“You infamous pirate, Captain Brand!” it began––“the son of the man who destroyed the ‘Centipede’ and her crew, and the boy whom your brutal mate tore from the mother you saw at dinner to-day, are near you! That calm, stern, determined doctor, too, whom you laced down on the trestle for poisonous insects to kill, has been on your track for the past seventeen years, and will soon hold you in his iron gripe! There will be no mercy then!”
The eyes closed, the heart stopped beating, and the thin lips and tongue, as dry as cartridge-paper, now took up the strain, while the mutilated hand clutched convulsively, as if there were fifty fingers fingering knives and pistols.
“Shall I assassinate my old doctor, and run the risk of being arrested and hung? No! He thinks me dead, and I will go back to the island, redeem my treasure, and pass the remainder of my life tranquilly in the highlands of Scotland!”
Don’t be too sanguine, Colonel Lawton; for, though your ten thousand pounds in gold is still in the vault, yet there is Don Ignaçio Sanchez, whose estates have been confiscated, and who has just got out of ten years’ imprisonment in the Moro of Havana, glad to save his neck from the iron collar, and, without the little jewel-hilted blade up his sleeve, is now turning about to see how he may redeem his lost fortunes. Don’t be an hour too late, I pray you, Captain Brand, for that sharp eye of Don Ignaçio has already, perhaps, looked at the shiny cleft in the crag, and thinks he knows what lies hidden there! Oh, si! nothing but mouldy beans and paper cigars to live upon for ten years, and fond of more substantial food, even though it were yellow greenish gold, mildewed by damp, but yet solid and refreshing. Cierto––certainly! Quien sabe––who knows?
But be careful, Don Ignaçio! Don’t take your old wife with you on that projected expedition, for you have treated that old woman––who resembles a rotten banana––badly! You have won back in monté all she ever won by cheating, besides the half ounces you used to give her for the Church––cheated her by drawing two cards at a time when you saw the numerals with that spark of an eye, and when you knew that she would win if you drew fairly! Yes, you have, you old sinner, for more than two score of years! And she hates you now––though you don’t think it––worse than you did Captain Brand! Have an eye to that old banana!
So passed that short night––long enough, however, for somebody––and before the fresh land-wind had woke up to creep down the valley, there was a mettled barb, with open nostrils, galloping up the broken road as if he had the devil on his back––as perhaps he had, or Colonel Lawton, or Captain Brand, possibly all three, but it makes very little odds to us.