he man answered him in Spanish.

"Ah, now you are taking me out of my depth," said the doctor. "Do you
speak French?"

The man shook his head.

"English, then?"

"_No comprende, senor_," replied the man hurriedly--or what sounded like
it.

"Never mind, then," said the doctor. "I'll send your skipper some
powder to-morrow."

The man shook his head and made signs, repeating them persistently,
frowning and shaking his head.

"I think he means, uncle," cried Rodd, "that he won't go away until you
have paid him in powder for the fish."

"Hang the fellow!" cried the doctor petulantly. "Why hasn't he been
taught English? I don't carry canisters of gunpowder about in my
pockets. Can any one make him understand that the powder is in the
little magazine on the schooner?"

"What does he want? Some gunpowder?" said the Count.

"Yes. I promised him a present of a few pound canisters."

"We can get at ours," said the Count quietly, and giving an order to the
French sailor who acted as his mate, the latter mounted into the brig,
disappeared down the cabin hatchway, and returned in a few minutes with
half-a-dozen canisters, with which the man smilingly departed, after
distributing a few elaborate Spanish bows.

The weather was glorious, and all that next day good steady progress was
made with the brig repairs, while Rodd and his uncle spent most of the
time keeping guard over the workmen and sending crocodile after
crocodile floating with the tide, to the great delight of the grinning
crew of the Spaniard, who lined the new-comer's bulwarks as if they were
spectators of some exhibition, and clapped their hands and shouted loud
_vivas_ at every successful shot, while all the time tiny little curls
of smoke rose at intervals into the sunny air as the men kept on making
fresh cigarettes as each stump was thrown with a _ciss_ into the gliding
stream.

"Quiet and lazy enough set, Pickle," said the doctor. "How they can
bask and sleep in the sunshine! It's an easy-going life, that of
theirs. Ah, there's the skipper! Fierce-looking fellow. He looks like
a man who could use a knife. But you don't half read your Shakespeare,
my boy."

"What's Shakespeare got to do with that fierce-looking Spaniard using
his knife, uncle?"

"Only this, my boy," said the doctor, drawing the ramrod out of his
double gun and trying whether the wads were well down upon the bullets,
for a couple of the ugly prominences that arched ov