Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.The Mutiny.During the night a little air of wind sprang up from the eastward which carried us out clear of the Mona Passage, and when day dawned we found ourselves with a clear horizon all round the ship. At noon we wore round to retrace our steps, and by sunset we were within a dozen miles of the spot we had occupied at the same hour on the previous evening.The day, for a wonder, had passed almost pleasantly; there had been no flogging; Captain Pigot had scarcely showed himself on deck, except for a few minutes after breakfast and again at noon; and the officers of the watches, glad to be freed from his obnoxious presence, had been careful not to unnecessarily hurry and badger the men whilst carrying on the duty of the ship. The only circumstance which, to my mind, seemed disquieting, was the unusual demeanour of the men, who performed their work, steadily enough indeed, but in a moody, unnatural silence, wearing, meantime, a gloomy, preoccupied air, whilst they at the same time—at least so it appeared to me—seemed to be, one and all, in a restless, anxious, watchful frame of mind, as though they were in momentary expectation of something happening. I could not at all understand this state of things, which was something quite new, for, notwithstanding the skipper’s intolerable tyranny, there were a few of the men—and those among the best and smartest hands we had in the ship—who had hitherto contrived to maintain a fairly cheerful demeanour, and who seldom let slip such an opportunity as that afforded by the captain’s absence from the deck to indulge in the exchange of a quiet bit of nautical humour or a harmless practical joke with their next neighbour. To-day, however, this sort of thing was conspicuously absent; and I was at first disposed to attribute the unwonted gloom to the men’s horror and regret at the lamentable accident of the previous evening. But that, I felt again, would scarcely account for it; for, however sincere may be Jack’s attachment to his shipmates whilst they are alive and with him, they are no sooner dead and buried than, from his quickly acquired habit of promptly casting behind him all disquieting memories, he forgets all about them and their fate.At length, as the day wore on and drew to a peaceful close, my misgivings, such as they were—and they were, after all, so slight as scarcely to deserve mention—passed away; and at eight bells I retired to my hammock with a dawning hope that perhaps, after all, the collective remonstrance of the officers was about to bear good fruit.My mind being thus at rest, I at once sank into a profound sleep, from which I was abruptly startled by a loud noise of some kind, though what it was I could not for the moment make out. Almost immediately afterwards, however, I heard it again—a loud furious combined shout of many voices from the fore part of the ship. Feeling instinctively that something was wrong, I leaped from my hammock—as also did Courtenay, my only companion in the berth—and began hurriedly to search for my clothes by the dim light of the smoky lamp which hung swaying from the deck-beam overhead. Before, however, I had time to do more than don my socks, a grizzled weatherbeaten main-topman named Ned Sykes made his appearance in the doorway of the berth, with a drawn cutlass in his hand and a pair of pistols in his belt. He looked intently at us both for a moment, and then said, in a gruff but kindly tone of voice:“Muster Lascelles, and Muster Courtenay, ain’t it? Ha! that’s all right; I reckoned I should find you two young gen’lemen here, safe enough. Now, you two, just slip into your hammicks again as fast as you knows how, and stay there until I gives you leave to get out of ’em.”“Why, what is the matter, Ned? What is all the row about?” asked Courtenay, with wide-staring, horrified eyes. For, by this time, the shouting and yelling were tremendous, and accompanied by a loud thumping, rumbling sound, produced, as we afterwards ascertained, by the shot which the men were flinging about the decks.“The matter is just this here, young ’un,” replied Ned, entering the berth and seating himself on a chest, “The hands for’ard has made up their minds not to have no more such haccidents as them two that occurred last night; nor they ain’t a-goin’ to have no more floggin’ nor bully-raggin’, so they’ve just rose up and are takin’ possession of the ship—Aha! I’m terrible afeard that means bloodshed,” as a piercing shriek echoed through the ship. “Now,” he continued, seeing that we evinced a strong disinclination to return to our hammocks, “you just tumble into them hammicks and lie down,quick; you couldn’t do a morsel of good, e’er a one of yer, if you was out there on deck—you’d only get hurted or, mayhap, killed outright,—and I’ve been specially told off to come here and see as neither of yer gets into trouble; you’ve both been good kindly lads, you especial, Muster Lascelles—you’ve never had your eyes open to notice any little shortcomin’s or skylarkin’s on the part of the men, nor your tongues double-hung for to go and report ’em, so the lads is honestly anxious as you sha’n’t come to no harm in this here rumpus.”