strength, as he knew his life was in his own hands; and that he was
anything but taken down, and was as ready as ever for a fight, he
showed, when he came out, in a sanguinary encounter which he engaged in
gratuitously for Federigo with one of the Americans, and in which it
would otherwise undoubtedly have gone hard with the Brazilian.

It was not out of any respect for him that Salvé took his part. He
looked upon him as false, treacherous, and entirely unprincipled; there
was nothing he did or said that did not seem pervaded with these
characteristics. But he helped him on the strength of that comradeship
which among these reprobates has its inviolable laws; and further than
that, there was something akin to a personal friendship existing between
them. Federigo was decidedly interesting. He could talk more or less on
almost every subject, and he was full of theories which he propounded
during their watches together, and to which Salvé eagerly listened.
There was, he said, among other remarks, and in a superior manner, no
such thing as religion, no such being as God. Such ideas were only for
dunderheads, who, moreover, in every country had their own particular
form of belief for the clever people and the priests to turn to their
own purposes. In reference to that, he told many stories of the
impositions practised by the priests in Brazil; and had many agreeable
anecdotes, too, about the beliefs of the wretched little race whose Sun
land they were passing at the time. He pronounced, in a word, for the
right of the strongest, and for piastres, women, and freedom as the
great objects of existence. What other god than Salvé, he once asked
ironically, had prevented the Irishman from taking the life of the
miserable Spaniard down there in the hold? or what god other than Fear
prevented the boatswain from felling Salvé himself to the deck with a
handspike? Although Salvé despised the speaker, his arguments made no
slight impression upon him. What god, he asked himself, would save him,