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Some of them remembered afterwards, with a sort of puzzled wonder, that they had more than once laughed heartily during their first meal upon the Rocas Reef. Yet none of them were insensible to the danger through which they had passed, nor the terrible position in which they stood.
The next morning we started at an early hour for the Rancho de las Rocas, three leagues from Santa Barbara. The populace remained in the booth, but we were joined by all our friends of the town, and once more were a large party. We were bound for a merienda and a carnesada, where bullocks would be roasted whole on spits over a bed of coals in a deep excavation.
"Beg pardon: should like to speak to you for a moment, sir, if agreeable to the lady," he said, touching his cap. "You were asking about the Arizona, wrecked off the Rocas Reef, were you not?" "Yes, I was," said Vivian, quickly. "Have you any news? Have any survivors of the crew returned?" "Can't say I know of any, save John Mason and Terry, the mate," said the man, shaking his head.
"I think, dear," he said, smiling, "that the easiest plan would be for me to go out to the Rocas Reef myself." "You, Rupert!" "Yes, I, myself. That is if Fane will go with me." "I shall be delighted," said Fane, whose grey eyes danced with pleasure at the idea. "You must take me, too," said Angela. It was Rupert's turn now to ejaculate. "You, Angela! My dear child, you are joking."
Did you never feel so?" "No, never." "If I had been buried on the Rocas Reef," said Percival, with biting emphasis, "you would have kept your promise, gone back to England, and married Elizabeth." "I never considered that possibility," answered Brian, with perfect quietness and some coldness. "Then you're a better fellow than I am.
Two days after crossing the Line we sighted the Rocas, on passing the parallel of Fernando Noronha, where the Brazilians have a penal settlement; and, on the third day, we cleared the Cape of Saint Roque, which is the most projecting point of the South American continent stretching out, as it does, miles into the Atlantic Ocean, while the coast-line on either side of it trends away in a wide sweep, away westwards, north and south, back from the sea.
"But what has happened?" asked Angela. "You did not talk in this way when you came from the Rocas Reef." "Because I did not know what a fool I could make of myself." She glanced at him with a faint, sweet smile. "You alarm me, Mr. Heron," she said, very tranquilly. "What have you been doing?"
Brian tried to evade the last point, but Percival insisted on it so strongly that he was obliged to give him a decisive answer. "No," he said, at last. "I'm sorry to make it seem as if your voyage had been in vain; but, if we ever get off the Rocas Reef, I shall go on to the Brazils. There is not the least reason for me to go home.
Here he found an old sailor telling a story to which the clerks and the chief himself were listening with evident interest. Vivian inquired who he was. The answer made him start. John Mason, of the good ship Arizona, which I saw with my own eyes go down in eight fathoms o' water off Rocas reef. Me and the mate got off in the boat, by a miracle, as you may say. All lost but us.
Colonel Rocas followed, with a regiment of the regular army. The president's sharp, beady eyes glanced about him for the expected demonstration of welcome; but he faced a stolid, indifferent array of citizens. Sight-seers the Anchurians are by birth and habit, and they turned out to their last able-bodied unit to witness the scene; but they maintained an accusive silence.
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