dering the town now; and, please the Virgin,
in a few hours we shall be well rid of them, and I shall have escaped
getting into very serious trouble--thanks to you, Montalvo. You have
placed me under a very heavy obligation, my friend, and I shall not
forget it.

"But there is still the future to be thought of. It is true that we
have escaped by the skin of our teeth for the moment, Montalvo; for the
moment only. But if I am any judge of character, that English
_muchacho_ will return, as he threatened he would; and then what are we
going to do?"

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil, your Excellency," answered
Montalvo, "and we shall have time enough to think of that when these
dogs have gone. Did you notice what the boy captain said? He will
return again, but not until the soldiers now expected have been
withdrawn from the town. Well, it must be your care, Excellency, that
the soldiers shall not be withdrawn from Nombre until the patience of
these English pirates has become thoroughly exhausted, and they have
taken themselves off elsewhere--precisely where they go is a matter that
need not concern us so long as it is sufficiently far from Nombre. And
while we are enjoying the protection of the soldiers it must be our
business to so strengthen the defences of the town that--_Madre de
Dios_! what is happening now?"

The worthy secretary might well exclaim, for his illuminating discourse
was at this moment broken in upon and interrupted by a series of
deafening explosions of so violent a character that they set the very
walls of the building trembling. They were caused by the bursting of
the cannon mounted in the battery, and the blowing-up of the defences
which Basset had devised and caused to be constructed with so much
labour, and the destruction of which Saint Leger had ordered as a
preliminary to his abandonment of the place. The Governor and his
secretary had scarcely recovered from the consternation engendered by
those alarming explosions when George appeared with the information that
they were now free to leave the battery and return to Government House
whenever they pleased; and the two Spaniards were still painfully
scrambling through and over the debris of the destroyed defences, on
their way back to the town, when they saw the Englishmen jump into their
boats and push off from the beach.

It was long after sundown on that same day when the anxious watchers on
board the _Nonsuch_, anchored in that