Then turning to Cadwallader, he says:
“If all goes well, we shall make Panama in less than two days. We might do it in one, if we could but set sail enough. Anyhow, I think old Bracebridge will stay for us at least a week. Ah! I wish that were all we had to trouble us. To think they’re gone—lost to us—for ever!”
“Don’t say that, Ned. There’s still a hope we may find them.”
“And found, what then! You needn’t answer. Will; I don’t wish you to speak of it. I daren’t trust myself to think of it. Carmen Montijo—my betrothed—captive to a crew of pirate cut-throats—oh!”
Cadwallader is silent. He suffers the same agony thinking of Iñez.
For a time the picture remains before their minds, dark as their gloomiest fancies can make it. Then across it shoot some rays of hope, saddened, but sweet, for they are thoughts of vengeance. Cadwallader first gives expression to it.
“Whatever has happened to the girls, we shall go after them anyhow. And the robbers, we must find them.”
“Find, and punish them,” adds Crozier. “That we surely shall. If it costs all my money, all the days of my life, I’ll revenge the wrongs of Carmen Montijo.”
“And I those of Iñez Alvarez.”
For a while they stand silently brooding upon that which has brought such black shadow over their hearts. Then Cadwallader says: