to
port in your boat. You will get off with a month's arrest, and as
compensation, you will have the satisfaction of having delivered a brave
enemy from despair and death."

The officer ground his teeth together, but even yet he did not give up all
hopes of getting out of the scrape. Resistance was evidently out of the
question, his men's muskets being in the power of the Americans who, with
cocked pistols and naked cutlasses, stood on guard over them. The soldiers
themselves did not seem very full of fight, and the boatmen were negroes,
and consequently non-combatants. But there were several trincadores and
armed cutters cruising about, and if he could manage to hail or make a
signal to one of them, the schooner would be brought to, and the tables
turned. He gazed earnestly at a sloop that just then crossed them at no
great distance, staggering in towards the harbour under press of sail. The
American seemed to read his thoughts.

"Do me the honour, Senor," said be, "to partake of a slight _dejeuner-a-la
fourchette_ in the cabin. We will also hope for the pleasure of your
company at dinner. Supper you will probably eat at home."

And so saying, he motioned courteously towards the cabin stairs. The
Spaniard looked in the seaman's face, and read in its decided expression,
and in the slight smile of intelligence that played upon it, that he must
not hope either to resist or outwit his polite but peremptory entertainer.
So, making a virtue of necessity, he descended into the cabin.

The joy of the refugees at finding themselves thus unexpectedly rescued
from the captivity they so much dreaded, may be more easily imagined than
described. They remained for some time without uttering a word; but the
tears of the lady, and the looks of heartfelt gratitude of her husband
were the best thanks they could offer their deliverer.

On went the schooner; fainter and fainter grew the outline of the land,
till at length it sank under the horizon, and nothing was visible but the
castle of the Molo and the topmasts of the vessels riding at anchor off
the Havannah. They were twenty miles from land, far enough for the safety
of the fugitive, and as far as it was prudent for those to come who had to
return to port in an open boat. Ready's good-humour and hearty hospitality
had reconciled him with the Spaniard, who seemed to have forgotten the
trick that had been played him, and the punishment he would incur for
having allowed himself to b