“How do you happen to be here?” asked Bob.
“My father, as I suppose you have heard, left the steamer Santa Maria to go on the schooner North Star and hunt for his water-logged brig. I continued on to Belize on the Santa Maria, with orders from my father to take the first boat from Belize to Port Livingstone, at the mouth of the Izaral. There I was met by some of General Pitou’s soldiers, and brought out to this camp to wait until my father, or my uncle, should come. My father did not come, and will not. My uncle has already arrived, and to avoid him I have come away by myself, into this part of the woods.”
“Who is your uncle, Ysabel?” asked Bob.
“Abner Fingal.”
“Fingal!” exclaimed both the boys.
“His real name is Sixty,” explained the girl, “and he is my father’s brother. He is captain of the schooner that has been helping the revolutionists, and he has sworn vengeance on all those who had anything to do with my father’s capture.”
“That means us,” said Dick, as he turned for an apprehensive look through the timber in the direction of the path. “I never dreamed of anything like that,” he added.
“It’s not generally known,” said the girl, “that Captain Fingal and Captain Sixty are in any way related. They have both been helping the revolutionists, and, if the uprising was a success, they were to be rewarded.”
“You ran away from the rebel camp in order to avoid Fingal?”
“Yes.”