ough at freighting to keep himself and his crew in
provisions for a week Felipe would anchor the navy and hang about
the little telegraph office, looking like one of the chorus of an
insolvent comic opera troupe besieging the manager's den. A hope for
orders from the capital was always in his heart. That his services as
admiral had never been called into requirement hurt his pride and
patriotism. At every call he would inquire, gravely and expectantly,
for despatches. The operator would pretend to make a search, and then
reply:

"Not yet, it seems, _Senor el Almirante--poco tiempo!_"

Outside in the shade of the lime-trees the crew chewed sugar cane or
slumbered, well content to serve a country that was contented with so
little service.

One day in the early summer the revolution predicted by the collector
flamed out suddenly. It had long been smouldering. At the first note
of alarm the admiral of the navy force and fleet made all sail for a
larger port on the coast of a neighbouring republic, where he traded
a hastily collected cargo of fruit for its value in cartridges for
the five Martini rifles, the only guns that the navy could boast.
Then to the telegraph office sped the admiral. Sprawling in his
favourite corner, in his fast-decaying uniform, with his prodigious
sabre distributed between his red legs, he waited for the
long-delayed, but now soon expected, orders.

"Not yet, _Senor el Almirante_," the telegraph clerk would call to
him--"_poco tiempo!_"

At the answer the admiral would plump himself down with a great
rattling of scabbard to await the infrequent tick of the little
instrument on the table.

"They will come," would be his unshaken reply; "I am the admiral."

IX

THE FLAG PARAMOUNT

At the head of the insurgent party appeared that Hector and learned
Theban of the southern republics, Don Sabas Placido. A traveller,
a soldier, a poet, a scientist, a statesman and a connoisseur--the
wonder was that he could content himself with the petty, remote life
of his native country.

"It is a whim of Placido's," said a friend who knew him well, "to
take up political intrigue. It is not otherwise than as if he had
come upon a new _tempo_ in music, a new bacillus in the air, a new
scent, or rhyme, or explosive. He will squeeze this revolution dry of
sensations, and a week afterward will forget it, skimming the seas
of the world in his brigantine to add to his already world-famous
collections. C