how things were, they would honour you for the way in which you have
helped me on towards success."

"Yes, sir, no doubt," said the lad frankly; "but the British Government
doesn't know what you say, and it doesn't know me; but Captain Glossop
does. He's my government, sir, and it will be bad enough when I meet
him, as it is. What will he say when he knows I've been fighting for
the people in the schooner I came to take?"

"Hah!" said the President thoughtfully, and he was silent for a few
moments. Then rising he turned to the skipper. "I must go back,
Captain Reed," he said, "for there is much to do. But I have warned you
of the peril in which you stand. You will help me, I know, if you can;
but you must not have your brave little schooner sunk, and I know you
will do what is best. Fate may favour us still more, and I shall go on
in that hope."

Then without another word he strode out of the cabin, and went down into
his barge amidst a storm of cheers and wavings of scarves and flags,
while those on deck watched him threading his way towards the little
fort.

"He's the best Spaniard I ever met, Burgess," said the skipper.

"Yes," said the mate. "He isn't a bad sort for his kind. If it was not
for the poor beggars on board, who naturally enough all want to live, I
should like to go some night and put a keg of powder aboard that
gunboat, and send her to the bottom."

"Ah, but then you'd be doing wrong," said the skipper.

"Well, I said so, didn't I? I shouldn't like to have it on my
conscience that I'd killed a couple of score fellow-creatures like
that."

"Of course not; but that isn't what I mean. That gunboat's too valuable
to sink, and, as you heard the Don say, the man who holds command of
that vessel has the two cities at his mercy."

"Yes, I heard," said Burgess; "and t'other side's got it."

"That's right," said the skipper; "and if we could make the change--"

"Yes," said Burgess; "but it seems to me we can't."

"It seems to me we can't. It seems to me we can't," said Poole,
repeating the mate's words, as the two lads stood alone watching the
cheering people in the boats.

"Well," cried Fitz pettishly, "what's the good of keeping on saying
that?"

"None at all. But don't you wish we could?"

"No, I don't, and I'd thank you not to talk to me like that. It's like
playing at trying to tempt a fellow situated as I am. Bother the
gunboat and both the Dons! I wish I were back in th