“Then the men have actually mutinied,” said I—and there I stopped short, for at that moment came the sound of a rush aft of many feet, with shouts and curses, mingled with which I heard the loud harsh tones of Captain Pigot’s voice raised in anger. Themêlée, however, if such there was, quickly swept aft, and there was a lull for perhaps two or three minutes, followed by the sounds of a brief struggle on the quarter-deck, a few shrieks and groans, telling all too plainly of the bloody work going forward, and then silence, broken only now and then by the sound of Farmer’s voice, apparently issuing orders, though what he was actually saying we could not distinguish.During all this time Courtenay and I lay huddled up in our hammocks, too terrified and horror-stricken to say a word. At length, after the lapse of about an hour of quietness on deck, Sykes—after cautioning us most earnestly not, on any account, to move from where we were until his return—set out with the expressed intention of ascertaining how the land lay. He was absent about a quarter of an hour; and on his return he informed us in horrified accents that, out of all the officers of the ship, there remained alive only Mr Southcott the master, the gunner, the carpenter, Courtenay, myself—and Farmer, the master’s mate, who, it appeared, had taken a leading part in the mutiny, and had been elected to the command of the ship. It was evident, from the scared and horrified appearance and manner of our informant, that he had never anticipated any of this awful violence and bloodshed, though he frankly admitted that he had been a consenting party to the mutiny—the general understanding being that the officers were all to be secured in the first instance, and afterwards handed over as prisoners to the enemy—and he hurriedly explained to us that, for his own safety’s sake, it would now be necessary for him to leave us and join the rest of the mutineers without delay, but that he would return to us as soon as he possibly could; and that, in the meantime, we were on no account to leave the berth, or our lives would certainly be sacrificed.After hearing such statements as these, no further warning was needed to keep us two unhappy mids close prisoners for the rest of the night. Further sleep was of course quite out of the question; so we hastily dressed, and, closing the door of the berth, seated ourselves on a sea-chest, where we passed the remainder of the night discussing the awful tragedy which had so suddenly been enacted, comparing notes as to our mutual forebodings of some such disaster, and, lastly, wondering what would be the ultimate fate of ourselves and the few other surviving officers.At length, after what appeared to be a very eternity of suspense and anxiety, steps were heard approaching the berth; and, upon our throwing open the door, Sykes, somewhat the worse for liquor, made his appearance, hailing us, in tones of obviously forced joviality, with:“Well, what cheer, my fighting cocks—my bully bantams? How goes it? Hope your honours has passed a comfortable night,” with a ghastly grin at his own facetiousness. Then, with considerably more seriousness of manner, he continued:“Well, young uns, Farmer—orMisterFarmer, I should say—has been axing arter you, and his instructions am that you may now go ’pon deck. But—hark ’e, my bullies, keep your weather eyes a-liftin’ and a stopper upon your tongues. Whatsomever you may happen to see don’t you be led away into indulgin’ in any onpleasant remarks upon it; nor don’t you go for to try and talk over any of the lads into ‘returning to their duty,’ or any rot of that sort; for so sure as either of you attempts anything like that, so surely will you get your brains blowed out. The ship’s took—what’s done is done—and neither you nor nobody else can make or mend the job; the men is in a mighty ticklish humour, I can tell ’e, and if you wants to save your precious carcasses you’ll have to walk mighty carcumspect. And that’s the advice and opinion of a friend, all free, gratis, and for nothink. Now, come along, my hearties; show a leg!”We followed our well-meaning guide up the ladder to the quarter-deck, where we found Farmer apparently awaiting our appearance. He was standing or rather leaning in a wearied attitude against a gun on the starboard side