lunteers of good families. There was a
good deal of light-hearted jesting over their meal. When it was over,
Francis said:

"Now let us hold a council of war."

"You are better off than Pisani was, anyhow," one of the young men
said, "for you are not hampered with proveditors, and anything that
your captaincy may suggest will, you may be sure, receive our assent."

"I am your captain no longer," Francis replied. "We are all prisoners
now, and equal, and each one has a free voice and a free vote."

"Then I give my voice and vote at once, Francisco," Matteo said, "to
the proposal that you remain our captain, and that we obey you, as
cheerfully and willingly as we should if you were on the poop of the
Pluto, instead of being in the hold. In the first place, at Carlo's
death you became our captain by right, so long as we remain together;
and in the second place you have more experience than all of us put
together, and a very much better head than most of us, myself included.

"Therefore, comrades, I vote that Messer Francisco Hammond be still
regarded as our captain, and obeyed as such."

There was a general chorus of assent, for the energy which Francis had
displayed throughout the trying winter, and the manner in which he had
led the crew during the desperate fighting, had won for him the regard
and the respect of them all.

"Very well, then," Francis said. "If you wish it so I will remain your
leader, but we will nevertheless hold our council of war. The question
which I shall first present to your consideration is, which is the best
way to set about retaking the Pluto?"

There was a burst of laughter among the young men. The matter of fact
way in which Francis proposed, what seemed to them an impossibility,
amused them immensely.

"I am quite in earnest," Francis went on, when the laughter had
subsided. "If it is possibly to be done, I mean to retake the Pluto,
and I have very little doubt that it is possible, if we set about it in
the right way. In the first place, we may take it as absolutely certain
that we very considerably outnumber the Genoese on board. They must
have suffered in the battle almost as much as we did, and have had
nearly as many killed and wounded. In the second place, if Doria
intends to profit by his victory, he must have retained a fair amount
of fighting men on board each of his galleys, and, weakened as his
force was by the losses of the action, he can spare but a comparatively
small