entrance next the rocks by which to creep in and out, and then thatched or built over the intertwisted branches with turf, torn up by our hands, and with broad plantain leaves, creepers, and all kinds of tendrils that had toughness and consistency woven to form a roof.
At the erection of this most primitive wigwam we toiled the whole day, save during the scorching interval of noon, and ere nightfall it was complete, with piles of dried leaves and seagrass for couches and bedroom furniture.
Therein we placed all our provisions—the three bags of bread, two kegs of rum (which by unanimous consent were placed under the sole supervision of Hislop); our four casks of water were also brought ashore, though there was no lack of pure springs on the island.
In this wigwam were also placed our blankets, the sails and tackle of the longboat, and then the succeeding days were spent in accumulating provisions (as we looked forward with dread to our last biscuit), and a signal-post was erected on the mountain.
With Probart the carpenter, and Henry Warren (two of our stoutest hands), Tom Lambourne and I went upon this duty.
Alternately carrying on our shoulders or dragging in our hands the studding-sail boom, we toiled through wild and untrodden wastes, toward the summit of the great and yet nameless conical mountain that rears its lonely scalp to the height of five thousand feet above the waves of the Southern sea.
The hope that on reaching its summit we might descry a sail, was an additional incentive to toil up the steep slope without lingering by the way.
On leaving a flat savanna of sedge-grass we reached a series of wooded ridges which form the base of the mountain, at every step rousing clouds of birds, especially a species of blackcock, and twice in the jungle we came upon the lair of wild boars of great size and such ferocity of aspect that we were glad to shrink astern of Tattooed Tom, who carried the hatchet.
This jungle was exceedingly difficult of penetration, owing to its density, the number of wild aloes, with creeping plants, prickly pears, and other tropical weeds, of what kind I know not, twined about them. It was a literal wilderness of serrated grass blades, yellow gourds, and great squashy pumpkins like gigantic vegetable marrows, all woven into an inextricable network of leaves, tendrils, and branches.
In other places we had to force a passage through thickets of richly flowered shrubs and tall plants with mighty leaves, the general greenery of the landscape being increased by the many runnels of fine spring water which poured down the fissures of the mountain into the plain we had left.
By the sides of these runnels, we frequently paused, and making a cup of a large leaf, filled it with the cool, limpid water that gurgled over the rocks, to quench our constant thirst; and for a time such vegetable cups were the only drinking vessels we had while on the island of Alphonso.
At last we gained the summit of the mountain, and with mingled satisfaction and anxiety in our hearts, swept the horizon with eager eyes.
Not a sail was in sight!
Far as our eyesight could reach around us, in a mighty circle, rolled the waters of the Southern Atlantic, almost tepid with heat, and pale and white, as they seemed to palpitate under the rays of the unclouded sun.
At our feet lay the whole isle of Alphonso and its two rocky appendages, with the encircling sea boiling in the narrow chasms between them, with a fury which was the result of contrary currents, and which formed a singular contrast to its calmness elsewhere.
After a brief rest we prepared to set up the signal-post.
Tom took off his shirt, and drawing from his pocket a piece of spunyarn, which a seaman is seldom without, he lashed his under-garment to the end of the studding-sail boom, and by the aid of the hatchet and our hands, we scraped a hole sufficiently deep in which to erect the spar, and then jammed it hard and fast with stones. As the shirt was blown out flag fashion upon the wind, we hoped it would prove a sufficient indication to a vessel approaching from any quarter that there were people on the island in want of succor.
For some hours we lingered on the mountain-top, in the fond hope of seeing a sail, and then returned slowly downward to the beach, where our shipmates awaited us at the wigwam which now formed our home, and which we jocularly designated the capital city of Alphonso.
We felt very much the want of firearms. The air seemed alive with birds—the woods with game of several kinds; and now an old musket with a few charges of powder would have proved more useful to us than the treasure of the Bank of England.
Hislop recovered strength rapidly, and his convalescence inspired our little band of castaways with new confidence and vigor, as they had implicit reliance in his superior knowledge and intelligence.
We were never idle; for, unarmed as we were, the task of procuring food for our general store was by no means a sinecure to those who undertook it.
Tom Lambourne and John Burnet, the cook, first brought us a valuable contribution in the shape of a great sea-lion, which was furnished with a rough and shaggy mane, that added greatly to its terrible aspect, for it was an unwieldy brute, as large as a small-sized cow.
They had fallen in with it when it lay basking on the beach. Burnet courageously attacked it with one of the stretchers of the long-boat,* and dealt it a severe stroke on the head.
* Stretchers are pieces of wood placed across the bottom of a boat, whereon the oarsmen place their feet that they may have additional purchase in rowing.
The animal uttered a hoarse grunt and turned upon him open-mouthed, when he thrust the staff down its throat, and held it there till Lambourne hewed off the head with his hatchet.
One or two others were afterwards despatched in the same way; but we had to lie long in wait, and could catch them only by cutting off their retreat to the water.
