“Does he intend to touch at Zanzibar?” inquired Lindsay.
“Me tink no,” replied the interpreter; “got many pritty garls—go straight for Persia.”
On hearing this the Lieutenant put the cutter about, and sailed out to sea in search of the ‘Firefly,’ which he knew could not at that time be at any great distance from the shore.
He found her sooner than he had expected; and, to his immense astonishment as well as joy, one of the first persons he beheld on stepping over the side of his ship was Azinté.
“You have captured Marizano, sir, I see,” he said to Captain Romer.
“Not the scoundrel himself, but one of his dhows,” replied the Captain. “He had started for the northern ports with two heavily-laden vessels. We discovered him five days ago, and, fortunately, just beyond the protected water, so that he was a fair and lawful prize. The first of his dhows, being farthest out from shore, we captured, but the other, commanded by himself, succeeded in running ashore, and he escaped; with nearly all his slaves—only a few of the women and children being drowned in the surf. And now, as our cargo of poor wretches is pretty large, I shall run for the Seychelles. After landing them I shall return as fast as possible, to intercept a few more of these pirates.”
“To the Seychelles!” muttered the Lieutenant to himself as he went below, with an expression on his countenance something between surprise and despair.
Poor Lindsay! His mind was so taken up with, and confused by, the constant and obtrusive presence of the Senhorina Maraquita that the particular turn which affairs had taken had not occurred to him, although that turn was quite natural, and by no means improbable. Marizano, with Azinté on board of one of his piratical dhows, was proceeding to the north. Captain Romer, with his war-steamer, was on the look-out for piratical dhows. What more natural than that the Captain should fall in with the pirate? But Lieutenant Lindsay’s mind had been so filled with Maraquita that it seemed to be, for the time, incapable of holding more than one other idea—that idea was the fulfilment of Maraquita’s commands to obtain information as to her lost Azinté. To this he had of late devoted all his powers, happy in the thought that it fell in with and formed part of his duty, to his Queen and country, as well as to the “Queen of his soul.” To rescue Azinté from Marizano seemed to the bold Lieutenant an easy enough matter; but to rescue her from his own Captain, and send her back into slavery! “Ass! that I am,” he exclaimed, “not to have thought of this before. Of course she can never be returned to Maraquita, and small comfort it will be to the Senhorina to be told that her favourite is free in the Seychelles Islands, and utterly beyond her reach, unless she chooses to go there and stay with her.”
Overwhelmed with disgust at his own stupidity, and at the utter impossibility of doing anything to mend matters, the unfortunate Lieutenant sat down to think, and the result of his thinking was that he resolved at all events to look well after Azinté, and see that she should be cared for on her arrival at the Seychelles.
Among the poor creatures who had been rescued from Marizano’s dhow were nearly a hundred children, in such a deplorable condition that small hopes were entertained of their reaching the island alive. Their young lives, however, proved to be tenacious. Experienced though their hardy rescuers were in rough and tumble work, they had no conception what these poor creatures had already gone through, and, therefore, formed a mistaken estimate of their powers of endurance. Eighty-three of them reached the Seychelles alive. They were placed under the care of a warm-hearted missionary, who spared no pains for their restoration to health; but despite his utmost efforts, forty of these eventually died—their little frames had been whipped, and starved, and tried to such an extent, that recovery was impossible.