For one second this vapour eclipsed the Burlonilla, which seeing, Matasiete standing on the pier head beside the baffled señora Maria Josefa, remarked:
"There is nothing under canvas that can take that craft; but I will have a try at it with steam. Will you come?"
"Anywhere!" cried the vindictive sister of don José de Miranda, "Anywhere, if revenge only flourishes there."
"I think," muttered Ignacio to himself behind this worthy pair, "that don Jorge Federico had far better have left me first officer of the Burlonilla. At the same rank on board of the Casta Susana, methinks I shall handle my brother's pearls before he does."
[CHAPTER XIII.]
INTERVENTION.
The Burlonilla proved herself commendably swift. Had she been even a faster sailer, captain Gladsden would have never dreamt of going out to sea with a view of eluding anyone curious about the movements of the eccentric young Englishman, after the disappearance of Ignacio being reported to him. Search high and low, not a trace of the rogue. Spite of the sharks at Guaymas, capitán don Jorge was so convinced that the lieutenant of bandoleros was inevitably fated to adorn the gallows, that he believed the rogue had reached land, or, as the vice-consul could have given him a pointer, been taken into the scow of his famous colleagues.
Without being aware that the steamer was at the command of those who could be accounted his enemies, and would be sent in pursuit, or, rather better to say, since Ignacio was the pilot, would strive to anticipate him, the captain made all haste for the spot indicated on Pepillo's plans.
Since Ignacio had but a vague surmise to go upon, the Burlonilla passed Point St. Miguel without anything hostile arising, and soon cast anchor at the second of the islets, in a chain which were named after the knots in the rope girdle of St. Francis. But the seafarers, men supremely practical, who do not fetch their similes from afar, had also preferred to take the protuberances for a likeness to the knots in a logline, call them, Las Señales de la Cordonera de San Francisco. The good mission priests might protest, but the laws of the Medes and Persians are easily effaceable as compared with a name down on a sea chart.