Their hearts and tongues were considered the best food by the sailors, who broiled them over a fire which we kindled by striking two stones together, and letting the sparks fall upon a heap of dry leaves; and to the discovery of these impromptu flints we were indebted to Ned Carlton.
As for salt, I found plenty of it, baked in the crevices of the rocks upon the beach, where the spray had dried it in the hot sunshine.
The wild boars that lurked in the woods, baffled our efforts for a long time. By the edge of the hatchet we possessed, I fashioned for my own use a kind of spear, about six feet long, hewn out of a piece of fine teak wood, which I found upon the beach.
This weapon I made and pointed with great care, and armed with it frequently lay in watch for the sea-lions, but without success.
On the shore, at this season, when the sunshine was reflected from the sloping faces of the volcanic rocks and from the surface of the sea, the heat was beyond all description—intense, breathless, and suffocating, so that the lungs would collapse painfully, in the difficulty of respiration.
To breathe was like attempting it at the mouth of a newly opened furnace, and so I usually retired inland and sought the cool solitude of the deep thickets, or wandered through groves of solemn, impressive, and majestic old trees; for some were there so old, that they must have cast the shadows of their foliage on Alphonso de Albuquerque, or Tristan de Cunha, and their bearded followers.
How many ocean storms had swept their leaves into the waste of waters since then!
We had now been five days on the island without a sail being seen, though more than half our time was spent in watching the horizon; and so Tom Lambourne's old shirt still waved in vain from the boom-end on the mountain-top.
On the fifth day, however, to our surprise, the signal was no longer visible, so we supposed that a gust of wind had overthrown it in the night.
Lambourne, Carlton, and Probart started for the mountain-top to restore it, while Hislop and I rambled into the woods, where we had a view of the shining sea to the westward. The waves came in long rollers, as there was a fresh breeze blowing from the west, and the foam rose white and high on the tremendous bluffs of the Inaccessible Isles, as we named them.
All the water between them was a sheet of sparkling and snowy froth, amid which, had we been nearer, we should doubtless have seen the black heads of the sea lions, as they sported in the spray and sunshine.
On asking Hislop how far he thought we were from the continents of Africa and South America, he replied without hesitation,—
"We are about fifteen hundred miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata on the westward, and twelve hundred odd from the Cape of Good Hope on the east; but there is land nearer to us——"
"Land nearer!" I reiterated.
"There are the three isles of Tristan da Cunha, and about five hundred miles south-west of us a desolate rock called the Isle of Diego Alvarez; and fortunate it is indeed for us that we were not cast away there, as it yields only mossy grass, and now and then a few seals or sea-elephants may be seen upon the reefs about it. But, Dick Rodney, does it not make one long to be afloat again, with a good ship underfoot, both tacks and the breeze too, aft?—a cloud of canvas, carrying the three masts into one when seen astern—the lower studding-sail booms rigged out and dipping in the flying spray as she rolls from side to side—does it not, I say, bring all this to mind, when from here we can watch the waves that rose, perhaps, upon the shores of Mexico rolling in foam between these rocky isles? Do you remember Homer's description of the curling wave?" And without waiting my reply he began to recite from the Iliad, with wonderful facility:
"As on the hoarse resounding shore, when blows the stormy west,
The billowy tide comes surging wide, from ocean's dark blue breast;
First in mid-sea 'tis born, then swells and rages more and more,
And rolling on with snowy back, comes thundering near the shore;
Then rears its crest, firm and sublime, and with tumultuous bray
Smites the grim front of the rugged rock, and spits the briny spray."
How far Hislop in his classical enthusiasm might have pursued his free translation, till we had all the deeds of Agamemnon and others on that tremendous day before the walls of Troy, I cannot say, had not a crashing sound in the adjacent thicket roused and alarmed us.
We started up, and had just time to conceal ourselves behind the trunk of a tree, when a herd of seven wild boars came plunging out of the thicket to drink at a runnel which flowed toward the sea.
They were unlike any of the swinish race we had ever seen before; and but for our vague sensations of alarm we could have watched them with pleasure, as they inserted their long fierce snouts in the water that sparkled under the forest leaves.
They were all broad-shouldered animals, with high crests and thick bristly manes; and all were black in color or darkly brindled.
Unlike those of the sty-fed hogs to which we had been accustomed at home, their erected bristles shone like silver or polished steel in the rays of sunshine that fell through the waving branches; their eyes were flashing and clear, and their skins were all clean as if washed for a show of prize pigs.
Thin flanked, active, and strong, they began to grunt and gambol, and to splash up the glittering water, till suddenly they caught sight of us, and all fled save one, a fierce old boar, which, after tearing up the grass with his hind feet, came resolutely forward, showing a pair of tusks that made me tremble for the calves of my legs if I ventured to run off, and still more for those of poor Hislop, who was alike unable to escape or confront him.
Fortunately I had my teak-wood spear.
While keeping a tree between me and the boar, he prepared for the offensive by whetting his terrible tusks against a stone and grunting hoarsely.
