"Is it then for you to repeat to me your sinister predictions that you stop me thus?" he cried.
"By no means, your Excellency; I do not admit my right either to control your acts or to oppose your plans. I have warned you, that is all. I am now at your orders."
"You have not, I hope, whispered a word to anyone of these absurd crotchets which possess your brain?"
"What use would it be, my lord, to speak without your authority of what you term crotchets, and what I term certainties? The soldiers placed under my orders know as well as I do what awaits them in the desert. As to your slaves, what use would it be to frighten them beforehand? Is it not better to leave them in entire ignorance? For, I repeat, to escape will be impossible for us."
The marquis knitted his eyebrows, and crossed his arms with anger.
"Let us see," resumed he, with a subdued voice, but nevertheless, with trembled emotion, "let us make amend for it, Diogo."
"I ask nothing better, your Excellency."
"Speak, but be brief; I repeat, time flies, an hour ago we ought to have been on our journey."
The captain scratched his forehead with an embarrassed air, but appearing all of a sudden to arrive at a decision.
"This is the state of the case, my lord," said he; "up to the present time we have traversed civilised countries, or nearly so, where we have only had to contend against ordinary dangers; that is to say, the bites of wild beasts or those of reptiles."