It was now that, withdrawing his eyes from the jaguar, he perceived at a distance a small craft tossing about on the heavy billows. He nimbly climbed the eminence to have a better view of what he feared his fancy may have too flatteringly pictured to him. It was in reality a small fallucha that was labouring on the heavy seas. Her course was under the land, but on the reach she was edging sea-ward. Alarmed at this appearance, he came down the cliff and ran along the beach towards the little vessel. Having got nearly opposite, he halloed as loudly as he could. He was not heard; again he cried, but with as little success as before.
“Am I destined again to meet with other misfortunes?” he muttered, calmly. “Am I destined to be left to perish on this unfrequented shore! Oh my father! how many events seem to arise to befriend you. Were I not sufficiently grounded in my belief, I would be almost tempted to believe that destiny, or Providence, or something else, exerted itself to shield you from your merited chastisement. But avaunt, vain, and stupid thought, the fatalities that have befallen thee, Emmanuel Appadocca, are only the acting of one of the grand laws by which yon sun stands where it is, while the earth wheels around it; or by which thou thyself throttled the huge beast last night. Dost thou not see that the distance is too far for thy voice to reach? Providence has instruments enough among his creatures, he does not interfere with our little concerns.”
Muttering this, Appadocca climbed the heights, took off the jacket with which the hospitable Ranchero had provided him, and waved it in the air.
The mariners on board the fallucha held their oars in mid-air.
“They have seen me,” said Appadocca, and waved the jacket again.
The fallucha had discovered the signal.
Casting away the jacket, Appadocca threw himself at once from an overhanging rock into the sea, and began to swim boldly out to meet the vessel that was now slowly approaching him.
His eagerness however, was now well nigh proving his death; for miscalculating the distance as well as his strength, he had ventured farther than his fatigues could justify. He was just sinking from exhaustion, when the powerful arm of a sailor from on board the fallucha grasped him.
He was laid on one of the rower’s benches, where he lay insensible. The sailors gravely bent over him, and tried every means for producing re-animation, which was not easily attained, for the Spaniards had no effectual restoratives, and Appadocca was now so overwhelmed, that the healthy elasticity of nature was almost destroyed.
Appadocca proffered his thanks to the four men who formed the crew of that little vessel for their kindness, as soon as he had come to himself.