Elisa, born upon his estate, of amply proved fidelity, and marvellously skilled in the use of herbs and the treatment of disease, with the result that, having battled for a fortnight with the raging fever that almost immediately developed itself, she had at length triumphantly brought me to the point of convalescence. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. A NIGHT ALARM. Having heard Mama Elisa's story, the next thing I wanted was, naturally, to see Don Luis and thank him for his extraordinary kindness to me, a stranger, and more than that, an enemy. Accordingly, upon being informed of my desire, and learning from Mama Elisa that I was now well enough to receive a visitor, my host presented himself at my bedside that same evening, and expressed the very great pleasure he felt at finding me making such good progress toward recovery. He accepted my expressions of gratitude with much graciousness, professed himself happy to have been the means of saving the life of a fellow creature, begged me to regard himself, his house, and everything that belonged to him as entirely at my service for as long as I might be pleased to make use of them, and then said he would be glad to learn how I came to be in the plight in which Tomasso had found me, if I felt equal to the task of telling the story. I thought that, for a moment, he looked a trifle disconcerted when I mentioned the fact that I was a British naval officer; but, if so, the expression was quickly suppressed, and he listened with deep attention and much sympathy to my story of our falling in with and boarding the _Santa Brigitta_, our subsequent fight with the pirate schooner, and the foundering of the _Wasp_ during the gale. Somewhat to my surprise, he was quite a young man, scarcely more than thirty years of age. I had somehow got it into my head that, being the owner of so fine an estate as Bella Vista, he must of necessity be at least a middle-aged, if not an elderly man; but I understood when he explained that the estate had originally been purchased, and afterwards developed, by his father, who, I now learned, had perished in the insurrection of 1791. At length, after we had been chatting together for fully an hour, Mama Elisa intervened, protesting that I had been sufficiently excited for one day, and quite unceremoniously ordered her master out of the room; upon which Don Luis, laughing heartily at his favourite servant's brusqueness, shook me cordially by the hand, hoped I should soon be well enough to quit my sick chamber, and informed me that he would now do himself the pleasure to visit me for a few minutes daily, if only for the purpose of assuring himself that Mama Elisa had not poisoned me with any of her vile concoctions. After which parting shot at Mama he effected a masterly retreat.