t to Marina, the Captain Diaz came to see me
and told me that a friend of his was in command of a carak which was due
to sail from the port of Vera Cruz for Cadiz within ten days, and
that this friend was willing to give me a passage if I wished to leave
Mexico. I thought for a while and said that I would go, and that very
night, having bid farewell to the Captain Diaz, whom may God prosper,
for he was a good man among many bad ones, I set out from the city for
the last time in the company of some merchants. A week's journey took
us safely down the mountains to Vera Cruz, a hot unhealthy town with an
indifferent anchorage, much exposed to the fierce northerly winds. Here
I presented my letters of recommendation to the commander of the carak,
who gave me passage without question, I laying in a stock of food for
the journey.
Three nights later we set sail with a fair wind, and on the following
morning at daybreak all that was left in sight of the land of Anahuac
was the snowy crest of the volcan Orizaba. Presently that vanished into
the clouds, and thus did I bid farewell to the far country where so many
things had happened to me, and which according to my reckoning I had
first sighted on this very day eighteen years before.
Of my journey to Spain I have nothing of note to tell. It was more
prosperous than such voyages often are, and within ten weeks of the date
of our lifting anchor at Vera Cruz, we let it drop in the harbour of
Cadiz. Here I sojourned but two days, for as it chanced there was an
English ship in the harbour trading to London, and in her I took a
passage, though I was obliged to sell the smallest of the emeralds from
the necklace to find the means to do so, the money that Marina gave me
being spent. This emerald sold for a great sum, however, with part of
which I purchased clothing suitable to a person of rank, taking the rest
of the gold with me. I grieved to part with the stone indeed, though it
was but a pendant to the pendant of the collar, but necessity knows no
law. The pendant stone itself, a fine gem though flawed, I gave in after
years to her gracious majesty Queen Elizabeth.
On board the English ship they thought me a Spanish adventurer who had
made moneys in the Indies, and I did not undeceive them, since I would
be left to my own company for a while that I might prepare my mind to
return to ways of thought and life that it had long forgotten. Therefore
I sat apart like some proud don, say
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