Suarez begged the senor captain to
remember that he had spoken truly when he declared that its meaning was
unknown to him. Probably, from what he now learnt, the girl who threw
in her lot with the sailors had built a fire there.
Courtenay turned on his heel and quitted the cabin. The smell of the
Indians was loathsome, the mere sight of Suarez offensive. For this
discovery had overcast the happiness of his wooing as a thunder-cloud
darkens and blots the smiling life out of a fair valley. There rushed
in on him a hundred chilling thoughts, each gloomier than its
forerunner. Ravens croaked within him; misshapen imps whispered evil
omens; his spirit sat in gloom.
Christobal, well knowing how the demons of doubt and despair were
afflicting Courtenay, followed him to the upper deck. Boyle was in the
chart-house and Tollemache. Each man noted the captain's troubled
face; from him they glanced towards the doctor; but the Spaniard had
undergone his purgatory some hours earlier; his thin features were now
quite expressionless.
Courtenay obtained a telescope. With the tact which never failed him,
even in such a desperate crisis as this, he handed the doctor his
binoculars.
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