of personal fear, in
determination to act thoroughly my assumed character. More lives than
one hung in the balance, and, with tightly clenched teeth, I swore to
prove equal to the venture. The very touch of those deck planks to my
bare feet put new recklessness into my blood, causing me to marvel at
the perfection of my own fool play.

The gaunt Spaniard commanding my presence stood waiting, hardly more
than five paces from where I landed, yet so intense became my immediate
interest in the strange scene--an interest partly real, but largely
simulated for the occasion--that he contented himself watching my
confused antics with much apparent amusement, and without addressing
me. Even to this hour that scene lies distinct before my eyes.
Possessed I skill with pencil I could sketch each small detail from the
retina of memory--the solitary sentinel beside the rail, his well-worn
uniform of blue and white dingy in the sun; another farther forward,
where a great opening yawned; with yet a third, standing rigid before a
closed door of the after cabin. An officer, his coat richly decorated
with gold braid, wearing epaulets, and having a short sword dangling at
his side, paced back and forth across the top of a little house near
the stern. I heard him utter some command to a sailor near the wheel,
but he never so much as glanced toward me. Perhaps thirty or more
seamen, bronzed of face, and oddly bedecked as to hair, lounged idly
amid the shadows opposite, while, more closely at hand, that gaunt,
cadaverous Spaniard, at whose invitation I was present, leaned against
a big gun, puffing nonchalantly at a cigarette, held between lean,
saffron-colored fingers. The deck was white as the snows of a northern
Winter, while the brass work along the railings and about the cannon
glittered brilliantly in the sunshine. There was a gaudy
yellow-and-white striped canopy stretched above a portion of the deck
aft; the huge masts seemed to pierce into the blue of the skies; while
on every side were ranged grim guns of brass and iron.

My role was that of an ignorant, green, half-frightened darky, and I
presume I both appeared and acted the natural-born idiot, if I might
judge from the expression upon the Spaniard's face, and the broad grin
lighting up the fierce countenance of the sentry at the gangway. Yet
back of this mask there was grim determination and fixed purpose, so
that no article of furniture was along that broad deck which