t is by the same right that justified Don Martin Enriquez,
His Most Catholic Majesty's Viceroy of Mexico, when he attacked the
fleet of Admiral Hawkins while he was refitting his ships in the harbour
of San Juan de Ulua, last year."

For a few moments the Governor looked--and was--decidedly "taken aback."
He could find no satisfactory reply to George's argument, for the
sufficient reason that none such existed. But presently he pulled
himself together and said:

"The occurrence to which you have referred, senor, was a most deplorable
blunder on the Viceroy's part; but I had no hand in it, and I must
refuse to be held responsible for it. You must yourself surely admit
that it would be unjust in the extreme to make me answerable for the
actions of a man over whom I have no control whatever."

"Oh, yes," retorted George, "I quite admit that; and it is not in your
personal capacity, but merely as a Spaniard, that I am holding you and
all Spaniards responsible for that outrage. And I hold Spaniards
generally responsible for it, senor, for the reason that no attempt has
been made by any Spaniard to right the wrong that was done. Yourself,
for example, when invited to do what you could to rectify the matter, as
far as might be, by releasing seventeen Englishmen unlawfully captured
during the commission of the `blunder,' curtly refused to take any steps
whatever. Hence my presence here, and my capture of this ship. Need I
say any more?"

It was necessary for George to say a great deal more before he succeeded
in bringing the stiff-necked Don to reason, and in the process of doing
so he told His Excellency a few home truths that first sent that
functionary into a towering passion and then turned him sick with fear;
but at length Don Silvio was brought to see the futility of kicking
against the pricks, and finally he gave in with a good grace, the more
readily when he learned that eleven out of the seventeen men demanded
had already been taken out of the captured galley; he agreed with George
that it was scarcely worth while to expose a number of important cities
to the horrors of bombardment and valuable ships to the risk of capture
for the sake of detaining half a dozen Englishmen in captivity; he
therefore at length struck a bargain with the relentless young captain
that, in consideration of the latter undertaking to abstain from further
molestation of Spanish life and property, he, the Governor of Panama,
would fort