of the deck; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes gleamed feverishly; he looked a good twenty years older than he had appeared to be on the previous day; and, like a good many of the other mutineers, he appeared to have been indulging somewhat freely in liquor. He roused himself at our approach, and, seating himself in a negligent, careless attitude on the breech of the gun, said:“Good morning, young gentlemen. I am glad to see you both safe and sound. Sykes has of course informed you of what has taken place—he had my instructions to do so, as also to see that you were kept out of harm’s way last night. Now, what I have to say to you is this. You two lads having invariably manifested kindness and sympathy for the men, they were especially anxious that whenever the rising might take place your lives should be spared. This has been done. You are alive and unharmed this morning, whilst others have gone to render an account of their manifold misdeeds—their countless acts of oppression and cruelty—before that Judge in whose sight their lives are not one whit more valuable than the lives of those whom they have goaded and driven to death—ay, and toworsethan death—to such frantic desperation as can only be allayed by the shedding of blood like water. Now, mark me well, both of you; you have had neither part nor lot in this matter—those who wished you well have so managed that, whether or no, you should be kept strictly neutral throughout the affair; all those to whom you owed obedience are either dead or prisoners; you are not asked or expected to join us—we do not want you and should not care to have you even if you were willing—you are therefore relieved from duty; and all that is asked of you is that you shall interfere in no way, either by word or deed, with the working of the ship or with our plans. If you are agreeable to abide by this proposal, well and good; you will be welcome to come and go as you like until we find it convenient to land you; you will be allowed to occupy your former quarters, and your rations will be regularly served out to you. But if on the other hand you make the slightest attempt to communicate with the prisoners, or endeavour in any way to seduce any of the men from their loyalty to the rest, I will hang you both that same hour, one from each yard-arm. That is understood and agreed to, is it not, men?” he continued, raising his voice and appealing to the crowd of mutineers who had gathered round us.“Ay, ay, that’s agreed; that’s fair enough,” was the unanimous reply.With that, Farmer waved his hand to us by way of dismissal; and considerably thrown off our balance by the address to which we had just listened, and by the terrible turn affairs had taken generally, we slunk off to the poop, so as to be as far away as possible from the murderous gang and from the ghastly puddles of coagulated blood about the quarter-deck, which still bore witness to heaven against them.At this moment a man on the forecastle electrified all hands by shouting:“Sail ho!”I saw Farmer start from his seat on the gun as if shot, his flushed features turned ashen pale, and for a moment his palsied lips refused to give utterance to a sound.“Sail ho!” repeated the man in a louder hail, thinking, I suppose, that his first intimation had passed unnoticed. This second hail fairly startled the men, and in a moment everything was bustle and confusion and panic. It aroused Farmer too; he pulled himself together sufficiently to respond to the hail with the usual question, “Where away?” and, on receiving the reply, “Two points on the larboard bow,” walked forward to personally inspect the stranger. We, of course, likewise directed our glances in the specified direction; and there she was, sure enough, a large ship, on the starboard tack, with every stitch of canvas set that would draw, and steering a course which would take her across our bows at a distance of about a mile.“Bring me the spy-glass out of the cabin, somebody!” hailed Farmer from the forecastle. The glass—a very powerful one and a favourite instrument with the murdered captain—was handed him by one of the quarter-masters, and he applied it to his eye. A breathless silence now prevailed fore and aft for the stranger had all the look of a British man-of-war, and everybody was waiting to hear what Farmer’s verdict would be. The inspection was a long-sustained and evidently anxious one. At length, dropping the glass into the hollow of his arm Farmer turned and said:“Bring Mr Southcott on deck, and let us hear his opinion of yonder hooker.”In a few minutes the master was escorted on deck by a couple of armed seamen, and led forward to where Farmer was standing.