work to keep from telling him my real thoughts of his
wicked nature. Nay, sometimes I was sore put to it to keep my hands from
his throat. Nothing would have pleased me better than to find either him
or my cousin Jasper in some lonely spot where no odds could have favored
them or me. Then my wrongs should have received full vengeance, and none
would have blamed me for meting it out to these two villains. Judge how
hard it was for me to have to associate, week after week, with one of
the men who had so deeply wronged me, and, moreover, to have to
preserve towards him a certain degree of cordiality. Try as I would,
however, I could not give Nunez as much in the way of politeness as
Nunez gave me. My manners were surly at the best, and I had much ado to
preserve them at all.

Getting in the way of fair winds, we sighted the Bahamas, and passed the
north-west coast of Cuba somewhere about the beginning of September. We
were then some five hundred miles from Vera Cruz, but it was not until
Christmas week that we bore down upon the Mexican coast. It was, I
think, on Christmas morning that I first saw the shores of that
beautiful land, whose natural loveliness served but to make more evident
the horrible cruelties of the men who had seized and possessed it. Fair
and wonderful it was as the mists lifted under the sun's warmth to see
the giant peak of Orizaba lifting its head, snow-white and awful, into
the clear air, while full seventeen thousand feet below it the land lay
dim and indistinct, nothing more than a bank of gray cloud.

"You would think a country with such a mountain as that would be a place
of much delight, master, would you not?" said Pharaoh Nanjulian,
pointing to the great white peak. "It looks fair and innocent enough,
but it is a very devil's land, this Mexico, since the Spaniards overran
it; and yonder peak is an emblem of nothing in it, except it be the
innocence of those who are murdered in God's name."

"What mountain is that?" I inquired.

"Orizaba, master. It lies some sixty miles beyond Vera Cruz, and is of a
height scarcely credible to us Englishmen. God be thanked that there is
so little wind to-day! With a fair breeze we should have been in port
ere nightfall. As it is, we must take our chance to-night, master, or
fall into the hands of the Inquisition."

"I am ready for aught," said I. "But have you thought of a plan?"

"Aye, trust me for that. Marry! I have thought of naught else since we
c