Excited and bewildered, as he came on at a quick run, I charged my weapon full at him, and by the mercy of Providence, the point entered one of his fierce glittering eyes, which made him rear and recoil, while in his rage and pain the bristles on his ridgy back rose up like little blades of steel.
"Into his throat with your spear!" cried Hislop; but I anticipated the suggestion, for ere the words had left his lips, I had buried—thrusting deep with all the force that excitement and terror gave me—the pointed teak-wood shaft down his red and gaping throat.
Choking in blood, in foam and fury, the great boar writhed upon his back, and in doing so twitched from my hands the weapon, which still remained wedged in his throat and tongue, and rendered him almost powerless. I knew not what to do now, for if he snapped it through, and thus released himself, we, or I at least, would be lost.
But as he lay there on his back and sides alternately, snorting, roaring, and covering the grass with bloody froth, and tearing it by his bristles, Hislop sprang forward, and though weak with many half-healed wounds, drove a clasp-knife repeatedly into the throat and stomach of the monster, which soon lay still enough.
When it was quite dead, I drew out my teakwood spear, and found the point almost uninjured, for I had hardened it in fire.
We thrust two crooked branches through the tendons of the boar's hind-legs, and by these drew it to our hut, which was about half a mile distant; there our prize caused great congratulation among our crew, and I obtained no little praise for performing so hardy a feat.
Our return diverted for a time some excitement and surprise which had been caused by the return of Tom Lambourne, Probart, and Carlton from the mountain-top, with tidings that the studding-sail boom had vanished, and that not a trace of it was to be found anywhere!
The disappearance of the boom and of Tom's old striped shirt, which had waved from it like a banner, excited considerable speculation and something of alarm.
If simply overturned by the wind, it must have lain where it fell; at all events, it could not have rolled far from the cairn, or pile of stones, in the centre of which we had wedged it. By what agency had this disappearance come to pass?
That it was the work of wild animals could not for a moment be conceived; so the event filled us with vague but very alarming conjectures.
With his hatchet, Probart the carpenter cut down and prepared a long and slender tree to replace the lost boom on the top of the Devil's Mountain, as we now termed it; and while one portion of us assisted him in this, the other set about the capture of some of the wild goats with which the woods of the island abounded, as we were anxious to procure the milk of the females, and the flesh of their kids.
This was a most arduous task, as they were so fleet of foot; and when pursued, or when in search of those bitter and astringent plants of which they are so fond, they could gain the most dangerous pinnacles and ledges of rock that overhung the sea. In such places there grew a kind of wild laburnum, and Hislop did not fail to remind me that Theocritus described it as the favorite food of the goat.
We often saw these agile quadrupeds spring, without pause, fear, or hesitation, from pinnacle to pinnacle, or from ledge to ledge of rock, where, had they missed footing, they must have fallen a thousand feet or more, either into the ocean on one side, or some ravine on the other; and there, perched far aloft, they would remain, looking at us quietly, and reminding me of the couplet:
"High hung in air the hoary goat reclined,
His streaming beard the sport of every wind."
By great industry, and the exertion of incredible labor and activity, we succeeded in capturing five, by isolating them from their flocks and chasing them into chasms and corners from which they had no means of escape, and then we secured them by the running rigging of the longboat.
Some of the females afforded milk, a rarity and nourishment to us who had been so long at sea. The flesh of a kid we thought delicious; and lest we should tire of roasted and broiled, Jack Burnet, the ship's cook, contrived to boil some pieces of a goat in its own skin, stretched upon sticks, with a fire underneath, salt for a spice, and sliced pumpkin for vegetables.
Of the horns, when carefully scraped and cleaned, we made very efficient drinking-cups, in which our rum, duly mixed with water, was doled out to us by Hislop, the keeper of our provision-store.
The eggs of the sea-birds were a constant object of search, and being an expert climber, I frequently collected great numbers of those laid in the crevices of the rocks by the sea-gull and storm-finch.
Our life was one of perpetual exposure and daily activity. Though overpoweringly hot at noon, the atmosphere of the morning and evening was delightful; and as these portions of the day were spent in hunting for food, the time passed rapidly; but Hislop's chief fear was, that if we were not taken off by some ship before the rainy season set in, our discomforts and danger from agues would become very great.
By the time we had been fourteen days on the island, he was recovered so far as to be able to join me in making an exploration of it, or rather in walking all round it.
The circumference of the largest isle is only four leagues; but its shores are so steep and rocky in some places, that traversing them proved a most arduous task.
On the eastern side we found a great cascade pouring from a brow of rock upon the beach. The latter was covered almost everywhere by a broad-leaved seaweed, the dark and slimy tendrils of which were several yards in length, and were termed by Hislop "the gigantic fucus."
So day after day passed, and amid our various means of procuring food, we never failed to keep a keen look-out to seaward for a passing sail; but none came near that lonely islet of the southern sea.
One morning I found there had drifted ashore near our hut a mass of that mysterious substance, the origin of which has puzzled so many naturalists—ambergris. It must have weighed more than a hundred pounds in weight; and and when we threw some of it into the fire, it melted and diffused around a most agreeable perfume. This marine production, which is only to be found in the seas or on the shores of Africa and Brazil, is alleged by some to be a concretion formed in the stomach of the spermaceti whale.