“Mr Southcott,” said the mutineer, turning toward the individual addressed, and perceptibly shrinking as their glance met, “be good enough to take this glass, and let me know wha’ you think of the stranger yonder.”“Stranger!” ejaculated Southcott. “Where away? Ah, I see her!” and he took the glass from Farmer’s extended hand.“Well, what think you of her?” asked Farmer impatiently, after the master had been silently working away with the glass for some two or three minutes.“One moment, please,” answered Southcott with his eye still glued to the tube; “I think—but I am not quite sure—if she would only keep just the merest trifle more away—so as to permit of my catching a glimpse—”“Sail ho!” shouted a man in the fore-top; “two of ’em, a brig and a ship on the starboard beam, away in under the land there!”Farmer unceremoniously snatched the glass away from the master and levelled it in the direction indicated.“Ay, ay, I see them,” said he. “That is theDrakenearest us, and theFavouriteinshore of her. They are all right; we have nothing to fear from them. It is this stranger here ahead of us that bothers me. Come, Mr Southcott,” he continued, “you ought to know something about her by this time—you have been looking at her long enough; do you think you ever saw her before?”The master took the glass, had another long squint at the ship ahead, then handed the instrument back to Farmer, with the answer:“I decline to say whether I have or not.”“That is enough,” said Farmer; “your answer but confirms me in my conviction as to the identity of yonder frigate. It is theMermaid. Speak, sir, is it not so?”“You are right, Farmer, itistheMermaid, thank God! and you cannot escape. See! she is already hauling up to speak us; and in another twenty minutes will be alongside. Now, sir, resign to me the command which you have with so much violence and bloodshed usurped; and you, men,” he continued, turning round and in a loud voice addressing the rest of the crew, “return at once to your duty. Support and assist me in recovering the command of the ship, and I promise—”“Silence!” roared Farmer, striking the master a heavy blow full in the mouth with his clenched fist. “Seize him, you two,” he continued to the men who had charge of the prisoner, “and if he offers to speak again to the men clap a belaying-pin between his teeth. My lads, you now know the truth; yonder frigate is our old acquaintance theMermaid. Mr Southcott proposes that I should surrender the command of this ship to him; and if I do so we all know what will follow. Most of us will dangle at the yard-arm; and though,through the royal clemency,” (with a bitter sneer), “a few may be allowed to escape with a flogging through the fleet, with left-handed boatswains’ mates to cross the lashes—think of that, men, and compare it with the mere two or three dozen at the gangway which most of you have tasted since you joined theHermione—where is the man among you, I ask, who can point to himself and say, ‘I shall be one of thefortunatefew?’ No, no, my lads! after last night’s work there must be no talk of surrender; the ropes are already round our necks, and as surely as we ever find ourselves beneath the British flag again, so surely will those ropes be hauled taut and ourselves bowsed up to the yard-arm. And, even if our lives could be assured to us, what inducement is there to us to serve under British bunting again? I say there isnone. We must choose, then, between two alternatives; we must either fight or fly. Which is it to be?”The rest of the mutineers huddled together, evidently irresolute; each man eagerly sought his neighbour’s opinion, theprosandconsof Farmer’s question were hurriedly discussed, and I saw with inexpressible delight that a good many of the men were more than half disposed to fall in with the master’s suggestion.Mr Southcott must have seen this too, for he wheeled round upon Farmer and exclaimed:“Surely, Farmer, you are not mad enough to entertain the idea of fighting theMermaid? Why, man, you could not stand up before her for five minutes with the men in their present undisciplined state and no one but yourself to direct operations. Your defeat under such circumstances is an absolute certainty; and think what would be the fate of yourself and your misguided followers if taken in arms against the flag under which they have sworn to serve. At present some at least of them may hope for mercy if they will but—”“Away with him! Take him below!” shouted Farmer, “and if he attempts to open his mouth again put a bullet through his brains. Now, shipmates,” he continued, as the master was hurried below, “make up your minds, and quickly too; which will you have, the yard-rope or a pitched battle?”