asn't it?"

Mrs. Williams--he said--had been weeping her eyes out over our desolate
end; and even the skipper had sulked with his food for a day or two.

"Ha! Ha! Drowned! Excellent!" He shook me by the shoulders, looking me
straight in the eyes--and the bizarre, nervous hilarity of my reception,
so unlike his scornful attitude, proved that he, too, had believed the
rumour. Indeed, nothing could have been more natural, considering my
inexperience in handling boats and the fury of the norther. It had sent
the Lion staggering into Havana in less than twenty hours after we had
parted from her on the coast.

Suddenly a change came over him. He pushed me on to the settee.

"Speak! Talk! What has happened? Where have you been all this time? Man,
you look ten years older."

"Ten years. Is that all?" I said.

And after he had heard the whole story of our passages he appeared
greatly sobered.

"Wonderful! Wonderful!" he muttered, lost in deep thought, till I
reminded him it was his turn, now, to speak.

"You are the talk of the town," he said, recovering his elasticity of
spirit as he went on. The death of Don Balthasar had been the first
great sensation of Havana, but it seemed that O'Brien had kept that news
to himself, till he heard by an overland messenger that Sera-phina and I
had escaped from Casa Riego.

Then he gave it to the world; he let it be inferred that he had the
news of both events together. The story, as sworn to by various suborned
rascals, and put out by his creatures, ran that an English desperado,
arriving in Rio Medio with some Mexicans in a schooner, had incited the
rabble of the place to attack the Casa Riego. Don Balthasar had been
shot while defending his house at the head of his negroes; and Don
Bal-thasar's daughter had been carried off by the English pirate.

The amazement and sensation were extreme. Several of the first families
went into mourning. A service for the repose of Don Balthasar's soul was
sung in the Cathedral. Captain Williams went there out of curiosity, and
returned full of the magnificence of the sight; nave draped in black, an
enormous catafalque, with silver angels, more than life-size, kneeling
at the four corners with joined hands, an amazing multitude of lights. A
demonstration of unbounded grief from the Judge of the Marine Court had
startled the distinguished congregation. In his place amongst the
body of higher magistrature, Don Patricio O'Brien burst into an
unco