On the fifteenth morning after our landing, a seaman named Henry Warren, who went to milk our goats, which had been tethered to a large tree near the hut, returned in haste to announce that the ropes which had secured them were cut, apparently by a sharp instrument—cut clean through—and that the goats, the capture of which had cost us so much labor, were gone.
"Cut? By whom?" asked every one.
Before we had time to consider this, Hislop came out of the hut, and stated that one of our three bread bags had also been cut open, by a slash from a knife apparently, and that several pounds of biscuit had been abstracted.
The strange alarm, and what was worse, the doubt of each other, which these discoveries excited, were painful and bewildering.
We examined the place where the goats had been tethered, but could discover no traces of feet, and nothing remained but the ends of the ropes (the longboat sheets and halliards) tied to the stem of a tree.
Whoever among us had done this was guilty of wanton malice and treason to the rest of his friends—for friends we hoped we were, as well as brothers in misfortune.
We also examined the mutilated bread bag. In the side thereof was a clean slash a foot in length, made by some sharp instrument, and by this aperture the biscuits had been abstracted by some one who had inserted his hands through the fragile wall of our hut, which, as I have stated, was composed only of turf and branches.
This theft had been committed in the night; but by whom?
Was the thief one of ourselves? The eyes of each seemed to ask the hateful question of the others, and to repel their inquiring glances; but soon after three of our missing biscuits were discovered by Tom Lambourne, lying a few yards apart among the long grass, as if the abstractor had dropped them during a hasty flight toward the woods or the Devil's Mountain.
"In addition to ourselves there is some one else on this island," exclaimed Hislop, emphatically; "and this accounts for the loss of the studding-sail boom; and without delay, this some one else must be discovered."
We dreaded lest savages might be concealed in some of the caverns or woods, and that they might come upon us in the night and slay all, or that they might make off with or destroy the longboat, our most valuable possession.
It was at once resolved that one of our number (to be regularly relieved) should remain in it day and night, armed with the hatchet, our only weapon, and that he should be well flogged if he slept, or neglected the double duty of watching the hut and boat, which were close by each other.
An immediate search was resolved upon. Lots were cast for the one who was to remain behind to guard our property, and the duty fell upon me.
Armed with the boat stretchers, or with clubs which they had carefully selected and cut from the trees, Hislop departed with all my companions; and after proceeding over the grassy plain, they soon disappeared in the woods that covered all the lower slope of the great mountain.
I cannot describe the sensations of loneliness that came over me on finding myself for the first time single, alone, and left entirely to my own reflections and resources.
The carpenter's hatchet was my only weapon; and armed with it I sat on a grassy slope mid-way between the hut and sea, gazing anxiously inland, listening for any passing sound; but all remained still save the chafing of the waves on one hand, and the loud buzz of tropical insect life in the thickets or among the long grass on the other.
What, I asked myself, if savages were actually lurking in the woods, and on seeing that all my companions were gone, they should come tumultuously down upon the hut and boat? I would at once become their victim.
Or what would be my fate if my friends fell into an ambush, or perished in detail?
Could any human beings be lurking in the two adjacent isles? was my next surmise.
We had never seen any thing alive on them—not even wild goats or boars; and if there were other inhabitants, the steepness of the rocks, which rose sheer from the water, and the fury of the surf that rolled between, forbade any attempt to cross.
So in such painful surmises, and in keen watching, I passed the most of the day alone.
In the afternoon, one by one, all my shipmates returned to our little headquarters on the shore, weary and jaded—torn by briars and brambles in the thickets—and all had the same tale to tell. They had seen and heard of nothing save wild boars, wild goats, and sea-birds.
Hislop now directed that one of our number should guard the hut by night, and a second the boat, with orders to hail each other in this fashion:
"Boat, ahoy!"
"Hut, ahoy!"
This was to insure a watchful look-out; but with all these precautions, wise and necessary though they were, our feeling of security, and even of reliance on each other, was gone for the time.
As these occurrences excited the imagination of our companions, some of those who watched the hut and boat by night, asserted that when all our party, save themselves, were safely lodged and asleep, something like the figure of a very tall man had appeared for an instant on the bluffs that overhung the sea, between them and the moonlight.
But of this mysterious personage, if such existed anywhere, except in the overstrained imagination of a lonely midnight watcher, we could discover no trace during day.
One night, when Francis Probart and Ned Carlton were on watch, a sound like the distant report of a pistol was heard by them, and at the same instant, both saw a flock of petrels and storm-finches rise up in the moonlight from the face of a bluff, where they revolved above the breakers, like a swarm of gnats in a sunbeam.
So if Ned and the carpenter were mistaken in the sound, the birds were also roused and alarmed.
Marc Hislop ridiculed their story, but he was considerably bewildered, and so were we all when two days after, a seaman named Hugh Chute, when rambling in the woods, found one of our goats, which we knew by the fragment of rope still tied round its neck, lying dead, with a bullet in its throat!
