Chapter 7 Chapter 7 The Cave

Poor Fasquez is facing a terrible night, and equally terrible is his present situation.His unfortunate companion had been murdered, and his body was thrown into the water, where it is now drifting out to sea with the ebb tide.If he hadn't been on duty at the lighthouse, he would have suffered the same thing as them, but he had no time to think about himself, and his only thoughts were on those friends he had just lost. "Poor Maurice! Poor Philip!" he murmured, "they go to the aid of the villains with all their confidence, and get pistols instead! I shall never be with them again." met; they shall never see their country and countrymen again! And Maurice's wife, who intended to join him two months later, when she heard the news of his death . . . "

Fasquez was full of grief.His grief for the two companions, with whom he had known each other for many years, was entirely genuine.It was at his instigation that they had asked for the lighthouse position, and now he was alone. But where did this two-masted ship come from, and who were the pirates on board? Which country's flag does it fly?Why come into the Elgow Bay like this? Obviously these bandits are very familiar with Elgo Bay.What are they going to do here?Why did they extinguish the lighthouse as soon as they landed?Could it be to prevent other ships from following them into the bay?

These thoughts flooded Fasquez's mind in succession, but he could not find the answer, and he was not at all concerned about the danger he was in.But these villains will soon learn that there are three people living in the dormitory.In that case, would they start searching for a third man and finally catch him? It was less than two hundred yards from Fasquez's hiding place on the harbour, beyond the creek, and Fasquez could see lights moving, sometimes in the boat, sometimes in the courtyard under the lighthouse, sometimes in the In the dormitory window.He could even hear people talking loudly to each other in his own language, were they his own people?Or Chileans, Peruvians, Bolivians or Mexicans?Because people in these countries speak Spanish.Or is it the Brazilians?

At last, at about ten o'clock, the lights went out, and no sound broke the silence of the night. Fasquez must not stay where he was, he would be seen after daybreak.He never imagined that these gangsters would have the slightest compassion.He had to escape their grasp. Where is he going?Would it be safer to flee to the interior of the island, or flee to the mouth of the bay, so that he might be rescued by some passing ship?But whether he fled to the island or the coast at the mouth of the bay, how could he survive?How about living until the day when the rescue brigade arrives? His provisions will soon be exhausted.In another forty-eight hours, he would have eaten nothing left.Where can he find food again?He didn't even have a fishing rod.He couldn't get on fire either.Is it possible to live entirely on Kaisuke and the like?

At last his inner courage prevailed.He resolved to walk from Cape Sanjouan to the sea, and spend the night there.Wait until daylight to think otherwise. In this way, Fasquez left the place where he had just looked towards the two masts. There was no light or sound on board now.The bandits knew they were safe in the creek, so there must have been no guards on board. Fasquez walked along the foot of the cliff on the north shore.No sound could be heard except the crash of the breaking tide and the occasional call of the belated birds. It was eleven o'clock at night when he stopped at the end of Cape Sanjoen, and the only shelter he could find along the coast was a crevice, where he remained until daybreak.

Fasquez didn't wait for the sun to fully shine on the horizon, so he ran to the beach to see if anyone came down from the lighthouse, or came around the cliffs on the Sanjoian side. The whole bay was deserted on both sides.There was not a single boat in sight in the bay, but the men on board already had two boats at their disposal, one was the rowboat on the Moore, and the other was the boat used by the lighthouse staff to perform their duties. There was not a single boat in sight outside the island. Fasquez suddenly remembered how dangerous it would be for those ships to sail to Starn Island now that the lighthouse was out.Ships coming from the sea will not know their bearings.The ship's men, counting on the lights on Starn Island, would venture westward, and in doing so, encounter the dangerous coast between Cape Sanjoen and Cape Several.

"These bastards turned off the light," Fasquez called out. "It would be in their bad interest to light the lighthouse, so they won't light it!" It is indeed a serious incident that the lights of the lighthouse are not turned on. These gangsters deliberately want to use this to induce shipwreck and profit from it.Now they don't need to light wildfires to lure ships, because ships at sea will safely and boldly sail towards the island to find the position of the lighthouse. Sitting on a rock, Fasquez thought through all the events of the previous day.He watched the current carefully, wondering if it might come down with the body of his unfortunate companion.But no; last night's ebb tide had carried their bodies away, and now they were buried in the depths of the sea.

