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"Since you ask me, I can only say that it depends on you. Sign the relinquishment, give us your word not to prosecute, and you may leave in three hours." Cullison shook his head. "That's where you get in wrong. Buck up against the law and you are sure to lose." "If we lose you lose too," Dominguez answered significantly.
To begin with, I was fully resolved that Dominguez and his companions having left the felucca, they should never again return to her, if I could possibly prevent it. At the right moment I would make sail upon the little craft and head her for Barbadoes, leaving them to get ashore as best they could.
Perhaps the most difficult part of my task was to preserve all through this trying time such a demeanour as would effectually conceal from Dominguez the fact that I was alert and on the watch for something; but I managed it somehow, by leading him to believe that, rather than suffer torture, I had determined to provoke Morillo into killing me outright; a plan of which Dominguez highly approved, while expressing his doubts as to the possibility of its achievement.
This occurred during the early morning, about an hour after sunrise. The trade wind was then blowing steadily but moderately, and the weather was, as usual, fine and clear. Toward noon, however, it became noticeable that the wind was very decidedly softening down; and when Dominguez took his meridian observation of the sun, we were not going more than four knots.
Why, I could no more raise ten thousand pounds than I could fly." "No?" he queried coolly; "not even to save yourself from " "Not even to save myself from the utmost refinement of cruelty that your friend Morillo is capable of devising," I answered decisively. "Pardon me, senor, but I can scarcely believe you," retorted Dominguez, with that hateful, sneering smile of his.
And, as it happened, I chanced to be first on deck on this particular day, and, without any premeditation, went aft and relieved Miguel; so that, when a few minutes later Dominguez came on deck, he found me in possession of the tiller, and staring intently at some floating object about a quarter of a mile away, and slightly on our weather bow, that kept rising into view and vanishing again as the long, lazy undulations of the swell swept past it.
"We have no means of knowing," says the New York Sun, in commenting upon this precious effusion, "whether Senor Jose Reyes, Senor Celestino Dominguez and Senor Genaro Cautino actually grasped their guns and immolated themselves upon the altar of four centuries and in the presence of the ostentatious and vociferous invader; or whether they prudently joined the light fishermen, merchants, lawyers, musicians and jibaros of Porto Rico, to whom they had vainly appealed in the name of Spain in yelling themselves hoarse as the Stars and Stripes went up in town after town.
Meanwhile, the moment that Dominguez became aware of what I was doing he swept the boat round with a couple of powerful strokes of his oar, and once again they gave chase with might and main, Dominguez at the same time shouting to me that if I would allow them to return on board they would land me wherever I pleased, and never ask so much as a penny-piece by way of ransom.
"What are you staring at so hard, Senor Courtenay? Do you see anything?" demanded Dominguez, as he sauntered aft toward me from the companion, cigar in mouth. "Yes," answered I, replying to his last question first, "there is something out there, but what it is I cannot for the life of me make out. There there it is!
The door opened, and Doña Concepción stood on the threshold. Her face was whiter than usual, and her manner almost ruffled. "It is Padre Domínguez," she said. "Padre Estudillo is ill. If -if any of you are tired, or do not wish to confess to the strange priest, you may go to bed." Not a girl moved.
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