He brought it to the hut, where the wound was cut open, and the bullet extracted. It was small, and had evidently been fired from a pistol; this event caused the most exciting speculations, amid which the carcass was hastily buried, as not one of us would eat of it.
What or who could this person be? were the prevailing questions; and what was his reason for concealing himself from us in the thick woods of the island?
In the thorough exploration of the latter, caused by these episodes, our people fortunately discovered a fine grove of banana trees, and returned laden with their yellow and luscious fruit.
At the same time Tattooed Tom found some letters "in a foreign lingo," as he said, cut on the face of a steep rock, overhanging the river, which formed the cascade at the beach. To this rock he conducted Hislop and me next day, and after tearing aside some masses of creepers and scraping off a rich coating of moss, we found this old legend on the smoothed face of the basalt:
EL NOBLE CABALLERO, D. ALPHONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE;
A. D. 1506.
RVGVEN A DIOS FOR EL.
"The year of the discovery of the island!" said Hislop.
"Have other eyes ever seen this inscription since?" added I.
"It is very doubtful. This Alphonso also discovered the Albuquerque Kays, as he named the three islets which lie off the Mosquito shore in the Caribbean Sea."
Hislop copied the inscription into his notebook, and just as we turned to leave the spot, a large stone about sixty pounds in weight, came crashing down the cliff, hurled apparently from its summit, and if so, by no inexpert hand, for it struck the rock of the legend within a foot of where Hislop stood, and was shivered into a hundred pieces, covering him over with dust.
Had it struck him instead, he had been slain and mangled on the spot. Had a fragment broken any of his limbs, in how miserable a plight would he have been on that desolate island, without proper shelter or surgical aid!
Looking up to the summit of the cliff, which was about a hundred and fifty feet in height, I perceived among the dense fringe of wild gourds, shrubs, leaves, and plantain trees, then waving in the wind, something like a human face, that, after peering over at us, was suddenly withdrawn.
"That stone was never dislodged either by goats or by accident," said Hislop; "there is not a vestige of clay upon the fragments—besides, all the face of the cliff is smooth and solid rock!"
"And it is the only place we did not overhaul yesterday, master Hislop," said Tom Lambourne.
"Then there must be the thief of our biscuits—of our goats——"
"Of our stun'sail boom and my old guernsey. Let us have all hands turned up for a hunt again," exclaimed Tom.
I now mentioned what I had seen.
"A man!—do you think it was a man's head?"
"I cannot be certain, Hislop," said I; "it seemed a face of some kind, and a very hairy one too."
"It might be an old pumpkin," suggested Tom, in his matter-of-fact way.
"Or a goat—at all events, it could not have been a baboon?" said I.
"No, no; there is no such animal hereabout, master Rodney," replied Tom.
"Man or monkey, goat or devil, we'll overhaul the place this very afternoon." exclaimed Hislop, with increasing energy and anger; "but first we shall return with all expedition to the hut."
All day the air had been unusually sultry and breathlessly hot, even for the tropics at that season; but when the sun sank westward, when the air became cooler, and the shadows of the island, with its wooded bluff and towering blue mountain, across the slope of which the light gossamer clouds lay floating half-way up, were thrown far eastward over that lonely sea which no keel seemed ever to furrow, we prepared for a further exploration, or as Hugh Chute said, "to overhaul that ere cliff from truck to keelson."
Chute and Carlton were despatched to its base, by the way of the river bank, and to where the cascade poured over the rocks, waking the solemn echoes of the otherwise silent ravine.
Their instructions were, to station themselves near the rock which bore the Spanish legend—to keep a sharp look-out on the face of the cliff and all the way up to the grove of banana trees that grew on its summit.
Billy the cabin boy was left in charge of the hut and boat, while Hislop, with the rest of us advanced toward the cliff, up the sloping bank of which—its only accessible point—we proceeded to climb.
It was, or is (twelve months can make no change) a hundred and fifty feet in height, as I have stated, rising sharply up from the side of the great mountain, and is covered by a jungle of wild shrubs that must have been growing there since the days of the deluge.
The creepers with gummy branches, the sharp serrated grass, the yellow gourd vines, the wild tendrils and plants of which we knew neither the names nor the nature, were there interwoven as closely as a herring net, to the depth of seven or eight feet from their roots.
Amid this jungle the hum of the myriads of great insects which we roused and dislodged was deafening; while the black clouds of gadflies and cockroaches were very bewildering, and, to say the least, annoying.
We floundered and fell as we waded through this sea of leaves and verdure, but rose and scrambled on again, pausing ever and anon, breathless and exhausted, to sit and fan ourselves, or to aid in pulling each other out of this jungly network, for it resembled that which sprang by magic spell around the palace of the sleeping beauty in the old fairy tale, to baffle all intruders for a hundred years.
Hislop, who had not yet recovered his strength, was among the first to give in, and declare, when half way up, that "he could climb no further!"
