to the house, put to
bed, and everything possible done to save my life. The nearest reliable
doctor being at Santiago, over forty miles distant, on the other side of
the mountains, he had quickly decided to put me in the hands of Mama
Elisa, born upon his estate, of amply proved fidelity, and marvellously
skilled in the use of herbs and the treatment of disease, with the
result that, having battled for a fortnight with the raging fever that
almost immediately developed itself, she had at length triumphantly
brought me to the point of convalescence.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A NIGHT ALARM.

Having heard Mama Elisa's story, the next thing I wanted was, naturally,
to see Don Luis and thank him for his extraordinary kindness to me, a
stranger, and more than that, an enemy. Accordingly, upon being
informed of my desire, and learning from Mama Elisa that I was now well
enough to receive a visitor, my host presented himself at my bedside
that same evening, and expressed the very great pleasure he felt at
finding me making such good progress toward recovery. He accepted my
expressions of gratitude with much graciousness, professed himself happy
to have been the means of saving the life of a fellow creature, begged
me to regard himself, his house, and everything that belonged to him as
entirely at my service for as long as I might be pleased to make use of
them, and then said he would be glad to learn how I came to be in the
plight in which Tomasso had found me, if I felt equal to the task of
telling the story. I thought that, for a moment, he looked a trifle
disconcerted when I mentioned the fact that I was a British naval
officer; but, if so, the expression was quickly suppressed, and he
listened with deep attention and much sympathy to my story of our
falling in with and boarding the _Santa Brigitta_, our subsequent fight
with the pirate schooner, and the foundering of the _Wasp_ during the
gale.

Somewhat to my surprise, he was quite a young man, scarcely more than
thirty years of age. I had somehow got it into my head that, being the
owner of so fine an estate as Bella Vista, he must of necessity be at
least a middle-aged, if not an elderly man; but I understood when he
explained that the estate had originally been purchased, and afterwards
developed, by his father, who, I now learned, had perished in the
insurrection of 1791.

At length, after we had been chatting together for fully an hour, Mama
Elisa intervened,