This occurred through complete exhaustion, rather than the exercising of any judgment, for, had it not been for this providential support, I would surely have drowned without a struggle.  Every breath I drew was in pain; I felt as though my ribs had been crushed in, while I had lost sufficient blood to leave me as weak as a babe.  I simply clung there desperately, hopelessly, yet the salt water soon served to revive me physically, and even my brain began to arouse from its daze to a faint realization of the conditions.  The small dory to which I clung, caught in some mysterious current, floated at the very extremity of its slender towline, and in consequence the sloop appeared little more than a mere smudge, when my eyes endeavored to discover its outlines.  Evidently the bloody work had been completed, for now all was silent on board.  I could not even detect the sound of a footstep on the deck.  Then, clear enough to be distinctly heard across the narrow strip of water, came the voice of Estada, in a gruff inquiry: 

“So you are hiding here, Cochose?  What are you looking for in the sea?”

“What?  Why that damned Englishman.”  The response was a savage growl, intensified by husky dialect.  “Mon Dieu!  He fought me like a mad rat.”

“The Englishman, you say?  He was here then?  It was he you battled with?  What became of the fellow?”

“He went down there, Senor.  The dog stabbed me three times.  It was either he or I to go.”

“You mean you threw him overboard?”

“Ay, with his ribs crushed in, and not a breath left in his damned body.  He’s never come up even—­I’ve watched, and there has not been so much as a ripple where he sank.”

The two must have hung in silence over the rail staring down.  I dared not advance my head to look, nor even move a muscle of my body in the water, but both were still standing there when Estada finally gave utterance to an oath.

“How know you it was the man?”

“Who else could it have been?  You have the others.”

“Ay, true enough; yet it will go hard with you, Cochose, when the Captain learns of this—­he would have the fellow alive.”

“As well attempt to take a tiger with bare hands—­see, the blood yet runs; a single inch to the left, and it would be I fed to the fishes.  Pah! what is the difference, Senor, so the man dies?”

“Right enough, no doubt; anyway it is not I who must face Sanchez, and it is too late now to change fate.  Let’s to the rest of our task.  You can still do your part?”

The giant negro growled.

“Ay; I have been worse hurt, yet a bit of cloth would help me.”

“Let Carl see to that, while I gain glimpse at this map of the house up yonder.  Come forward with me to the cabin, till I light a candle.  How came you aft here?”

“Because that fellow leaped the rail from the wharf.  I saw him, and we met at the wheel.”