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Updated: May 17, 2025
I advise you, as a friend, to do so." "Indeed!" said Jack. "And why, pray? Of course you have some good reason for offering me this advice, Senor Alvaros?" "Yes," answered Alvaros, "I have; and it is this. Cuba is in a most unsettled state at present. She is seething with rebellion, and all strangers are regarded with the utmost suspicion by the Government.
"Hands up, you villain and murderer!" exclaimed the young Cuban, glaring savagely along the sights of the levelled weapon into Senor Alvaros' eye: "hands up; or I will blow your worthless brains out with as little compunction as that with which I would crush a venomous snake beneath my heel! Quick! Don't hesitate, or I fire!"
The obvious inference therefore is that he was hired by someone to make the attempt; and he asserts that the man who hired him was Senor Alvaros.
He was, of course, profoundly concerned at the news which Jack had to tell him; and spent the remainder of the evening in alternately invoking sea blessings upon the head of Don Sebastian Alvaros, wondering what would happen to the Montijos should the apprehensions of their friends prove correct, and endeavouring to devise schemes for the discovery and liberation of the family.
On the contrary, it is my intention to make quite a long stay here, and see Cuba from end to end. It is even possible that I may decide to purchase a property on the island, and try my luck as a tobacco planter." "I fervently trust not, Senor, for your own sake," said Alvaros. "Permit me to offer you a little friendly advice. Cut short your visit, and leave Cuba at once.
"If you know the man, as you say, Senor, you will also know that it will not be of the slightest use to charge him with complicity in this," answered Panza. "Possibly not," agreed Carlos. "Yet it would enable us to give Senor Alvaros a hint that his machinations are known, and that henceforth we shall be on our guard against them." "Very well, Senor," agreed the would-be assassin.
Then Alvaros, who had feigned not to have recognised Jack, exclaimed: "By the by, I must not forget to tell you a most interesting item of news. Do either of you fellows happen to know, or to have heard of, a certain Don Hermoso Montijo, who owns a large tobacco plantation in the direction of Pinar del Rio?
Then, one morning, a message reached Senor Calderon from Major Alvaros, to the effect that the latter would arrive at the hacienda that night, on a business visit, and that all necessary preparations were to be made for his reception.
And certain very dreadful things had happened, among which floggings and starvation might be mentioned, the whole culminating in their condemnation to transportation for life to the horrors of the penal settlement of Fernando Po, when Don Hermoso persisted in his refusal and declared that he would rather see his daughter dead than wedded to such a scoundrel as Don Sebastian Alvaros.
In the presence of the master and mistress the negroes, with that innate sense of delicacy which governs their conduct toward those whom they love, were careful that the signs of their grief at the loss of their beloved young mistress should be confined to a few respectful expressions of sympathy; but when Mama Faquita, Senorita Isolda's old nurse, having extracted from Carlos a tolerably full and detailed account of the circumstances that had culminated in her beloved young mistress's death, went the round of the negro huts that night, she kindled in the breasts of her fellows a flame of fury and vengeful longing that was destined to consume Senor Alvaros.
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