“What occasion is there for either?” inquired a burly boatswain’s-mate. “There’s more ways of killing a cat than choking of her with cream. Let’s square dead away afore it and set stunsails alow and aloft, both sides. I’ll lay my life we run far enough away from theMermaidafore sunset to dodge her in the dark.”“No good,” dissented Farmer. “TheMermaidcould beat us a couple of knots off the wind in this breeze.”“Ay, ay; that’s true enough; she could so,” assented a topman. “But we have the heels of her on a taut bowline; so why not brace sharp up on the starboard tack, pass between the islands, and then make for Porto Rico?”“What! and run the gauntlet of those two cruisers inshore there, as well as take our chance of falling in with theMagicienneand theRegulus, which we know are knocking about somewhere in that direction! Is that the best counsel you can give, Ben?”“Well, then, let’s haul close in with the land, set fire to the ship, and take to the boats,” answered Ben.“And what then?” sneered Farmer.“Why, land, to be sure, and take sarvice with Jack Spaniard,” was the reply.“Why, man, do you suppose they would welcome us if we went to them empty-handed?” asked Farmer. “No, no, that will never do. If we join the Spaniards we must take the ship with us to ensure a welcome; and I’m half inclined to think that will be the best thing we can do. But not now; that must be thought over at leisure. Meanwhile, what is to be done in the present emergency? We have no time for further argument. Will you stand by me and obey my orders?”“Ay, ay, we will, every man Jack of us, sink or swim, fight or fly,” was the reply from a hundred throats.“That’s well, my lads,” exclaimed Farmer exultantly; “it shall go hard but I will bring you through somehow. Starboard your helm, there,” to the man at the wheel; “let her come to on the larboard tack; to your stations, men; let go the larboard sheets and braces, and round in on the starboard. Smartly, my bullies; let’s have no bungling, now, or Captain Otway there will at once suspect that something is amiss. That’s well; ease up the lee topgallant and royal-braces a trifle; well there of all; belay! Afterguard, muster your buckets and brushes and wash down the decks. Roberts, go below with a gang and rouse the hammocks on deck; and quarter-masters, see that they are snugly stowed. Where’s the signal-man? Bend the ensign on to the peak-halliards and our number at the main; and main-top, there I stand by to hoist away the pennant. Gunner, muster your crew; go round the quarters with them; and see that everything is ship-shape in case we should have to make a fight of it.”I was surprised to see how, as Farmer issued his orders in a tone of authority, the instinct of discipline asserted itself; the men sprang to their stations as nimbly and executed their several duties as smartly as though Captain Pigot himself had been directing their movements. TheHermionewas braced sharp up on the larboard tack and heading as near as she would lay for theMermaid, which was now about a point and a half on our weather bow, about four miles distant, and nearing us fast; whilst theFavouriteand theDrakewere stretching out from under the land to join her.Presently a string of tiny balls went soaring aloft to theMermaid’smain-royal mast-head, to break abroad as they reached it and stream out in the fresh morning breeze as so many gaily coloured signal flags.“There goes theMermaid’sbunting, sir!” sang out the signal-man, “she is showing her number.”“Ay, ay, I see it,” exclaimed Farmer. “And, by Heaven,” he added, “it never struck me until this moment that Pigot was senior captain. Hoist away your ensign and pennant! up with the number! We are all right, my hearties; I know how to trick them now.”He raised the telescope to his eye and brought it to bear upon theMermaid.“All right,” he exclaimed a few seconds later, “she sees our number—haul down! Now signal her to chase in the north-eastern quarter. Hurrah, my hearties, that’s your sort! There goes her answering pennant; and there she hauls to the wind on the starboard tack. That disposes of her at all events. Now signal theFavouriteandDraketo chase to the nor’ard; that will send them through the Mona Passage, and leave us with a clear sea.”A quarter of an hour later the three cruisers which had caused the mutineers so much uneasiness were thrashing to windward under every rag they could spread; when Farmer bore up and ran away to the southward and westward with studding-sails set on both sides of the ship.

During the night a little air of wind sprang up from the eastward which carried us out clear of the Mona Passage, and when day dawned we found ourselves with a clear horizon all round the ship. At noon we wore round to retrace our steps, and by sunset we were within a dozen miles of the spot we had occupied at the same hour on the previous evening.

