Even then, as I stood upon the eve of death, I felt my blood run hot within me at the sting of his coarse taunts. Truly de Garcia’s triumph was complete. I had come to hunt him down, and what was the end of it? He was about to hurl me to the sharks. Still I answered him with such dignity as I could command.
‘You have me at some disadvantage,’ I said. ‘Now if there is any manhood left in you, give me a sword and let us settle our quarrel once and for all. You are weak from sickness I know, but what am I who have spent certain days and nights in this hell of yours. We should be well matched, de Garcia.’
‘Perhaps so, Cousin, but where is the need? To be frank, things have not gone over well with me when we stood face to face before, and it is odd, but do you know, I have been troubled with a foreboding that you would be the end of me. That is one of the reasons why I sought a change of air to these warmer regions. But see the folly of forebodings, my friend. I am still alive, though I have been ill, and I mean to go on living, but you are–forgive me for mentioning it–you are already dead. Indeed those gentlemen,’ and he pointed to the two black men who were taking advantage of our talk to throw into the sea the slave who followed me up the hatchway, ‘are waiting to put a stop to our conversation. Have you any message that I can deliver for you? If so, out with it, for time is short and that hold must be cleared by daybreak.’
‘I have no message to give you from myself, though I have a message for you, de Garcia,’ I answered. ‘But before I tell it, let me say a word. You seem to have won, wicked murderer as you are, but perhaps the game is not yet played. Your fears may still come true. I am dead, but my vengeance may yet live on, for I leave it to the Hand in which I should have left it at first. You may live some years longer, but do you think that you shall escape? One day you will die as surely as I must die to-night, and what then, de Garcia?’
‘A truce, I pray you,’ he said with a sneer. ‘Surely you have not been consecrated priest. You had a message, you said. Pray deliver it quickly. Time presses, Cousin Wingfield. Who sends messages to an exile like myself?’
‘Isabella de Siguenza, whom you cheated with a false marriage and abandoned,’ I said.
He started from his chair and stood over me.
‘What of her?’ he whispered fiercely.
‘Only this, the monks walled her up alive with her babe.’
‘Walled her up alive! Mother of God! how do you know that?’
‘I chanced to see it done, that is all. She prayed me to tell you of her end and the child’s, and that she died hiding your name, loving and forgiving. This was all her message, but I will add to it. May she haunt you for ever, she and my mother; may they haunt you through life and death, through earth and hell.’
He covered his face with his hands for a moment, then dropping them sank back into the chair and called to the black sailors.
‘Away with this slave. Why are you so slow?’
The men advanced upon me, but I was not minded to be handled by them if I could help it, and I was minded to cause de Garcia to share my fate. Suddenly I bounded at him, and gripping him round the middle, I dragged him from his chair. Such was the strength that rage and despair gave to me that I succeeded in swinging him up to the level of the bulwarks. But there the matter ended, for at that moment the two black sailors sprang upon us both, and tore him from my grip. Then seeing that all was lost, for they were about to cut me down with their swords, I placed my hand upon the bulwark and leaped into the sea.