where I was, and how I came to be
there; but for the first three or four days after the events above
described my nurses, Mama Elisa and Teresita, refused to tell me
anything save that I was with friends. But at length, when I had so far
recovered as to be able to sit up in bed without assistance, Mama Elisa
took compassion upon me and proceeded to satisfy my curiosity. She
informed me first, that the gale in which the _Wasp_ foundered had
occurred more than three weeks previously! Then she proceeded to say
that on the second day after the gale had moderated, the sea having by
that time gone down sufficiently to permit the fishermen once more to
proceed to sea in their canoes, one Tomasso, a negro--formerly a slave
but now a freeman, in the service of Senor Don Luis Fernando Maria
Calderon y Albuquerque, owner of the Bella Vista estate--had sallied
forth from a certain small cove on the estate for the purpose of
procuring a supply of fish, as usual. After having been thus engaged
for some hours, with very scant success, Tomasso had decided to try his
luck farther out; and while padding to seaward his attention had been
attracted by the appearance of something floating about a mile away.
Paddling in that direction, in the hope that what he saw might be worth
picking up, he had at length come alongside the hatchway, with me upon
it, in a state of collapse. The negroes on the island had risen in
insurrection against the whites only some six years previously, while
slavery had been abolished only about four years, the relations between
the blacks and the whites on the island were consequently still greatly
strained, and many a negro, finding one in that helpless state, would
have callously left me to die. Tomasso, however, luckily for me, was
not one of that sort: he had always been well treated by his master, and
therefore felt no animus against the whites; consequently as soon as he
found that a spark of life still remained in my body, he transferred me
to his canoe and, abandoning for the moment all further thought of
fishing, paddled back to the shore. Then, hauling his canoe up on the
beach, he had hastened to the house and acquainted his master, Don Luis,
with his find. The latter, a generous, humane, high-spirited fellow,
and as noble a specimen of the Spanish hidalgo as one need wish to meet,
at once hastened down to the cove and, upon perceiving my condition,
gave immediate orders that I was to be carried up