med, or flee at once."

"It is impossible," said Ramon coldly. "We are shut in here, and my sun
must rise or set to-morrow. This is my last stand."

"But your wife--your children! Think of them."

"I have thought of nothing else, waking and sleeping," said the Don
coldly. "But my wife would not look upon me if I forsook my country,
and my children shall not live with the knowledge that Ramon's is a
coward's name."

"Is this your decision?" said the messenger of bad tidings.

"Yes. Captain Reed, my brave true friend, look at him. He is half-dead
with hunger and exhaustion. Can you give him water and food?"

"He shall share what we have, sir, and I am sorry that we cannot give
him better fare than biscuit and water; but the rations we brought with
us were small, and they are nearly at an end. Don Miguel, I ask your
pardon for me and mine. You will forgive us our rough treatment? We
were fighting for your friend."

"I know," said the visitor faintly, and he took and grasped the
captain's hand.

A few minutes later he was sharing Don Ramon's shelter, and struggling
hard to recoup nature with the broken biscuit he was soaking in a
pannikin of water, while Fitz and his companions returned to their old
station to resume the watch.

They sat for some time thinking, for nobody seemed disposed to talk,
even the carpenter, the most conversational of the trio, seeming to
prefer the society of the piece of dirty-looking black tobacco which he
kept within his teeth; but the silence became so irksome, for somehow
the firing seemed to have driven every wild creature to a distance, that
Fitz broke it at last.

"I don't know when I felt so nervous," he whispered. "I felt sure that
something that would have seemed far more horrible than the fight was
about to occur."

"What, my father ordering that poor fellow to be shot? Yes, it would
have been horrible indeed."

"But would the skipper have ordered him to be shot, Mr Poole, sir?"
said Winks thoughtfully.

"I'm afraid so, Chips."

"Humph! Don't seem like him. He bullies us chaps pretty sharp
sometimes, and threatens, and sometimes the words he says don't smell of
violets, nor look like precious stones; but I can't see him having a
chap shot because he was a spy. Why, it'd be like having an execution
without a judge."

"Yes, very horrible," said Fitz, "but it's time of war; as in the Duke
of Wellington's time,--martial law."

"Who's him, sir? You mean