“What is that dark object, sister?” asked Francisca, pointing to a large, black-looking substance, floating to leeward.
“Indeed, I don’t know, Niñetta! It looks like a whale.”
“Oh! I want to see one so much; call Captain De Vere, and tell him to bring the telescope, so that we can have a good look at it,” said Francisca.
Clara called her husband, who came laughingly upon the poop, with a telescope; and adjusting the glass, he looked through it to see that the focus was right, before giving it to the ladies.
But as he looked his countenance changed, and taking the glass from his eye, in a voice of pity, he said, “that is not a whale, ladies; but two poor men on a floating mast.” Both the ladies expressed the greatest pity, and begged De Vere to have the poor men picked up: this he intended to do; and calling to his side the captain of the ship, pointed out to him the floating wreck.
The captain was a kind-hearted man, and there is nothing that excites the sympathy of a sailor quicker than a wreck, for it is a peril to which they are all and always exposed, and he at once ordered the man at the wheel to keep away. Soon the figures of the men on the spar were visible from the deck, and they looked as if they were both dead.
Getting near them, the Diamente’s top-sail was hove aback, and a boat lowered, to bring the sufferers on board. When she brought them, both men were insensible, though their faint breathing gave evidence that life had not yet departed.
All the crew and passengers were gathered around the gangway, to see the rescued ones as they were passed on board. As Willis came over, Francisca, with the quick eye of love, recognized him, and, shocked at his dreadful appearance, fainted.
None else recognized the handsome slaver, in the begrimed, sunburnt, blood-stained, and skeleton figure before them. And attributing Francisca’s swoon to pity, for a sight so horrible, carried her below.
Mateo and Willis were laid on deck, for the purpose of being resuscitated before they were carried below. Willis, who was much the most debilitated of the two, from the loss of blood he had sustained, for a long time resisted all efforts to restore animation. But Mateo, who had swooned but a short time before they were discovered, more easily recovered his faculties. But only partially and confusedly had his mind been restored, for, startled by the noise and bustle around him, bewildered, and remembering the desperate fight before the schooner was blown up, and seeing bending over him the face of De Vere, whom he had always known as an enemy, he thought he was again in the hot and heady fight, and staggering to his feet, before any one could stop his movements, he had drawn his sheath-knife, and shouting feebly, in Spanish, “Give it to the English dogs!” he plunged his knife to the hilt in the breast of De Vere; and overcome by the exertion, sunk again senseless on deck; falling across the body of the English captain, who had dropped dead.