fty miles
nearer the spot where, if nothing happened in the interim to prevent it,
I was to be delivered into the hands of a fiend in human form, whose
hatred of me was so intense and vindictive that he had taken a
considerable amount of trouble, and put himself to considerable expense,
merely to get me into his power and wreak a blood-curdling revenge upon
me.

But to tamely submit to be thus handed over to Morillo's tender mercies
was the very last thing that I contemplated. I had every reason to
believe that the picture drawn by Dominguez of the form which Morillo's
revenge would probably take was a tolerably truthful one; and while I
was prepared to face death in any form at a moment's notice in the way
of duty, I had not the remotest intention of permitting myself to be
tortured to death merely to gratify the ferocity of a piratical outlaw,
if I could possibly help it. So for the first three or four days I
devoted myself wholly to the task of endeavouring to bribe my custodians
to forego their intention of handing me over to Morillo, and to land me
upon the nearest British territory instead. But I by and by made the
discovery that my efforts in this direction were doomed to failure;
Dominguez was clearly so profoundly impressed with Morillo's power, and
with his tenacious memory for injuries, that the conviction had borne
itself in upon him that if he yielded to my persuasions it would be
absolutely necessary to his safety, not only to buy over the whole of
those engaged upon the business of my abduction, but also to place the
whole width of the globe between himself and Morillo; and to execute
these little matters satisfactorily would, according to his own
calculations, necessitate the disbursement on my part of the modest
amount of ten thousand pounds sterling, a sum which, as I explained to
him over and over again, it was utterly beyond my power to raise. It
was not that Dominguez was grasping or avaricious; it was simply that he
regarded a certain course of action necessary to his own safety and
well-being, in the event of his consenting to yield to my wishes; and as
he had no intention of suffering any pecuniary or other loss or damage
by so yielding, it appeared to him that the thing could not be done
under the sum he had named, and there was the whole matter in a nut-
shell. The attempt at bribery having thus resulted in failure, there
remained to me but one other alternative, that of a resort to force-