lled the
_Alabama_, and had been picked up after the fight with the _Keasarge_,
off Cherbourg, by Mr. John Lancaster's yacht, the _Deerhound_. There is
no need for concealment now, so that I may freely admit that the
_Deerhound_ and the _San Margarita_ were one and the same. Travers, who
was in love with the yacht, told me if he had another blade to the screw
he could give leg-bail to the fastest ship in the Spanish navy. At
leaving, I was asked to take a trip with them; they were about to visit
their floating arsenal in the Bay of Biscay, load, and try to run
another cargo. I respectfully declined--fortunately for myself; my
orders were to get to the Carlist headquarters, not to go playing Paul
Jones.

Leader and Smith Sheehan were about to cross the border, and readily
acceded to my request to form one of the party. We rose at daybreak next
morning and looked out of window for the _San Margarita_. The roadstead
of Socoa was a blank. She had steamed away during the night. After the
customary chocolate we started blithely, in a light basket-carriage with
a pair of fast-trotting ponies, that whisked us in less than two hours
to the foot of the Pyrenees. Here we had to alight, the road up the
mountain being impracticable for vehicles. A boy guide was in waiting to
show us over the border by the smuggler's path--a wild short-cut through
a labyrinth of brushwood. The guide was a remarkable youth in his way;
he understood not a syllable of French or Spanish, and spoke only Basque
which none of us comprehended, so that our parley with him was somewhat
uninteresting. Yet I was anxious to elicit the opinions of that guide. A
lad who could strike the path up the mountain with such truth might, by
some instinct, have seen his way through Spanish politics. Our walk was
a trial of endurance. I had traversed the Pyrenees in snow, and that was
fatiguing enough in all conscience; but now the sun was beating cruelly
on the parched herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like treading
burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-dozen times before we reached the
summit; and yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all three on
his head, kept on with a springy step and serene smile, like the youth
in "Excelsior." It was an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me,
with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I arrived heaving and
panting on the crown of the ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a
pile of planking fresh from the