violence among the mountains. The rain and the wind, which had hitherto been silent, increased the loudness of the echoes. José went swearing on at every step. Lieutenant Martinez, pale and silent, gazed with sinister looks at his companion, whom he regarded as an accomplice he would gladly get rid of.
Suddenly a flash of lightning illuminated the obscurity. The seaman and the lieutenant were on the edge of an abyss.
Martinez hurried up to José, and after the last clap of thunder he said to him, "José, I am afraid!"
"Do you dread the storm?"
"I do not dread the storm in the sky, José; but I fear the storm which agitates my breast!"
"Oh, you are still thinking of Don Orteva! Come on, lieutenant! you make me laugh," answered José. He, however, did not laugh, as Martinez surveyed him with his haggard eyes.
A terrible clap of thunder burst over them.
"Hold your tongue! hold your tongue!" cried Martinez, who appeared to be no longer master of himself.
"The night is a favorable one for preaching to me!" replied the seaman. "If you have any fear, lieutenant, shut up your eyes and your ears."
"It seems to me," cried Martinez, "that I see the captain Don Orteva with his head crushed there, there!"
A dark shadow, illuminated the next moment by a flash of lightning, arose within twenty feet of the lieutenant and his companion.
At the same instant José saw close to him Martinez, his countenance pale and distorted with passion, his hand grasping a dagger.
"What is there!" he cried out.
A flash of lightning environed them both.
"What! Kill me!" cried José. The next moment he fell, a corpse, and Martinez fled in the midst of the tempest, his bloody weapon in his hand.
A few moments afterwards two men hung over the dead body of the seaman, saying, "This is one of them!"
Martinez fled like a madman across the dark solitudes; his head uncovered, regardless of the rain, which came down in torrents.
Y. I Verne
