consciousness of the thing--of the gallantry and the
heroism--as the prosiest blacksmith. He had grown into a man of
dangerous fibre, but he was less aware of it than of his muscles.

[Illustration: "JOHN DINWIDDIE DRISCOLL--THE MISSOURIAN"
"His cheeks were smooth, but they were tight and hard and brown from
the weathering of sun and blizzard"]

Various items on the _Luz_ struck the trooper as amusing. There
was the incongruity of his seven-hundred-dollar cabin, the secession of
his stomach from the tranquillity of the federal body organic, and
finally, this running away from somebody. But he quickly perceived that
the last was serious enough. The skipper lowered his glasses, and shook
his perky head a number of times. "_Who_ said life was all beer and
skittles?" he demanded defiantly, and glared at Driscoll as though
_he_ had. But getting no answer, he seemed mollified, as though
this proved that the man who _had_ said it was an imbecile.
Murguia, by the way, had come to hate no truth more soulfully than the
palpable shortcoming of life in the matter of beer and skittles. And now
it was borne in upon him again, for the skipper announced, definitely
and with an oath, that they'd have to begin throwing the cargo
overboard.

Poor Don Anastasio behaved like a man insane. He wrung his hands. He
protested stoutly, then incoherently. He whined. He glared vengefully at
the dread sail on the horizon, and then he shrank from it, as from a
flaming sword. And as it grew larger, his eyeballs rounded and dried
into smaller discs. But at once he would remember his darling cotton
that must go to the waves, and the beady eyes swam again in moisture,
like greenish peas in a sickly broth. Avarice and terror in discord
played on the creature as the gale through the whimpering cordage.

"No 'elp for it, sir," said the skipper, bridling like a bantam. "Didn't
I try to save _my_ cargo, off Savannah, and didn't I lose my sloop
to boot? Didn't I now, sir?--Poor old girl, mebby she's our chaser out
'ere this very minute."

"Try--try more turpentine," said Murguia weakly.

"Yes, or salt bacon, sir, or cognac, or the woodwork, or any blarsted
thing I see fit, sir!" The little skipper hit out each item with a step
downward to the deck, and five minutes later Murguia groaned, for bale
after bale came tumbling out of the hold. Then over they began to go,
the first, the second, the third, and another, and another, and after
each went a moan f