"I have secrets of importance to communicate. Where can we converse in safety?"
"Wherever you please," replied Certa, roughly.
"Señor, let not your passions ruin your prospects. I would neither confide my secret to the most carefully closed chambers, nor the most lonely plains. If you pay me dearly for it, it is because it is worth telling and worth keeping."
As they spoke thus, these two men had reached the sea, near the cabins destined for the use of the bathers. They knew not that they were seen, heard and watched by Martin Paz, who glided like a serpent in the shadow.
"Let us take a canoe," said André, "and go out into the open sea; the sharks may, perhaps, show themselves discreet."
André detached from the shore a little boat, and threw some money to its guardian. Samuel embarked with him, and the mestizo pushed off. He vigorously plied two flexible oars, which soon took them a mile from the shore.
But as he saw the canoe put off, Martin Paz, concealed in a crevice of the rock, hastily undressed, and precipitating himself into the sea, swam vigorously toward the boat.
The sun had just buried his last rays in the waves of the ocean, and darkness hovered over the crests of the waves.
Martin Paz had not once reflected that sharks of the most dangerous species frequented these fatal shores. He stopped not far from the boat of the mestizo, and listened.
"But what proof of the identity of the daughter shall I carry to the father?" asked André Certa of the Jew.