“I have other sails, señor,” he explained. “They will be in place as rapidly as my men can get them there. The craft of ill-omen cannot get far before we are upon her heels again. She is running out to sea once more. She would lose sight of us before she turns toward the accursed spot where they have their land rendezvous. Their behavior astounds me; they acted as if they had seen a ghost!”
“And so did I!” Don Audre declared. “I’ll swear that, for an instant, I saw Señor Zorro standing at the butt of the bowsprit—and then he was gone!”
“By the saints, I saw him myself!” Sergeant Gonzales shouted. “He was here to aid us! Man or spirit, I know not—but he was here! And now he has disappeared!”
Fray Felipe came toward them. “It cannot be that he is alive and aboard,” he told them, “else he would discover himself to us at once. Perhaps it was but a strong hope that caused you to imagine the sight.”
“Fray, I swore friendship with you, but I’ll break the compact if you say such a thing again!” Sergeant Gonzales declared. “I saw him, I say! Man or spirit, I know not—but I saw him!”
The caballeros were busy helping the crew with the new sails. One by one they were sheeted home, and presently the schooner gathered headway once more. On it sailed, in the wake of the pirate craft, vengeance only delayed.
Far behind, Señor Zorro watched her grow smaller and smaller, and the flare of hope that had been in his heart dwindled to a mere spark again.
His unexpected plunge into the sea before he had recovered from the first ordeal had unnerved him for the moment. He had come to the surface to find that the schooner had drifted away. Before he could handle himself to advantage she was at some distance, and the pirate craft was drawing away from the ship of smoke and flame.
There was a strong tide running, and Señor Zorro was too weak to fight against it. Near him there drifted a spar that had been torn away when the ships had crashed together. He struggled through the swirling water and managed to reach it, and drew himself upon it to sprawl there almost breathless, gasping, exhausted. He was too weak to signal his friends, and he doubted whether they would see him did he do so.
Shouting would be a waste of breath, he knew; and so, stretched across the spar, he fought to keep his consciousness, closing his eyes and forcing himself to breathe normally. When some strength had returned to him he sat upright and looked across the sea. The pirate craft was in the distance. The schooner, the fires extinguished, some of her sails in place, was drawing away from him rapidly. Señor Zorro gave thanks for that—his friends were not deserting the señorita.