ing fate--Dios! My heart was throbbing with joy."

"How awful," said Captain Farmer, on the Spaniard's voice failing him at
the terrible recollection of his experiences; "but, I can sympathise
with you."

"Es Verdad, it was awful--so awful, that my heart was nigh bursting and
my brain seemed on fire," replied the other in a calmer tone. "However,
I had not long to wait, the whole thing, from the first moment I
observed the steamer to the collision, lasting barely a second of time,
although to me it was an eternity; for, as I saw the steamer, and heard
the sound of her paddle-wheels, even as the villain Gomez aimed at me,
the prow of the avenging vessel--which I regarded then, as now, as an
instrument in the hand of God--came crashing into the bows of our ship,
cutting through her hull and deck, and crumpling up the forecastle,
senor, as if it had been a paper bag."

"And the mutineers?"

"Carramba!" cried the Spaniard, whose vindictiveness I thought
appalling; only, of course, one had to make allowances for what he had
suffered and the crimes the men of whom he spoke had committed. "They
were all mangled and crushed in a moment, in the midst of their game of
monte, as they were fighting and quarrelling over the stakes. The
villain Gomez had his skull cracked like an eggshell by the foremast
coming down on top of him, as it went by the board with all its yards
and gear. The maintopmast, then fell also leaving _La Bella Catarina_
the wreck you saw, Senor Lieutenant, and you, young gentleman, before
she foundered."

He bowed to Mr Jellaby, as well as to myself, on saying this, as if to
emphasise his description.

"Did not the steamer stop?"

"No, Senor Capitano," replied he in answer to this question of Captain
Farmer's. "Everybody must have been asleep aboard, I think, just before
it happened, and they had no lookout man on the watch; although as it
was in the early grey of the morning, and we had no lights except that
lantern on the forecastle, which could not have been seen at any
distance, and was, of course, extinguished in the general smash-up
afterwards, it was perhaps not to be wondered that they ran us down.
The collision, though, appeared to wake them up, for I saw a dark figure
on the paddle-box nearest to me as the steamer swung herself clear of us
and forged ahead again. She had a good deal of way on, and by the time
she stopped her engines she was some distance away and lost to sight in
the da