Then he suddenly thought of the horror of his situation, no matter from which angle he looked at it, it was extremely terrible. What can he do? There was nothing to do; there was absolutely nothing to do but wait for the return of the San Fe.But there are still two months to wait until the San Fe appears outside the mouth of Elgo Bay.Even if he will not be discovered during this period, how can he survive?Of course he can find a cliff cave to live in, and the weather is always good before the relief arrives.If it had been a severe winter, when the weather had dropped to thirty or forty degrees below zero, Fasquez would have been overwhelmed by that alone; he would have froze to death before he starved to death.

At the beginning, Fasquez first set out to find a place to settle down.From the layout of the dormitory of the lighthouse, the pirates can tell that the lighthouse is guarded by three people.Now that this man has escaped, they will do everything possible to find him and kill him; and therefore a search will be made about Cape Sanjoen immediately. By this time Fasquez's usual fortitude had fully recovered.A man of his temper could never be so discouraged for long. After searching for a while, he found a small cave with a very narrow entrance, only ten feet deep and five or six feet wide. It was just under the cliff near the beach at Cape Sangsian.The fine sand in the cave paves the ground, but the tide cannot reach here, and no matter how strong the storm at sea is, it cannot blow in.Fasquez climbed into the cave, put down the few things he had brought from the dormitory, and put down a little food in his pocket, and a stream of water formed by the melting snow flowed from the foot of the cliff into the bay, supplying him with fresh water for food. , he will never die of thirst.

After eating a few biscuits and a piece of corned beef to satisfy his hunger, Fasquez was about to go outside the cave to drink water to quench his thirst, when he heard the voices of people nearby, so he stopped. "Here they come!" he said to himself. He crouched against the cave wall, hiding his body while spying outside. In the bay, a small boat driven by four people was coming with the tide.Two oars in front, two others sit in the stern, one of them at the helm. This was the canoe from the two-masted ship, not the boat from the lighthouse. "What is their plan?" Fasquez thought to himself, "Are they looking for me? From the way the two-masted ship sailed into the bay, it is certain that these people are familiar with the island and it is not the first time they have been on the island." They come here from this island. They are definitely not here to enjoy the scenery! If not to search for me, then what is it for?"

