"There he goes, and God bless him, although he's cut adrift without a prayer or a sailor's winding-sheet," said Tom Lambourne, taking off his hat, as the body bobbed like a fisherman's float on the waves for a little space, and then disappeared in the long white track made by the Eugenie, through the dark apple-green of the morning sea.
All the stories I had heard or read of Spanish revenge seemed eclipsed by the atrocities of this fiendish Cubano.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE REQUITAL.
Three days and nights passed after this without finding us able to surprise or dislodge the demon who was in possession of the cabin; without our knowing where the ship was driving or drifting to, and without a sail appearing. A man-of-war belonging to any country we should have hailed as a protector; but on the wide waters of the Southern Atlantic ships are few and far between.
Hislop rallied a little, and was removed into one of the forecastle berths. He could tell us only that he had been surprised when asleep, and been stabbed again and again—that he became insensible, and remembered nothing more. His distress was great when we related the story of the captain's fate, the death of Will White, and that their destroyer was still in possession of the ship, and the arbiter of all our lives.
He writhed on his bed of pain, and sighed bitterly on finding how stiff and sore, how weak and almost blind he had become by loss of blood; but a crisis was now at hand with our Cubano.
The evening of the fourth day after we had saved Hislop found the brig still lying a westerly course; but whether in the latitude of Cape San Roque or of the Rio Grande, we knew not; and, I suppose, it was all the same to Antonio.
I was at the wheel. The sunset was gorgeously beautiful. The Eugenie was running with both tacks aft; and under the arched leech of her courses I could see the blood-red disk of the sun right ahead setting in the waves, which shone in all the colors of the dying dolphin; while against the flaming orb, the black outline of the masts, the figure-head, and the taper end of the jibboom, with its cap, guys, and gear, were clearly and distinctly defined.
The waves ahead rose and fell between me and the sun, as slowly and imperceptibly he sank at the flaming horizon, from a quarter circle to a segment; then the last vestige of that also disappeared, but the lingering rays of his glory played upward on the light clouds that floated above. Even they paled away and died out, and twilight stole over the silent sea, which changed from gold to a transparent blue.