ack. "But it is just the getting through that
passage that I have been feeling unhappy about. We draw eight feet of
water aft, and my chart says that there are only nine feet in the
passage."

Villacampa admitted that the depth of water shown on the chart was about
right, and confessed that the situation, now that one came to look at
it, was somewhat awkward; still, he was of opinion that if they could
but arrive off the mouth of the pass before dark everything would be all
right.

At five o'clock the stewards brought up the tables and proceeded to
serve tea; and Villacampa, who somehow found himself seated between
Senorita Isolda and Capitan Milsom, told himself that he had missed his
vocation, and that he ought to have been skipper of an English steam-
yacht--with a lovely and fascinating Spanish Senorita as a passenger--
instead of second lieutenant of a dirty Spanish cruiser.

They were running along the coast and steering a course of west by south
half-south, which gave them a gradually increasing offing, and was a
nice, safe course to steer, for it would take them well clear of all
dangers; the result being that when at length they arrived off the Cayo
Blanco passage, the yacht was quite ten miles off the land, and about
five miles distant from the edge of the reef. If Villacampa had noticed
how wide an offing was being maintained, he would probably have
suggested the desirability of hauling in a point or two; but he did not,
for he was being made much of by the ladies, while Jack had artfully
placed him with his back toward the land. Milsom, meanwhile, had been
watching the coast as a cat watches a mousehole, and the moment that he
saw certain marks come "on" he raised his cap and proceeded to mop his
perspiring forehead with a large bandana handkerchief; whereupon
Perkins, who had been for some time keeping an unostentatious eye upon
the party on the top of the deck-house, turned and sauntered aft to the
engine-room door, sneezing violently as he walked past it. The next
instant there arose a perfectly hair-raising clatter and clash of metal
down in the engine-room, and the engines abruptly ceased to revolve! So
sudden and startling was the clatter that both ladies screamed, and
clasped their hands convulsively, in the most natural manner possible;
while Jack and Milsom, starting to their feet and capsizing their chairs
with magnificent dramatic effect, dashed, one upon the heels of the
other, down the