With a vague sense that I was about to face a terrible danger, and that the sooner it was faced and past, the better, I walked hastily aft, and on descending the companion-ladder, paused when half-way down, and after knocking on the bulkhead called out distinctly and boldly,—
"Antonio! Hallo, Cubano!"
"Well, what do you want?" asked he, sulkily.
"To speak with you; may I come down?"
"Enter companero; you have not yet harmed me, thus I bear you no malice."
Putting a hand in my breast to ascertain that my little hatchet was secure, I entered the cabin, where the Cubano, with his broad back placed against the rudder-case, was seated on the stern-locker at the table, which he had covered with bottles, biscuits, cheese, and polonies, while papers, dockets, broken desks and boxes, lay scattered about him. He was clad, as I have stated, in the poor skipper's best shore-going suit of clothes, which he wore open and loose, for the atmosphere of the cabin, notwithstanding the shattered skylight, was oppressively hot, as the sun was now almost vertical; the flies were in noisy swarms, and the cockroaches were crawling over all the beams and bulkhead panels.
On first hearing a foot on the companion-ladder, he had evidently snatched up a revolver, and cocked it; but on finding that his visitor was only me, he put it down, threw away the fag-end of a cigarito, and said, with a ferocious grin and ironical politeness,—
"Buenos dias (a good day), senor; to what am I indebted for this visit?"
It was the first time I had ever looked in the face of a man who had coolly destroyed a fellow-being as he had done, and my flesh seemed to creep with an indescribable loathing; but I had a purpose to achieve, and determined to do it.
I was about to enter Weston's state-room, when the Cubano cocked his revolver and cried, in a voice of thunder,—