bullets were embedded in a
single mast. He had the tricolour flying all the time. A
fellow-countryman of his, Monsieur Jarmet, of the ship _Pierre-Alcide_,
of Nantes, sent in a claim for an indemnity of L160 for damages
sustained by his vessel much in the like manner. A Spanish war-craft,
moored behind him, began pelting the Carlists with shot; the Carlists
replied, and the _Pierre-Alcide_ came in for the bulk of the favours
distributed. Three bullets penetrated the captain's cabin, and four rent
holes in the French flag. Neither pilots nor tugs were for hire at
Bilbao, and captains of sailing vessels had only to whistle for a
favouring wind and rely on their own good fortune and skill. Bilbao had
to be dismissed on the merits.

Taking it for granted that I had that evasive horse, I reasoned, as I
tossed on my bed, to the restless whimper of the Bay of Biscay, over
which a storm was brewing, that "el Cuartel Real," the headquarters of
the King, was the natural goal. There first information was to be had,
and it was felt that it was about the safest place to be; but the King
seldom stopped under the same roof two nights successively, and no one
could tell where he would be two days beforehand. If he was at Estella
when one started, he might be at Vera or Durango, or goodness knows
where, when one got to Estella. So far his progress had been a success;
he was present at the taking of Estella, and exercised his Royal
clemency by releasing the captured prisoners. It would have been more
politic to have demanded an exchange, for there were partisans of his
own in Republican dungeons (Englishmen amongst them); but then prisoners
have to be fed and guarded, so on the whole it was as well they were set
free. It was very much the case of the man who won the elephant at a
raffle. If the stories, spread assiduously by the Republicans, of the
massacre and maltreatment of captives by the Carlists were correct,
here was the opportunity for the exercise of wholesale cruelty; but
there was not a particle of truth in such charges, which, by the way,
one hears in every civil war. Where Don Carlos might advance next, or
where severe fighting--not such brushes as that I witnessed at
Irun--might take place, was a mystery. The movements of the Republican
leaders were inexplicable, and conducted in contravention of all known
principles of the art of war. They harassed their men by long and
objectless marches. They ordered towns to be put in a