[Chapter XXX.]
The Quenching of Quipai.
The cottage at Alta Vista had expanded little by little into a long, single storied flat-roofed house, shaded by palm-trees and set in a fair garden, which looked all the brighter from its contrast with the brown and herbless hill-sides that uprose around it.
In the after part of the day on which I discovered the theft, Angela and myself were sitting under the veranda, which fronted the house and commanded a view of the great reservoir, the oasis and the ocean. She was reading aloud a favorite chapter in “Don Quixote,” one of the few books we possessed. I was smoking.
Angela read well; her pronunciation of Spanish was faultless, and I always took particular pleasure in hearing her read the idiomatic Castilian of Cervantes. Nevertheless, my mind wandered; and, try as I might, I could not help thinking more of the theft of the diamonds than the doughty deeds of the Don and the shrewd sayings of Sancho Panza. Not that the loss gave me serious concern. A few stones more or less made no great difference, and I should probably never turn to account those I had. But the incident revived suspicions as to the good faith of the two castaways, which had been long floating vaguely in my mind. From the first I had rather doubted the account they gave of themselves. And Kidd! I had never much liked him; he had a hard inscrutable face, and unless I greatly misjudged him was capable of bolder enterprises than petty larceny. He was just the man to steal secretly away and return with a horde of unscrupulous treasure-seekers, for he knew now that there were diamonds in the neighborhood, and he must have heard that we had found gold and silver ornaments and vessels in the old cemetery—
“Dios mio! What is that?” exclaimed Angela, dropping her book and springing to her feet, an example which I instantly followed, for the earth was moving under us, and there fell on our ears, for the first time, the dread sound of subterranean thunder.
“An earthquake!”
But the alarm was only momentary. In less time than it takes to tell the trembling ceased and the thunder died away.
“Only a slight shock, after all,” I said, “and I hope we shall have no more. However, it is just as well to be prepared. I will have the mules got out of the stable; and if there is anything inside you particularly want you had better fetch it. I will join you in the garden presently.”