How was I to remain insensible to these marks of interest? I do not deny that I should have been better pleased to have seen this intense interest show itself under less redoubtable forms. Still, I should have considered it a crime to have repulsed them this time with guns and muskets. I offered, therefore, no resistance. On the contrary, I wept with joy and pride when I heard the walls, roofs, windows, balconies, doors, and framework of the verandah crackling under the weight of the enormous stones which they kept throwing against them. I confess that I was moved by this devotion of theirs, the end of which was infallibly my death, since what a discovery awaited them in a very few minutes! They counted on finding themselves in the presence of a mandrill behind the walls which they had well-nigh overthrown, and instead of this they would place their hands on a light-haired man, although a Portuguese, identical in every respect, more’s the pity, with all that is well-formed and most agreeable in man.
CHAPTER XIII.
Deliverance.—I see my native land again.—O Macao!—My immortality.
I had only to sustain this siege, instigated, I was well aware, by the purest devotion, for a very few minutes longer, to ensure being murdered without the shadow of a doubt; everything was being destroyed and was falling around me, when all at once three cannon-shots sounded in the distance. Did I hear aright? I listen. Three fresh reports follow those which have already aroused my attention.
Thank God, I am not the only one who hears them. The besiegers below have also caught the sound.
In a moment the entire island is all attention.