Her course was trimmed north-east, for where they supposed the isle of Tristan da Cunha lay. She had caught a breeze, and before four o'clock in the morning, the last vestige of her had disappeared.
Still I did not entirely despair!
When day dawned, while my eyes were almost blinded by tears of rage and bitterness, I clambered in haste to the summit of the great bluff, and gazed eagerly to seaward, in the hope that the arguments or wishes of Hislop, of Carlton, and of blunt old Tom Lambourne might have prevailed, and that I should see her returning; but alas! there was nothing visible save a lonely albatross skimming lazily between me and the rising sun.
Except for the sake of Marc Hislop and one or two others, who in our parting interview had acted as my friends, I hoped—but this was in the intense bitterness of my heart, at an abandonment so cruel—that the longboat might swamp, founder, or perish, how I cared not.
What was to become of me now?
The boat might fall in with some ship, and thus afford me a double chance of being taken off the island. But would the captain of this supposed ship bear up for the land if it lay far from his course?
Amid these perplexing thoughts and surmises, my greatest source of annoyance was the odious companionship of the Cubano.
I felt neither hunger nor sleep, though all the preceding night I had never closed an eye; but now I remained upon the bluff, gazing on the sunlit sea, from under the shadow of a broad-leaved plantain, until I was roused in the afternoon by Antonio, who joined me.
"Hola! mio muchacho!" (hallo! my boy), he exclaimed; "you promised me a dozen of biscuits if I released you from my hiding hole in yonder rock. Now, biscuits are biscuits here, so where are those for which I ransomed you?"
"Gone in the boat with every thing else," I replied, sulkily and sternly.