A NEW DANGER.
Had not Antonio held me fast, and menaced me with his pistol, I would
have sprung into the water, and undeterred by the sharks that were
forever gliding stealthily about in the bay, would have swam after
the boat; for desperate though the fortune of those who were there, I
would rather have shared it than live on the island of Alphonso with
such a companion.
His fierce mocking laugh grated harshly in my ear, but I heeded him
not, and continued to gaze after the boat and the lessening forms of
those who had abandoned me, not without a fond and desperate hope
that they would return for me. Every moment I expected to see her
put about; but no! she held steadily on, till hull, and sail, and
crew were blended into one little dark spot, which ere long could
scarcely be discerned on the moonlit morning sea.
Her course was trimmed north-east, for where they supposed the isle
of Tristan da Cunha lay. She had caught a breeze, and before four
o'clock in the morning, the last vestige of her had disappeared.
Still I did not entirely despair!
When day dawned, while my eyes were almost blinded by tears of rage
and bitterness, I clambered in haste to the summit of the great
bluff, and gazed eagerly to seaward, in the hope that the arguments
or wishes of Hislop, of Carlton, and of blunt old Tom Lambourne
_might have prevailed_, and that I should see her returning; but
alas! there was nothing visible save a lonely albatross skimming
lazily between me and the rising sun.
Except for the sake of Marc Hislop and one or two others, who in our
parting interview had acted as my friends, I hoped--but this was in
the intense bitterness of my heart, at an abandonment so cruel--that
the longboat might swamp, founder, or perish, how I cared not.
What was to become of me now?
The boat might fall in with some ship, and thus afford me a double
chance of being taken off the island. But would the captain of this
supposed ship bear up for the land if it lay far from his course?
Amid these perplexing thoughts and surmises, my greatest source of
annoyance was the odious companionship of the Cubano.
I felt neither hunger nor sleep, though all the preceding night I had
never closed an eye; but now I remained upon the bluff, gazing on the
sunlit sea, from under the shadow of a broad-leaved plantain, until I
was roused in the afternoon by Antonio, who joined me.
"_Hola! mio muchacho!_" (hallo! my boy), he exclaimed; "you promised
me a dozen of biscuits if I released you from my hiding hole in
yonder rock. Now, biscuits are biscuits here, so where are those for
which I ransomed you?"
"Gone in the boat with every thing else," I replied, sulkily and
sternly.
"What!--all?"
"Every thing."
"What shall we do when my powder is done?"
"I know not, and I care not."
"There are but ten charges left," said he, gloomily, as he opened the
tin case.
"What is that to me?" I asked, with growing anger.
"It is this much to you, that if provisions fall short, I shall _eat
you_!" he replied, with a fiendish grin, accompanied by an emphatic
oath. "Now, my fine fellow, what do you think of _that_?"
The words of the wretch, his herculean frame and ferocious aspect,
which the wild life he had lately spent among the woods of Alphonso
had not improved, made me shudder.
On remembering the manner in which we first found him floating in the
open boat at sea, the suspicions of Weston, Hislop, and Lambourne
regarding the disappearance of a companion who had probably been with
him--suspicions which all his future conduct seemed to confirm, and
knowing all he was capable of committing, my heart sickened with
disgust and apprehension; but the imminence of my own danger made me
dissemble.
While pretending to smile and to disbelieve him, I mentally
considered how to arm myself, or how to deprive him of those weapons
which, when added to his muscular strength and singularly brutal
nature, rendered him an enemy so formidable.
The idea of swimming to one of the adjacent isles occurred to me; but
the straits between were full of foaming breakers and sharks; the
rocks, moreover, were inaccessible, and wherever I might go Antonio
could easily follow.
I remembered the carpenter's little hatchet, which was still lying
upon the beach, and resolved to possess myself of it, to conceal it
about me, and to use it without mercy if occasion served or required.
"Did you hear me speak, you English heathen?" shouted Antonio,
striking me on the shoulder.
"Yes," said I, shuddering again; for in addition to the load of crime
which covered Antonio, I loathed him as the primary cause of all our
misfortunes, and of my present misery.
"Bueno--then look to it!" said he, nodding.
"Look to what!"
"We must take to kid-catching, and boar-hunting, else I may feed
myself, as I have done before, with whatever comes most readily to
hand."
"Shall we not place a signal again on the mountain?"
"For what purpose?" he asked with a grimace.
"To attract a passing ship."
"Of what shall we make it?"
"The studding-sail boom--where is it concealed?"
At the mention of the boom, the revengeful Cubano gnashed his teeth,
and replied,--
"I have cast it where man's hand shall never get it, into a chasm on
the other side of the mountain; but voto! let us go down and repair
the hut those ladrones have left, and you," he added, with a grin,
"shall be my camarada de casa."
The sun was now setting beyond the sea, and the shadow of the great
mountain was falling eastward over the island as we began to descend
from the bluff, where I had lingered so long, by one of the narrow
and winding tracks made through the gorse by the wild goats.
Hunger now assailed me, and saying I would hasten forward and procure
some bananas, I reached the beach before Antonio was half-way down
the rocks, and found Probart's hatchet where--so unfortunately for
me--he had left it in the hurry of embarkation.
I snatched it up, and as the handle was short, and the blade, though
sharp, was small, I secured it in the waistband of my trousers, and
buttoned my now tattered jacket over it, determined to prove
therewith the hardness of Antonio's head on the first opportunity.
An emotion of security now filled my heart, as I felt that I had a
weapon with which to strike at least one blow in defence of my life,
if it was assailed.