ut of the sea, everything was known in Rio Medio. From where he sat he
beheld the empty, open sea over the dunes, but the edge of the upland,
cleft by many ravines (of which the one we had ascended was the
deepest), concealed from him the little basin and the inlet. He was
certain these men had not come up that way. They had approached him over
the plain. But there was more than one way by which the upland could
be reached from below. The thoughts rushed round and round his head.
He remembered that our boat must be floating or lying stranded in the
little bay, and resolved, in case of necessity, to say that we two were
dead, that we had been drowned.

It was El Rubio who put the very question to him, in an insolent tone,
and sitting on the ground out of his reach, with his gun across his
knees. His long knife ready in his hand, squinting Jose remained
standing over Castro. Those two men nodded to each other significantly
at the intelligence. He perceived that they were more than half disposed
to credit his story. They had nearly been drowned themselves pursuing
that accursed heretic of an Englishman. When, from their remarks, he
learned that the schooner was in the bay, he began putting on his shoes,
though the hope of making a sudden dash for his life down the ravine
abandoned him.

The schooner had been run in at night during the gale, and in such
distress that they let her take the ground. She was not injured,
however, and some of them were preparing to haul her off. Our boat, as
I conceived, after bumping along the beach, had drifted within the
influence of the current created by the little river, or else by the
water forced into the basin by the tempest, seeking to escape, and had
been carried out towards the inlet. She was seen at daylight, knocking
about amongst the breakers, bottom up, and in such shallow water that
three or four men wading out knee-deep managed to turn her over. They
had found Mrs. Williams' woollen shawl and my cap floating underneath.
At the same time the broken mast and sail were made out, tossing upon
the waves, not very far off to seaward. That the boat had been in the
bay at all did not seem to have occurred to them. It had been concluded
that she had capsized outside the entrance. It was very possible that
we had been drowned under her. Castro hastened to confirm the idea by
relating how he had been clinging to the bottom of the boat for a long
time. Thus he had saved himself, he declar