"As I came back to the world," he resumed, "savage and bloody thoughts occurred to me! Again I was swinging above the waves at the boom-end; again I saw all your exulting faces line the bulwark of the Eugenie; again I was in the sea!
"Then, horrid monsters, red-eyed and covered with shining bristles, were about to devour me. I felt their cold noses and their hot breaths upon my face; and with a yell of terror, I half rose up to find myself lying high and dry above the tide-mark, but among the sea-weed and shingle, blubber, star and jelly-fish of a warm beach, on which the evening sun was shining; and that the bristly monsters of my dreams were a herd of wild boars in council (consejo) about devouring me; but they scampered into the woods when slowly and feebly I staggered up, like one after a long debauch.
"My left arm was still lashed to the boom, from which I now released it.
"As I stood erect, shore and cliff, sea and mountain, swam round me, and then I became assailed by thirst and hunger.
"The nearest spring fully relieved one longing, and a wild gourd, which I nearly devoured, satisfied the other. I remained long in thought, considering where I had been cast, and as night came on, and the moon arose, the fear of savages or wild animals made me climb into a tree.
"I had no clothes but what you see; a pair of tattered calziones de marinero (sailor's trousers), and my sash; but, diabolo! did I not utter a shout, when, on examining it, I found that in the folds there were still my knife—my old Albacete knife—and one of the captain's revolvers, with a little tin case, which I had taken from his cabin. I then conceived that it might contain jewellery—now I hoped it was food—a case of sardines at the least!
"It was soldered and water-tight, so I forced the lid with my knife, and found that it contained caps and ammunition for the revolver!
"Thus, without fear, I supplied myself with food, until the arrival of your crew upon the island. I was hidden among some mangroves on the day when the long-boat came into the creek. I knew you all, and my heart swelled with rage as I covered you in succession with this pistol; but as every charge was, perhaps, a day's food to me, and I valued my scanty ammunition more than your wretched lives, I spared them, intending to cut you off otherwise, when any straggler came within reach of my knife; and, as you know, with a large stone, I nearly marred forever the seamanship of the contra-maestre. So that's all my yarn, and what do you think of it?"
"I think that when Heaven has so miraculously spared you, Antonio, your mind should have other thoughts than vengeance now."
The dark Cubano gnashed his white teeth, and laughed bitterly; but now, by his story, the disappearance of the boom from the mountain-top, the thefts from our bread-bag, the alleged pistol reports, and those appearances of a human figure on the bluffs in the moonlight, the wounded goat, and every thing else which had so greatly perplexed us of late, was completely accounted for; and fortunately for me, in the relation of his adventures, the Cubano had talked himself into a state of comparative equanimity.