"About a month after Juan's death, I was betrayed by some of his friends into the hands of the troops of his Majesty Ferdinand VII., and was placed by them on board a vessel for conveyance to Spain, where an ignominious death as a traitor awaited me.
"When passing near this isle, a heavy gale came on, and I fell overboard. In such a sea, to save me was impossible; but a sailor heard my shriek of despair, and cast over to me a hencoop.
"God, in his goodness, enabled me to reach it, and after drifting on the dark ocean for more than an hour, I was cast ashore, and here have I remained ever since, leading a life of piety and austerity, of penance and of prayer, in the humble and earnest hope that this imitation of the holy men of old may atone for the errors I committed in the world as Don Pedro Zuares Miguel de Barradas.
"Rueguen a Dios por el."
Such was the substance of this strange confession, which we have written out in a more readable and coherent form than Morrison found it, and which throws a light on the parentage and origin of the two dark seamen on board the Hermione; and as for the fate of the hapless Mariquita, the reader has already learned it from Captain Hawkshaw's unpleasant reminiscence of the Barranca Secca.
The evening of the next day saw the Princess steering for the north-western extremity of the island of Tristan d'Acunha. At nine o' clock, Bartelot ordered a light to be hoisted at the end of the foretopmast studdingsail boom, and a gun to be fired, as a signal for a shore boat, which promptly came off from this remarkable place.
As he wanted fresh water, the captain continued to stand off and on till dawn next day, when Morley, who had spent the morning watch in successful fishing, had the gratification of seeing the sun rise on the isle of Don Tristan d'Acunha.
Situated far amid the lonely waves of the Southern Atlantic, at the distance of 1,500 miles from any continent, this lofty island has a peak of 5,000 feet in height above the level of its beach. At dawn it seemed like a cone of flame, shaded off by purple tints, and towering amid a rose-coloured sea, whose depth is so vast that it far exceeds even the height of Tristan's loftiest peak.
Two islands are near it: one is named the Inaccessible; the other, the island of the Nightingale; but they are mere masses of wild storm-beaten rock, against which the ocean rolls its masses of foam, and above which, in the amber-tinted sky, a cloud of sea-hens, petrels, and albatrosses wheel and flutter.
In the little town which held a British garrison when our imperial captive pined in St. Helena, there is a mixed population of English and Portuguese mulattoes, though the isle is described in a recent gazetteer as being as desolate as when the Cavalier Tristan d'Acunha traversed the southern sea with his high-pooped caravel, and gave the place his name, in the first years of the sixteenth century.