Fasquez watched these people attentively.The man at the helm, the oldest of the four, seemed to be the chief, the captain.He wasn't sure what nationality they were, but judging from their appearance, the other three were roughly South American Spanish. The boat was now almost in the mouth of the bay; it had come along the north shore, and it was no more than a hundred yards from where Fasquez was hiding.Fasquez stared at Chuanyan. The head man made a gesture, and both oars stopped.With such a swing of the rudder bar, coupled with the movement of the hull, the boat came ashore. One man pressed the anchor into the sand, and all four men landed. By this time Fasquez could hear their conversation. "Is this the right place?" "Yes, the cave is over there. Twenty yards to the right of the cliff from here." "It's a good thing the cave hasn't been discovered by those lighthouse keepers." "During the fifteen months, it was a great fortune not to be discovered by those who built the lighthouse!" "They're too busy on the harbor side." "And the cave is so tightly packed, it's really not easy to see." "Come on," said the chief. He and his two companions walked diagonally across the beach, which was about a hundred yards from shore. From his hiding place, Fasquez watched every move of these people and paid attention to every word they said.The beach is covered with shells, and they make a crisp sound when they step on it.But soon even this sound was gone, and all Fasquez saw was the man walking up and down beside the boat. "They have a cave over there," he said to himself. Fasquez suddenly realized: the two-masted ship was loaded with a group of pirates, and these pirates had been entrenched on Starn Island long before the lighthouse fortification began.Was this cave where they used to hide stolen goods?Is their plan now to get the booty onto the ship? He suddenly remembered that there must be food stored in the cave, and he could use it.He suddenly had a ray of hope in his heart.As soon as the boat was gone and back to where the big ship was anchored, he left his hiding place, found the mouth of the cave, and fetched some provisions so that he could wait until the letter ship came back! As long as he was sure he could eke out eight weeks, his second plan was to keep the bandits from Staten Island. "Yeah, I hope they're still here when the San Fe comes back, and I hope Captain Lafaya wants them to look good!" But can this wish come true?Fasquez thought it over again, and decided that the two-masted ship would only be delayed for two or three days in the bay.As soon as the contents of the cave are loaded on the boat, it will leave Starn Island, never to return. Fasquez will soon have more definite information on this point. The three stayed in the cave for about an hour, then came out again and walked along the beach.From the cave where he was crouching, Phasquez could hear their loud conversation, and almost immediately overheard something to his advantage. "They didn't plunder our things when they were on the island, they are so polite!" "The Moore will be fully loaded when she sets sail." "And there is enough food along the way, which will reduce many difficulties." "If we only rely on the little food on the boat, we will definitely not be able to reach those islands in the Pacific Ocean, and we will have nothing to eat." "What idiots! Fifteen months have passed without our loot being found, or Cape San Basuloma hunting for us!" "Long live to them three times! It's too uneconomical to spend so much effort to lure those ships to run aground and get nothing in the end." This made the bandits laugh; Fasquez was so mad with rage at these words that he wanted to throw himself at them with a pistol and kill them all, but he restrained himself. One of them said: "As for this famous lighthouse in the sky, let those ships look for it now! It's not like they have their eyes closed!" Fasquez was not surprised when he heard this. "And they will continue to drive towards this island with their eyes closed, and soon sink their own ship!" "I wish I'd run a boat or two over the rocks at Cape Sanchouan before the Moore sailed away! God gave us a two-masted schooner, and she ought to be loaded to the brim." "We're lucky! A big ship is coming up to Cape San Basuloma, and there's no crew on it—no captain, no sailors—but if there is, we can't kill them." After hearing these words, Fasquez realized that the two-masted ship named Moore had fallen into the hands of pirates in the west of the island, and that several ships had been lured by these bandits before that. The island hit a rock, and all the crew members drowned. "What do we do now, Conga?" asked one of the men inside. "Go back to the ship, Cargante," replied Conga, whom Fasquez had just identified as the leader of the bandits. "Shall we clear out the goods in the cave?" "Don't move until the ship is repaired; repairs will take weeks." "In that case," said Cargante, "let's take some tools aboard." "Okay; you can come back and get it if necessary. Anything that Fargas needs for repairs can always be found here." "Let's lose no more time," went on Cargante. "The tide is coming in soon. We're going back at high tide." "Let's decide," Kanga replied, "we will ship the goods after the ship is repaired. We don't have to worry about being stolen." "But, Conga, you must remember that there were three watchmen at the lighthouse, and one of them escaped." "That doesn't bother me, Cargantet. He'll starve to death in a day or two, unless he can live on shellfish. And we can plug the hole." "Having said that," said Cargante, "repairs are a nuisance. Otherwise, the Moore would be ready to sail tomorrow. However, while we're here some of the ships may not need us to try to lure her. Come to this coast. Losses on board will be a bonanza to us!" Kanga and his companions came out of the cave again, with some tools, and some wood, for repairing the ship's ribs; on board. The boat drove away at once, and disappeared around a corner along the coast in a short while. As soon as Fasquez waited until he could no longer be seen, he ran to the sea again.Now he knows everything that concerns him.Two things are particularly important here: first, that he has managed to find food, and he can live for a month or so; second, that the two-masted ship is badly damaged, and repairs will take at least two weeks, or More, but not longer than this, so it is determined not to wait until the letter ship returns. As for the two-masted ship, is there any way to make it impossible to drive away after it is repaired?It seemed to Fasquez a dream.But if a ship passed close to the Cape of Sangsian, he must signal to it, and if necessary, jump into the sea and swim to the ship; But if the captain's men had a considerable amount of work to do, he would not hesitate to sail into the Elgow Bay and arrest the two-masted ship.At that time, if those villains fled to the interior of the island, they would not be able to leave. When the San Feu came back, Captain Lafaya would try to catch these pirates, or wipe them out! But would a boat approach Cape Sanchouan?That is, will the people on board see Fasquez's signal?As for his personal safety, Fasquez was in no hurry, although Conga had discovered that there was still a lighthouse man alive.As long as they search, he will hide himself. The most important thing at hand was to find out whether there was enough food to last him until the letter ship returned, so he went straight to the cave without delay.