What must his thoughts have been amid the awful solitude of that lonely isle before our arrival? I dared not attempt to imagine or to analyze them.
Why were the waves so sparing—why was Fate so favorable to a wretch like this? How came it to pass that a life so vile had been so marvellously protected? and when would the day of retribution come?
All these thoughts came upon me with rapidity. Antonio seemed almost to read my heart, for he laughed, and said in Spanish,—
"El diabolo! so we meet again. Ha! ha! I suppose you thought—Oho Juan bobo—it was all over with the Cubano when the studding-sail boom parted, and amid the laughter of these English dogs I fell away to leeward—to drown—to die in the trough of the sea—eh?"
I did not reply to the mocking question, as I was not yet in possession of all my faculties.
"Aha! Antonio el Cubano does not die so easily," resumed the Spanish Creole; "but now what am I to do with you?"
"You will release me, I hope, as I have never harmed you."
"For what purpose did you come up these rocks, hombre?" he asked, with a keen glance.
"Only to survey the island from a new point of view," I replied, evasively.
"The top of the mountain would be a better place for that purpose," he replied, grimly.