“Have you any object to go to Granada in preference to any other place?” he inquired of the master fisherman, who had now adjusted the sails of the cutter, and resumed the tiller.
“No, he had not,” was the reply: “he was endeavouring to make that island because it was the nearest land indicated to him by the pirate captain.”
“Would it not be easier to sail at once to Trinidad?” again asked the priest.
“Most decidedly,” was the answer; “the distance was greater, it was true,” added the master fisherman, but that was overbalanced by the fairness of the wind, because they would then be able to sail with a free sheet and should gain Trinidad within an infinitely shorter space of time than it would take to make Granada, by beating up against the wind from the position in which they then were.
“Then let us steer to Trinidad,” said the priest.
“Very well,” replied the master fisherman.
The cutter was kept off, the sheets and tacks were slackened, and the little vessel, now feeling the full force of the wind began to tear through the water.
Away, away, it went. During day and during night the master fisherman sat gravely at the tiller; neither fatigue nor want of sleep could induce him to entrust for a moment the command of the little vessel to his man; “He had taken an oath,” he said to the priest, when he requested him to take some rest.
It was on a beautiful morning when the priest and Agnes, on awaking from their uncomfortable slumbers, beheld themselves within the Gulf of Paria.