The week that succeeded my abduction was so utterly barren of events that it may be passed over with the mere remark that throughout the whole of the time we had perfect weather, with a steady, moderate trade wind, under the impulsion of which the felucca bruised along upon her proper course, reeling off her five to six knots per hour with the regularity of a clock; and during the whole of that time, strange to say, we sighted not a single sail. I had been by no means idle during this time, however, as may well be supposed; for every day at noon saw the little hooker a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty miles nearer the spot where, if nothing happened in the interim to prevent it, I was to be delivered into the hands of a fiend in human form, whose hatred of me was so intense and vindictive that he had taken a considerable amount of trouble, and put himself to considerable expense, merely to get me into his power and wreak a blood-curdling revenge upon me.
But to tamely submit to be thus handed over to Morillo’s tender mercies was the very last thing that I contemplated. I had every reason to believe that the picture drawn by Dominguez of the form which Morillo’s revenge would probably take was a tolerably truthful one; and while I was prepared to face death in any form at a moment’s notice in the way of duty, I had not the remotest intention of permitting myself to be tortured to death merely to gratify the ferocity of a piratical outlaw, if I could possibly help it. So for the first three or four days I devoted myself wholly to the task of endeavouring to bribe my custodians to forego their intention of handing me over to Morillo, and to land me upon the nearest British territory instead. But I by and by made the discovery that my efforts in this direction were doomed to failure; Dominguez was clearly so profoundly impressed with Morillo’s power, and with his tenacious memory for injuries, that the conviction had borne itself in upon him that if he yielded to my persuasions it would be absolutely necessary to his safety, not only to buy over the whole of those engaged upon the business of my abduction, but also to place the whole width of the globe between himself and Morillo; and to execute these little matters satisfactorily would, according to his own calculations, necessitate the disbursement on my part of the modest amount of ten thousand pounds sterling, a sum which, as I explained to him over and over again, it was utterly beyond my power to raise. It was not that Dominguez was grasping or avaricious; it was simply that he regarded a certain course of action necessary to his own safety and well-being, in the event of his consenting to yield to my wishes; and as he had no intention of suffering any pecuniary or other loss or damage by so yielding, it appeared to him that the thing could not be done under the sum he had named, and there was the whole matter in a nut-shell. The attempt at bribery having thus resulted in failure, there remained to me but one other alternative, that of a resort to force—myself against Dominguez and the two men who formed his crew. For, come what would, I was firmly resolved never to suffer myself to be delivered alive into Morillo’s hands; if it was my doom to die at the end of this adventure, I would die fighting. So, while feigning to yield to the inexorable force of circumstances, I began to meditate upon the most promising means whereby to escape from the exceedingly unpleasant dilemma in which I found myself involved; and after giving the whole matter my most careful attention, I came to the conclusion that my simplest plan would be to take—or attempt to take—the felucca from Dominguez and his associates, and, having done so, make for the nearest British harbour.
Chapter Fourteen.
I seize the felucca.
Having come to this conclusion, the next thing was to devise a plan of some sort; but upon attempting to do this, I soon discovered that it was wholly impossible, so much depending upon circumstances over which I had no control whatever, that I might have formed a dozen plans with never a chance to carry any one of them through. The only thing, therefore, was to await an opportunity, and be prepared to seize it the moment that it presented itself. Perhaps the most difficult part of my task was to preserve all through this trying time such a demeanour as would effectually conceal from Dominguez the fact that I was alert and on the watch for something; but I managed it somehow, by leading him to believe that, rather than suffer torture, I had determined to provoke Morillo into killing me outright; a plan of which Dominguez highly approved, while expressing his doubts as to the possibility of its achievement.
In suggesting—as I find I have in the above paragraph—that I had no plan whatever, I have perhaps conveyed a wrong impression; what I intended the reader to understand was that I had no finished scheme, complete in all its details, to depend upon. A plan of a sort I certainly had, but it was of the vaguest and most nebulous kind, consisting in nothing more specific than the mere determination to seize the felucca at the first favourable opportunity, and sail her, single-handed, to the nearest British port; but of how this was to be accomplished I had not the most remote idea. The only point upon which I was at all clear was that it would be inadvisable, for two reasons, to make my attempt too early: my first reason for arriving at this conclusion being that, the longer I deferred action the nearer should we be to Barbadoes, for which island I intended to make; while my second reason was that, should Dominguez perchance suspect me of any sinister design, the longer the delay on my part the less suspicious and watchful would he be likely to become. Fortunately for my purpose, we were making rather a long passage of it, the little hooker not being by any means a particularly weatherly craft; consequently our first land-fall—on our sixth day out—was the curious shoal and accompanying group of rocky islets called Los Roques, or The Roccas, off La Guayra, close to which we hove about and stood to the northward on the starboard tack.
This occurred during the early morning, about an hour after sunrise. The trade wind was then blowing steadily but moderately, and the weather was, as usual, fine and clear. Toward noon, however, it became noticeable that the wind was very decidedly softening down; and when Dominguez took his meridian observation of the sun, we were not going more than four knots. It was the custom aboard the felucca to dine in the middle of the day, as soon as Dominguez had worked out his calculations, the skipper and I dining first, and then going on deck while Miguel, the mate, took his meal. While Miguel was below Dominguez usually took the tiller, but of late I had occasionally relieved him—with a vague idea that possibly it might, at some opportune moment, be an advantage for me to be at the helm. And, as it happened, I chanced to be first on deck on this particular day, and, without any premeditation, went aft and relieved Miguel; so that, when a few minutes later Dominguez came on deck, he found me in possession of the tiller, and staring intently at some floating object about a quarter of a mile away, and slightly on our weather bow, that kept rising into view and vanishing again as the long, lazy undulations of the swell swept past it.
“What are you staring at so hard, Señor Courtenay? Do you see anything?” demanded Dominguez, as he sauntered aft toward me from the companion, cigar in mouth.