me a passage across to Havana in his beautiful yacht."

"I think," said Jack, with an air of hauteur, "that you have altogether
mistaken the character of my vessel. She is not a passenger ship, but a
private yacht in which I am taking a cruise for the benefit of my
health; and it is not my custom to give passages to total strangers,
especially when by so doing I should run the risk of embroiling myself
with the Spanish authorities, with whom I have no quarrel. No, Senor,
you must pardon my seeming churlishness in refusing so apparently
trivial a favour, but I decline to associate myself in any way with the
quarrel between your country and Spain. I have the honour to bid you
good-day."

"Ah, pardon, Senor; just one moment!" persisted the man. "The noble
Senor disclaims any intention to associate himself with the quarrel
between Cuba and Spain; yet two well-known Cuban patriots are guests on
board his yacht!"

"It would almost appear that my yacht and I are attracting a quite
unusual amount of attention here," laughed Jack. "The gentlemen of whom
you speak are personal friends of mine--the younger of them, indeed,
went to the same school as myself, in England--which should be
sufficient to account for my intimacy with them. But it does not follow
that, because they happen to be friends of mine, I am to give a free
passage to Cuba to anyone who chooses to ask me. Were I to do so I
should probably have to carry across half the inhabitants of Key West!
No, Senor, I must beg to be excused."

And, bowing profoundly to his ragged interlocutor--for with the language
Jack always found himself falling into the stately mannerisms of the
Spaniard--the young man passed on, wondering whether he had indeed been
guilty of an ungracious act to a genuine Cuban patriot, or whether the
man whom he had just left was a Spanish spy.

He put the question to Don Hermoso that night over the dinner-table,
while relating to his companions the incident of the afternoon; but the
Don laughed heartily at Jack's qualms of conscience.

"Never trouble yourself for a moment on that score, my dear Jack," said
he. "The man was without doubt a Spanish spy. Had he been a genuine
Cuban patriot, as he represented himself to be, he would have known that
it would only have been necessary to present himself to the local agent
of the Junta, with the proofs of his identity, when he could easily have
obtained a passage across to Cuba. But the inciden