“Very well, then,” remarked Mendouca, with a sneer, “so far as you can with honour, refrain, I pray you, from thrusting your nationality into my face; for I may as well tell you that I have the utmost hatred and contempt for the English; I would sweep every one of them off the face of the earth if I could; and some day, when this feeling is particularly strong upon me, I may blow your brains out if I happen to remember that you are an Englishman.”
“I hope it will not come to that, Don Fernando, for many reasons,” I remarked, with a rather forced laugh, “and among them I may just mention the base cowardice of murdering an unarmed man. I rather regret that you should be so completely as you appear to be under the dominion of this feeling of hatred for my nation; it must be as unpleasant for you as it is for me that we are thus forcibly thrown together; but it need not last long; you can put me out of the ship at the first land that we touch, and I must take my chance of making my way to a place of safety. It will be unpleasant for me, of course, but it will remove from you a constant source of temptation to commit murder.”
Mendouca laughed—it was rather a harsh and jarring laugh, certainly—and said—
“Upon my honour as a Spanish gentleman, you appear to be mightily concerned to preserve me from the crime of bloodshed, young gentleman. But do you suppose it would not be murder to put you ashore, as you suggest, at the first land that we reach? Why, boy, were I to do so, within six hours you would be in the hands of the natives, and lashed to the torture-stake! And would not your death then be just as much my act as though I were to shoot you through the head this moment?”
And to my astonishment—and somewhat to my consternation, I must
admit—he whipped a pistol out of his belt and levelled it full at my head, cocking it with his thumb as he did so.
“I presume it would,” I answered steadily; “and on the whole I believe that to shoot me would be the more merciful act of the two. So fire by all means, señor, if you must take my life.”
“By the living God, but you carry the thing off bravely, young cockerel!” he exclaimed. “Do you dare me to fire?”
“Yes,” I exclaimed stoutly. “I dare you to fire, if you can bring yourself to perpetrate so rank an act of cowardice!”