Two or three took advantage of this admission to remain with him for a time; but I, refreshed by a ripe banana which had fallen from the trees at the top, and which I found just at hand, pushed on, and being lighter than any of my companions, got ahead of them all.
After half an hour's severe toil, during which my hands and knees were lacerated and torn by sharp blades of gigantic grass, and by the gummy creepers to which one's very flesh adhered at times, I reached at last the banana trees, the foliage of which waved like a gigantic plume on the summit of this isolated rock.
The banana rises with a stem which is about six or seven inches in diameter at the root, and from thence tapers upward to the height of eighteen or twenty feet, to where the leaves spring like a bright green tuft, broad, wavy, feathery, and drooping, as those of the palm do.
I uttered a shout—an "Io pœan!"—to my companions, announcing that I had gained the summit before them, and armed with my only weapon, the teak-wood spear, pushed my way forward between the smooth stems of the bananas, till I reached the abrupt brow of the cliff, from the verge of which I saw, far down below, the bright blue stream that rose on the slopes of the great mountain, running through the heart of the isle and glittering in the setting sun among groves and ravines, to where it poured in foam upon the white sandy beach, and mingled with the mighty Southern Sea.
I saw also the figures of Chute and Carlton, as they stood near the rock which bore the inscription, but they could neither distinguish me nor hear my shout, which gave fresh ardor to those whom I had left half-way down, and who now resumed their ascent.
I looked keenly and cautiously about me on every side, but saw only the slender and countless stems of the tall bananas, whose broad leaves, as they spread under or over each other, interrupted the rays of the sun, and formed a shade that was pleasing and gloomy.
Now, when about to cross what seemed a hole or hollow in the jungle, by stepping from the strong tendril of one creeper to another, a naked arm and great human hand came up from amid the mass of leaves!
I was seized by the right foot, and in an instant found myself dragged down through foliage and intertwisted plants—down—down—I knew not where; and before I had time or breath to cry or resist, I lay prostrate on my back in a hole—a lair under the matted jungle—with a man above me, his knees planted on my breast, his strong hands upon my bare throat, and his fierce wild eyes glaring like those of a hyæna into mine.
Then, how terrible were my emotions on recognizing in the light that fell through the mass of foliage above, as through a vine-covered trellis—now overspread with hair, as beard and whiskers all were matted into a mass—the dark and ferocious face of Antonio, whom I believed to be drowned and lying at the bottom of the sea—Antonio el Cubano!
"Silenzio!" said he, in a low voice, like the hiss of a serpent in my ear; but the injunction was unnecessary, for so completely was I taken by surprise—so utterly at his mercy, and so destitute alike of breath or weapon—that resistance was impossible.
Perceiving that I was almost strangled he relaxed his fierce grasp a little, but still kept the sharply pricking point of his knife at my throat, as a hint to remain quiet.
It would be impossible for me to describe the emotions of my soul during this time, which seemed an eternity to me! Utter fear was one, for I thought the fellow had something supernatural—something truly of the demon—about him; that he could neither be drowned nor destroyed; and I lay still in that dark hollow, panting in his fierce clutch without a thought of resistance.
Now I heard my name shouted repeatedly.
"Rodney—Mr. Rodney—Dick Rodney—where are you?"
It was Tom Lambourne and others, my companions, who had now attained the summit of the rock, and were scrambling over the jungle, and pushing between the stems of the bananas, searching for me, rather than for the first object of such mystery.
My disappearance alarmed them.
"Can he have gone adrift over the bluff," I heard Tom Lambourne say, "or is he only having a game with us by hiding himself?'
"Oh yes!—that is it," replied Probart, the carpenter; "he can't have gone aloft into one of these bananas, for they are as clear of branches as a spare topmast; so let us sheer off to the mate, and Mr. Rodney will soon come down after us."
"Well, my lads, there are neither wild men nor wild beasts here," said Lambourne; "so we shall return back to Master Hislop, who is hanging in the wind halfway down, and then be off to the hut. We've earned a stiff glass of grog by this bout, anyhow."
My emotions became almost suffocating, when I heard them turn away to descend and rejoin Hislop without me.
I saw and heard them pass and repass over us, the creepers of the jungle yielding with their weight.
The leg and foot of one, named Henry Warren, came down through the green network of leaves, and actually touched me.
I drew a long gasping breath, and the atrocious Cubano, believing I was about to cry aloud, compressed my throat so tightly with his muscular hands, that a thousand lights seemed to flash before my eyes, and I must have become senseless for some minutes, as the next incident that dwells in my memory, is seeing him sitting in a crouching attitude, with his elbows on his knees; his black-bearded chin resting in the hollow of his right hand, and with his knife—his murderous Albacete cuchillo—clenched in his white teeth, while he surveyed me with a strange and sardonic smile in his deeply-set black eyes, which glittered like those of a snake in the rays of sunlight that struggled through the woven roof of leaves above us.
I heard no more the voices of my shipmates. They were gone, and I was left alone and unarmed with this man or devil,—as yet I knew not which he was; but I knew that if he had the will, he had assuredly the power, to kill and leave me in his lair, or to cast me, a mangled heap, to the bottom of the cliff whereon he lurked.
