Had those words
never passed Isabella's lips, doubtless in time I should have wearied
of a useless search and sailed for home and happiness. But having heard
them it seemed to me, to my undoing, that this would be to play the
part of a sorry coward. Moreover, strange as it may look, now I felt
as though I had two wrongs to avenge, that of my mother and that of
Isabella de Siguenza. Indeed none could have seen that young and lovely
lady die thus terribly and not desire to wreak her death on him who had
betrayed and deserted her.
So the end of it was that being of a stubborn temper, I determined to do
violence to my own desires and the dying counsels of my benefactor, and
to follow de Garcia to the ends of the earth and there to kill him as I
had sworn to do.
First, however, I inquired secretly and diligently as to the truth of
the statement that de Garcia had sailed for the Indies, and to be brief,
having the clue, I discovered that two days after the date of the duel I
had fought with him, a man answering to de Garcia's description, though
bearing a different name, had shipped from Seville in a carak bound for
the Canary Islands, which carak was there to await the arrival of the
fleet sailing for Hispaniola. Indeed from various circumstances I had
little doubt that the man was none other than de Garcia himself, which,
although I had not thought of it before, was not strange, seeing that
then as now the Indies were the refuge of half the desperadoes and
villains who could no longer live in Spain.
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