My progress toward recovery was now rapid, although I soon learned that my escape from death had been little short of miraculous. Naturally, as soon as my reason returned to me, and I was strong enough to engage in conversation, I began to inquire where I was, and how I came to be there; but for the first three or four days after the events above described my nurses, Mama Elisa and Teresita, refused to tell me anything save that I was with friends. But at length, when I had so far recovered as to be able to sit up in bed without assistance, Mama Elisa took compassion upon me and proceeded to satisfy my curiosity. She informed me first, that the gale in which the _Wasp_ foundered had occurred more than three weeks previously! Then she proceeded to say that on the second day after the gale had moderated, the sea having by that time gone down sufficiently to permit the fishermen once more to proceed to sea in their canoes, one Tomasso, a negro--formerly a slave but now a freeman, in the service of Senor Don Luis Fernando Maria Calderon y Albuquerque, owner of the Bella Vista estate--had sallied forth from a certain small cove on the estate for the purpose of procuring a supply of fish, as usual. After having been thus engaged for some hours, with very scant success, Tomasso had decided to try his luck farther out; and while padding to seaward his attention had been attracted by the appearance of something floating about a mile away. Paddling in that direction, in the hope that what he saw might be worth picking up, he had at length come alongside the hatchway, with me upon it, in a state of collapse. The negroes on the island had risen in insurrection against the whites only some six years previously, while slavery had been abolished only about four years, the relations between the blacks and the whites on the island were consequently still greatly strained, and many a negro, finding one in that helpless state, would have callously left me to die. Tomasso, however, luckily for me, was not one of that sort: he had always been well treated by his master, and therefore felt no animus against the whites; consequently as soon as he found that a spark of life still remained in my body, he transferred me to his canoe and, abandoning for the moment all further thought of fishing, paddled back to the shore. Then, hauling his canoe up on the beach, he had hastened to the house and acquainted his master, Don Luis, with his find. The latter, a generous, humane, high-spirited fellow, and as noble a specimen of the Spanish hidalgo as one need wish to meet, at once hastened down to the cove and, upon perceiving my condition, gave immediate orders that I was to be carried up to the house, put to bed, and everything possible done to save my life. The nearest reliable doctor being at Santiago, over forty miles distant, on the other side of the mountains, he had quickly decided to put me in the hands of Mama