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Updated: May 2, 2025
It was all very beautiful; and I should have liked nothing better than to spend a week with my gun and sketch-book in so charming a spot, but this was of course impossible; and it was also impossible for me, posted as I still was at the tiller, to take more than a hasty glance now and then, for the water was extremely shallow everywhere but in the channel, which was so intricate that, with the fresh breeze then blowing, it taxed me to the full extent of my ability to follow Carera's quick motions and keep the little hooker from running bodily ashore with us.
Better to die fighting than be strangled on the plaza." "Is this your plan or Carera's?" I asked, as I put the dagger in my belt. "Partly his and partly mine, I think. When he heard of your arrest, he said that it concerned our honor to effect your rescue. The idea of throwing a stone through the window was Carera's; that of personating a priest was mine."
After an absence of about an hour the felucca's boat came off again, without Carera, but loaded down to the gunwale with the most heterogeneous assortment of goods it is possible to imagine, including bales of silk and other valuable stuffs, casks of wine and spirits, and a considerable quantity of handsome silver plate; the latter alone being worth, according to my estimation, considerably more than Carera's bag of doubloons and the rest of his cargo to boot.
I must go out barefoot." "Of course. Who ever heard of a zambo turnkey wearing shoes? I will hide yours under my habit, and you can put them on afterward." "You are a friend of Carera's, of course?" "Yes; I am Salvador Carmen, the teniente of Colonel Mejia, at your service." "Salvador Carmen! A name of good omen. You are saving me." "I will either save you or perish with you. Take this dagger.
He was, according to Carera's account, a man of exceptional daring, as wily as a fox, and a thorough seaman; and these excellent qualities had not only raised him to the position of head or chief of the powerful gang with whose fortunes he had identified himself, but had also enabled him to carry on his nefarious business so successfully that he had gradually acquired an almost fabulous amount of booty, and had at the same time gained for himself at all events among the Spaniards the somewhat sensational title of "The Terror of the Caribbean Sea."
The Captain's deep snore had gradually lengthened out, so as to vouch for his forgetfulness, and Bang, Ricardo, Dr Pavo Real, and the ladies, had all subsided into the most perfect quietude, when I noticed, and I quaked and trembled like an aspen leaf as I did so, a long black paw, thrust through, and down from the dark aperture immediately over Padre Carera's head, which, whatever it was, it appeared to scratch sharply, and then giving the caput a smart cuff, vanished.
Another moment and the shot came hurtling about us, some overhead and a very fair dose on each side of the little craft, so close too that the spray flashed in over the deck in a regular shower, whilst one shot came crashing in through the taffrail, flying close past me where I was standing at the tiller, smashing through the head of the companion and then flying out over the bows, passing through the sail on its way and missing Carera's head by a hair's-breadth.
This visit had evidently discomposed Carera's nerves to a very considerable extent, for the boat was no sooner fairly away from the felucca's side than our host presented himself in the cabin, to inform us that, the land-breeze having sprung up and the night being fine and clear, he proposed to go to sea at once instead of waiting until morning.
It was to this secluded, and indeed almost unknown spot, that he was in the habit of running for shelter when hard pressed by the cruisers who were always on the lookout for him; and, from Carera's description of the difficulties of the navigation, it would seem almost impossible to devise or hit upon a place better suited for such a purpose.
We found, however, on inspecting Carera's well-worn chart, that the route he had adopted would take us within some ten miles of West Point, Jamaica; and shaving the island so closely as that there was just a possibility that we might be pounced upon by one of our own cruisers, so that we were, after all, not exactly in despair.
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