e sprang into the
fore-rigging with an oath of protestation. But at the same moment the
tall masts and spars of a vessel suddenly rose like a phantom out of the
fog at their side. The half disciplined foreign crew uttered a cry
of rage and trepidation, and huddled like sheep in the waist, with
distracted gestures; even the two men at the wheel forsook their post to
run in dazed terror to the taffrail. Before the mate could restore order
to this chaos, the Excelsior had drifted, with a scarcely perceptible
concussion, against the counter of the strange vessel. In an instant a
dozen figures appeared on its bulwarks, and dropped unimpeded upon the
Excelsior's deck. As the foremost one approached the mate, the latter
shrank back in consternation.

"Captain Bunker!"

"Yes," said the figure, advancing with a mocking laugh; "Captain Bunker
it is. Captain Bunker, formerly of this American barque Excelsior, and
now of the Mexican ship La Trinidad. Captain Bunker ez larnt every
foot of that passage in an open boat last August, and didn't forget it
yesterday in a big ship! Captain Bunker ez has just landed a company
of dragoons to relieve the Presidio. What d'ye say to that, Mr.
M'Carthy--eh?"

"I say," answered M'Carthy, raising his voice with a desperate effort to
recover his calmness, "I say that Perkins landed with double that number
of men yesterday around that point, and that he'll be aboard here in
half an hour to make you answer for this insult to his ship and his
Government."

"His Government!" echoed Bunker, with a hoarser laugh; "hear him!--HIS
Government! His Government died at four o'clock this morning, when
his own ringleaders gave him up to the authorities. Ha! Why, this yer
revolution is played out, old man; and Generalissimo Leonidas Perkins is
locked up in the Presidio."

CHAPTER IX.

LIBERATED.

The revolution was, indeed, ended. The unexpected arrival of a relieving
garrison in the bay of Todos Santos had completed what the dissensions
in the insurgents' councils had begun; the discontents, led by Brace and
Winslow, had united with the Government against Perkins and his aliens;
but a compromise had been effected by the treacherous giving up of the
Liberator himself in return for an amnesty granted to his followers.
The part that Bunker had played in bringing about this moral catastrophe
was, however, purely adventitious. When he had recovered his health, and
subsequent events had corroborated