He perceived the fear or horror he excited, and it seemed to amuse or flatter him.
I remembered his dreams, his outcries, and midnight terrors, when in the forecastle bunks; I thought of poor Captain Weston, of old Roberts the man-o'-war's man, who disappeared so mysteriously in the night, and of others whose blood was upon this man's hands and on his soul, and my flesh crept with loathing at our proximity.
What must his thoughts have been amid the awful solitude of that lonely isle before our arrival? I dared not attempt to imagine or to analyze them.
Why were the waves so sparing—why was Fate so favorable to a wretch like this? How came it to pass that a life so vile had been so marvellously protected? and when would the day of retribution come?
All these thoughts came upon me with rapidity. Antonio seemed almost to read my heart, for he laughed, and said in Spanish,—
"El diabolo! so we meet again. Ha! ha! I suppose you thought—Oho Juan bobo—it was all over with the Cubano when the studding-sail boom parted, and amid the laughter of these English dogs I fell away to leeward—to drown—to die in the trough of the sea—eh?"
I did not reply to the mocking question, as I was not yet in possession of all my faculties.
"Aha! Antonio el Cubano does not die so easily," resumed the Spanish Creole; "but now what am I to do with you?"
"You will release me, I hope, as I have never harmed you."
"For what purpose did you come up these rocks, hombre?" he asked, with a keen glance.
"Only to survey the island from a new point of view," I replied, evasively.
"The top of the mountain would be a better place for that purpose," he replied, grimly.
"But it is a much more laborious ascent."
"So the Eugenie has been cast away?"
"She was struck by lightning, took fire, and was burned to the water edge."
On hearing this, Antonio ground his sharp teeth, and said, with a savage malediction,—
"Por grados, as I said before, I will rid the world of you all!"
"For myself," I began, with some agitation——
"If I permit you to return alive to these men," he replied, sternly, "you will enable them to track me out. But see you this," he added, showing me a revolver; "I will make them all food for the sea-gulls and the wild boars if they attempt to molest me."
It was one of those which had hung in Captain Weston's cabin. It appeared to be loaded and capped; and though very rusty, was still sufficiently dangerous. I remembered that he had put it in his breast before he fell overboard.
"As for you," he resumed, and paused.
"I never harmed you, as you have frequently said."
"But you laughed as I swung at the end of the studding-sail boom. It was a fine joke to see a spar, with the world at one end and a poor devil holding on at the other! I can remember that, senor, though you may find it convenient to forget it."
"I am not aware, Antonio, that I did laugh," said I, in my most conciliatory tone.
"But I am quite aware of it, demonio," said he, furiously.
"Oh! why am I always doomed to meet this man?" I exclaimed bitterly.
"True," said he, with another malevolent grin, "I am a very horrid fellow; but we have met before we had the good luck to sail together."
"Before—I know it."
"At Teneriffe," said he; "up among the mountains."
"You were the sentinel who stood at the mouth of the cavern?"
"I was not, muchacho."
"Who or which, then?"
"He who was shot," said he, grinning.
"And who fell into the ventana?"
"Si, hombre!" (yes, man) replied the Cubano, with a shout of fierce laughter.
Absurd as this statement was, it was not without a horrid effect upon me for a moment, as he added,—
"Par los Santos! it is not so easy to kill Antonio!"
"Then I actually met you on the mountain side in Teneriffe?"
"So it would seem. A few of us had been ashore from the Costa Rican brig, the Marshal Serrano, in search of a diamond which is said to shine at night in the rocks there; but as our search was vain, we thought of raising a few silver dollars on you and your companions, as all our trouble had gone for nothing."
"But how did you reach this island?" I asked, willing, if possible, by conversing with him to gain his better mood.
"I was swept astern of the brig when the studding-sail boom parted, but I clung to it with a death clutch, and the waves, as they rose and fell, soon hid the Eugenie from me; but before that, every time I rose, half blinded, winking and spluttering on the summit of a wave, and saw her sails and spars and cabin windows glittering and looming large in the clear twilight, I sent a bitter malediction after her. However, I soon wearied of that, as it spent my breath, and when that went, the water always closed over my head."
"Had you no fear, Antonio?"
"Fear—of what?" he asked, scornfully.
"Of death—of drowning," said I, earnestly.
"I cannot tell what I felt; at least I had no thought of swimming, for there was no land that I knew of to swim to nearer than Brazil, which was perhaps fifteen hundred miles distant; so as life is dear," (I thought of the lives he had destroyed) "I clung to the spar in the hope of being picked up by some passing ship.
"I slipped off a coat, two waistcoats, and a pair of boots which had belonged to the captain, and every nook of which I had crammed with money, watches, and other valuables of his and Hislop's" (and my mother's parting gift—thought I), "and with another malediction, I let them go to the bottom of the sea, or the bellies of the sharks, I cared not which.
