Kara gasped, rolled over and sat up feeling like a fool, hastily wiping tears from her eyes. 'What? What are you talking about? Who are you? You shouldn't sneak up on people like that!' A man like none she had ever seen stood before her. He appeared at once very strong and stern, tall and with an air of command that made her instinctively afraid of him. Yet there was something, a sort of humane compassion about his mien that took the edge off her fear. Some distance behind him a black horse cropped the grass: evidently she'd not heard him approach and dismount only a short distance away.
'Did not my mother, the Señora Castellan, inform you about me, her only son, Señorita? No? Well, then let me introduce myself. I am called Roman, and it may well be said of me that I am truly the castellan of this island, Isla Fiero.'
'This seems rather a peaceful place to be called Savage Island,' Kara said as though fending off the implications of the word that under the circumstances seemed somehow provocatively connected to him.
'Savage does not only mean base and primitive, Señorita,' Roman told her. 'The base and the primitive may be found in all societies and in all cultures, no matter how technologically advanced. The term can also refer to the wild and menacing behaviour of a creature or place that by its nature will not endure the taming hand of what many miscall "civilization."'
Kara was only half-listening, however, and physically and emotionally withdrew into herself as he spoke. Seeing this, he stopped speaking to consider her.
At last, he said quietly, 'So it's true then. Ricardo has misappropriated your money and abandoned you here. That's very odd . . . that he would risk coming here after I'd put him in fear of his life. Would you like me to fetch him back here and have him set things to rights?'
Kara listened in silence until Roman mentioned Ricardo's return. 'Set things to rights? How do you mean?'
'I mean,' Roman told her, 'that I will compel him to return your money and take you back to the Bahamas, where you can catch a ship back to New York.'
Kara writhed, faced with such a prospect. 'I'll take the money back, Señor Castellan, but I will not go back to New York, nor will I set foot on that death trap of a plane! I'd sooner swim or paddle a dory! Would there be work for me in the Bahamas, do you think?'