ection, and even when
she is running at full speed one can scarcely feel a tremor in her."

"I am delighted to receive so excellent an account of her," answered
Montijo, "and so will the Pater be when I tell him--or, rather, when you
tell him; for, Singleton, I want you to promise that you will dine with
us to-night, and make the Pater's acquaintance. He is the very dearest
old chap that you ever met--your own father, of course, excepted--and he
will be enchanted to make your acquaintance. He already knows you well
enough by name to speak of you as `Jack'."

"I will do so with pleasure," answered Singleton heartily. "I have no
other engagement, and after one has been to a theatre or a concert every
night for a week--as I have--one begins to wish for a change. And while
I don't wish to flatter you, Carlos, my boy, if your father is anything
like you he is a jolly good sort, and I shall be glad to know him. But
we have run somewhat off the track, haven't we? I understood that you
have some sort of proposal to make."

"Yes," answered Montijo, "I have. Let me see--what were we talking
about? Oh, yes, the yacht! Well, now that she is built, we are in
something of a difficulty concerning her--a difficulty that did not
suggest itself to any of us until quite recently. That difficulty is
the difficulty of ownership. She has been built for the service of
Cuba, but somebody must be her acknowledged owner; and if she is
admitted to be the property of the Pater, of Marti, or, in fact, of any
Cuban, she will at once become an object of suspicion to the Spanish
Government, and her movements will be so jealously watched that it will
become difficult, almost to the verge of impossibility, for her to
render any of those services for which she is specially intended. You
see that, Jack, don't you?"

"Certainly," answered Singleton, "that is obvious to the meanest
intellect, as somebody once remarked. But how do you propose to get
over the difficulty?"

"There is only one way that the Pater and I can see out of it," answered
Montijo, "and that is to get somebody who is not likely to incur Spanish
suspicion to accept the nominal ownership of the yacht, under the
pretence of using her simply for his own pleasure."

"Phew!" whistled Singleton. "That may be all right for the other
fellow, but how will it be for you? For that scheme to work
satisfactorily you must not only find a man who will throw himself heart
and soul i