"One thing, at least, is certain. We are not, I am sorry to say, to touch at the Cape."
"And who told you this?"
"The captain himself."
Pedro uttered a tremendous Spanish oath, expressive of extreme astonishment and satisfaction.
"So—so this cunning old Englander has been keeping us all in the dark as to where we are?"
"Exactly."
"But wherefore?"
"That I cannot say," said Hawkshaw, evasively.
"Morte de Dios! does he suspect?—does he smell at a rat!" exclaimed the Spaniard, with a sudden rage; but Hawkshaw remained silent. "We must be somewhere off the coast of La Tierra de Natal, and if so, by the ship's steering to-day, the mouth of the Mozambique Channel should be upon our weather-bow; yet how far distant, none but the captain and his mates can say," continued Pedro, as if in communion with himself; but he was wrong in his supposition, for the ship, at the time he spoke, was about a hundred miles to the southward of Algoa Bay, which opens between Cape Recife and Cape Padrone in southern Africa.
"Listen to me," said Pedro, suddenly, with a savage glare in his black eyes, a low and husky tone in his deep, sonorous voice, his right hand on the haft of his knife, and his left planted on Hawkshaw's shoulder with the grasp of a vice. "We mean to take this ship, and run her on our own account; but as four new hands have been added to the officers, will you join us? It is a fair offer—your only chance of vengeance, too: for, ashore, you will not be worth a rotten castano."