"The red sun had set, and night, with all its stars, came on. The silvered sea was pleasant, warm, and smooth. I felt certain I could float by the spar all night, but my sole fear was for a blue shark, and every thing that sparkled in the water near me, made me draw my knees up to my chin, and my heart leap to my mouth, as I expected to be bitten in two or have all the flesh torn off my legs at a mouthful.
"By my necktie, I lashed my left arm tightly to the spar, so that if weariness came over me, even for a moment, it might not be swept from me, because, if such an accident happened in the night, I might never recover it again. So there were the studding-sail boom and I floating, adrift and alone, in the middle of the South Atlantic.
"I found that we were borne by a current due eastward, and I hoped that it would carry me near some ship that might be running with it toward the Cape.
"Day dawned.
"And there, about a Spanish league off, I saw this island, with the light clouds floating midway between its blue summit and the golden-colored sea. It was so like Teneriffe that I could have sworn I saw the white houses of Santa Cruz, with the ships at anchor in the bay, the dark Valley of the Diamond opening inland, and the Spanish flag flying on the old castle; and so strong is fancy, that par todos santos! I did see them all for a time. But some hours after, I was thrown by the waves with a shock upon the beach, where I lay long—I cannot tell how long—in a stupor, exhausted, worn-out, and all but dead."
"It is a strange story," said I, as the Cubano, who told it in very good Spanish, paused—
"As I came back to the world," he resumed, "savage and bloody thoughts occurred to me! Again I was swinging above the waves at the boom-end; again I saw all your exulting faces line the bulwark of the Eugenie; again I was in the sea!
"Then, horrid monsters, red-eyed and covered with shining bristles, were about to devour me. I felt their cold noses and their hot breaths upon my face; and with a yell of terror, I half rose up to find myself lying high and dry above the tide-mark, but among the sea-weed and shingle, blubber, star and jelly-fish of a warm beach, on which the evening sun was shining; and that the bristly monsters of my dreams were a herd of wild boars in council (consejo) about devouring me; but they scampered into the woods when slowly and feebly I staggered up, like one after a long debauch.
"My left arm was still lashed to the boom, from which I now released it.
"As I stood erect, shore and cliff, sea and mountain, swam round me, and then I became assailed by thirst and hunger.
"The nearest spring fully relieved one longing, and a wild gourd, which I nearly devoured, satisfied the other. I remained long in thought, considering where I had been cast, and as night came on, and the moon arose, the fear of savages or wild animals made me climb into a tree.
"I had no clothes but what you see; a pair of tattered calziones de marinero (sailor's trousers), and my sash; but, diabolo! did I not utter a shout, when, on examining it, I found that in the folds there were still my knife—my old Albacete knife—and one of the captain's revolvers, with a little tin case, which I had taken from his cabin. I then conceived that it might contain jewellery—now I hoped it was food—a case of sardines at the least!
"It was soldered and water-tight, so I forced the lid with my knife, and found that it contained caps and ammunition for the revolver!
"Thus, without fear, I supplied myself with food, until the arrival of your crew upon the island. I was hidden among some mangroves on the day when the long-boat came into the creek. I knew you all, and my heart swelled with rage as I covered you in succession with this pistol; but as every charge was, perhaps, a day's food to me, and I valued my scanty ammunition more than your wretched lives, I spared them, intending to cut you off otherwise, when any straggler came within reach of my knife; and, as you know, with a large stone, I nearly marred forever the seamanship of the contra-maestre. So that's all my yarn, and what do you think of it?"
"I think that when Heaven has so miraculously spared you, Antonio, your mind should have other thoughts than vengeance now."
The dark Cubano gnashed his white teeth, and laughed bitterly; but now, by his story, the disappearance of the boom from the mountain-top, the thefts from our bread-bag, the alleged pistol reports, and those appearances of a human figure on the bluffs in the moonlight, the wounded goat, and every thing else which had so greatly perplexed us of late, was completely accounted for; and fortunately for me, in the relation of his adventures, the Cubano had talked himself into a state of comparative equanimity.
"Now," said I, rising, "you will permit me to go, Antonio; and if you do, I promise to leave you a dozen of biscuits to-morrow on the rock at the foot of the cliff."
"As a ransom?"
"Yes."
"Well, biscuits are more valuable than golden doubloons here; but might they not be a snare?" he asked, with a savage gleam in his eyes.
"I swear it is not!" I exclaimed, with the greatest earnestness.
"Bueno—very well—you may go. You see how I am armed; so tell the contra-maestre and his men that if they attempt to molest me, they shall share the fate of those who died in the brig. So vaya—begone!"
This was all said in Spanish—he had spoken nothing else—and not without a wild dignity of manner that was rather impressive.
I lost no time in creeping or clambering out of his hiding-place.
"Buenos noches," said I, for the sun was now set; and not without fear that Antonio might change his wayward mind, and send a bullet through my back, I scrambled, rolled, ran, and went at times headlong and endlong down the back of the cliff in my anxiety to get beyond his reach, and rejoin my companions, whom I found debating on my disappearance and assembled in solemn conclave near the hut, where Burnet, the ship-cook, was roasting a kid for supper, and where I was received by a shout of welcome.