women, and freedom as the
great objects of existence. What other god than Salve, he once asked
ironically, had prevented the Irishman from taking the life of the
miserable Spaniard down there in the hold? or what god other than Fear
prevented the boatswain from felling Salve himself to the deck with a
handspike? Although Salve despised the speaker, his arguments made no
slight impression upon him. What god, he asked himself, would save him,
if he did not take care of himself among all these ruffians who
surrounded him? and had there been any such controlling Power in the
world, he thought with bitterness, a great deal in his life would have
been very different. Conversations of this kind always made him feel
thoroughly bad.

"What do you suppose," he suddenly asked, one evening as they were
talking together on their watch, "your sister meant to do with me,
Federigo, if I had not escaped?"

Up to this they had avoided touching upon this tender subject, and
Federigo answered, evasively--

"I'm sure I don't know. She takes wild notions sometimes."

"Yes--but what do you think? I know you had no hand in the matter."

"H'm! I had rather not say," replied Federigo, obviously relieved, but
with a peculiar smile, as if his fancy was ranging not without enjoyment
through the region of possibilities. "She scalded a monkey once, that
had bitten her, slowly to death with boiling-water. But her ingenuity
was endless."

Salve felt a shudder run through him, and something in his face told the
other that he had better not indulge his fancy any further; and he
hastened, therefore, to add half in joke and half by way of
consolation--

"Poor Antonio Varez will pay for her having been obliged to marry him,
never fear. Yes, she is rich and happy," he concluded with a sigh, as if
he envied her; and the subject dropped.

CHAPTER XVII.

They doubled Cape Horn, and came to Valparaiso. But, on the morning they
were to enter the harbour, Salve, to his intense exasperation, was put
under arrest. The captain found him too useful in keeping the crew in
order forward, and therefore took the most effectual means of preventing
him from putting into execution his declared determination to leave the
ship on their arrival at that port.

After leaving Valparaiso they called at the Chincha Islands, took in a
cargo of guano for China, and shaped their course then eastward across
the calm southern ocean, whose lonely monotony was only bro