Saint Leger?"

"I am he, at Your Excellency's service," answered George, with a
corresponding bow.

"_You_?" ejaculated the Governor, incredulously. "Why, you are only a
boy. Where is your leader? It is he with whom my present business is
concerned."

"Your Excellency," responded George, "I have the honour to be the
captain of the company you see about you."

"Ten thousand pardons, senor!" exclaimed the Governor, bowing low. "I
trust that you will magnanimously forgive my hasty expression of
surprise. I ought to have remembered that in your gallant nation age
does not necessarily count, and that among you are many very young men
who are doing work that fills us of maturer years with astonishment,
admiration and envy. Again I crave your pardon for my exceedingly
stupid mistake. It is you, then, senor, who addressed this letter to
me?" And he drew forth from a wallet at his belt George's letter to
him.

"Even so, Your Excellency," acknowledged George.

"And in it you say that you wish to treat with me for the release of
seventeen Englishmen sent here as prisoners from Nombre de Dios. Very
well, senor; I am prepared to treat with you upon that matter; but it
must be upon certain conditions. And the first of those conditions is
that you unconditionally surrender this ship to her captain and
officers, whom I have brought with me in order that they may receive her
at your hands."

"Your Excellency, the condition you name is an impossible one, not to be
considered for an instant. Let us dismiss it, and pass on to the next,
if there be a next," answered George calmly.

"Next?" reiterated the Governor, a trifle tartly, "of course there is a
next--several of them, indeed. But it is useless to speak of them until
this, perhaps the most important of them all, is settled. Upon what
grounds do you assert that my first condition is impossible, senor? You
have secured possession of her by craft and in a manner which, if I may
be permitted to say so, amounts simply to piracy. Our countries are not
at war, senor. Then by what right do you seize a Spanish ship and,
worse still, refuse to surrender her to her lawful owners, the
representatives of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain?"

"Ah!" returned George, with a great appearance of simplicity, "now there
Your Excellency puzzles me. I can't exactly tell you by what right I do
this, and have done a good many other things on the north side of the
isthmus; but i