The day, for a wonder, had passed almost pleasantly; there had been no flogging; Captain Pigot had scarcely showed himself on deck, except for a few minutes after breakfast and again at noon; and the officers of the watches, glad to be freed from his obnoxious presence, had been careful not to unnecessarily hurry and badger the men whilst carrying on the duty of the ship. The only circumstance which, to my mind, seemed disquieting, was the unusual demeanour of the men, who performed their work, steadily enough indeed, but in a moody, unnatural silence, wearing, meantime, a gloomy, preoccupied air, whilst they at the same time—at least so it appeared to me—seemed to be, one and all, in a restless, anxious, watchful frame of mind, as though they were in momentary expectation of something happening. I could not at all understand this state of things, which was something quite new, for, notwithstanding the skipper’s intolerable tyranny, there were a few of the men—and those among the best and smartest hands we had in the ship—who had hitherto contrived to maintain a fairly cheerful demeanour, and who seldom let slip such an opportunity as that afforded by the captain’s absence from the deck to indulge in the exchange of a quiet bit of nautical humour or a harmless practical joke with their next neighbour. To-day, however, this sort of thing was conspicuously absent; and I was at first disposed to attribute the unwonted gloom to the men’s horror and regret at the lamentable accident of the previous evening. But that, I felt again, would scarcely account for it; for, however sincere may be Jack’s attachment to his shipmates whilst they are alive and with him, they are no sooner dead and buried than, from his quickly acquired habit of promptly casting behind him all disquieting memories, he forgets all about them and their fate.

At length, as the day wore on and drew to a peaceful close, my misgivings, such as they were—and they were, after all, so slight as scarcely to deserve mention—passed away; and at eight bells I retired to my hammock with a dawning hope that perhaps, after all, the collective remonstrance of the officers was about to bear good fruit.

My mind being thus at rest, I at once sank into a profound sleep, from which I was abruptly startled by a loud noise of some kind, though what it was I could not for the moment make out. Almost immediately afterwards, however, I heard it again—a loud furious combined shout of many voices from the fore part of the ship. Feeling instinctively that something was wrong, I leaped from my hammock—as also did Courtenay, my only companion in the berth—and began hurriedly to search for my clothes by the dim light of the smoky lamp which hung swaying from the deck-beam overhead. Before, however, I had time to do more than don my socks, a grizzled weatherbeaten main-topman named Ned Sykes made his appearance in the doorway of the berth, with a drawn cutlass in his hand and a pair of pistols in his belt. He looked intently at us both for a moment, and then said, in a gruff but kindly tone of voice:

“Muster Lascelles, and Muster Courtenay, ain’t it? Ha! that’s all right; I reckoned I should find you two young gen’lemen here, safe enough. Now, you two, just slip into your hammicks again as fast as you knows how, and stay there until I gives you leave to get out of ’em.”

“Why, what is the matter, Ned? What is all the row about?” asked Courtenay, with wide-staring, horrified eyes. For, by this time, the shouting and yelling were tremendous, and accompanied by a loud thumping, rumbling sound, produced, as we afterwards ascertained, by the shot which the men were flinging about the decks.

“The matter is just this here, young ’un,” replied Ned, entering the berth and seating himself on a chest, “The hands for’ard has made up their minds not to have no more such haccidents as them two that occurred last night; nor they ain’t a-goin’ to have no more floggin’ nor bully-raggin’, so they’ve just rose up and are takin’ possession of the ship—Aha! I’m terrible afeard that means bloodshed,” as a piercing shriek echoed through the ship. “Now,” he continued, seeing that we evinced a strong disinclination to return to our hammocks, “you just tumble into them hammicks and lie down,quick; you couldn’t do a morsel of good, e’er a one of yer, if you was out there on deck—you’d only get hurted or, mayhap, killed outright,—and I’ve been specially told off to come here and see as neither of yer gets into trouble; you’ve both been good kindly lads, you especial, Muster Lascelles—you’ve never had your eyes open to notice any little shortcomin’s or skylarkin’s on the part of the men, nor your tongues double-hung for to go and report ’em, so the lads is honestly anxious as you sha’n’t come to no harm in this here rumpus.”

“Then the men have actually mutinied,” said I—and there I stopped short, for at that moment came the sound of a rush aft of many feet, with shouts and curses, mingled with which I heard the loud harsh tones of Captain Pigot’s voice raised in anger. Themêlée, however, if such there was, quickly swept aft, and there was a lull for perhaps two or three minutes, followed by the sounds of a brief struggle on the quarter-deck, a few shrieks and groans, telling all too plainly of the bloody work going forward, and then silence, broken only now and then by the sound of Farmer’s voice, apparently issuing orders, though what he was actually saying we could not distinguish.

During all this time Courtenay and I lay huddled up in our hammocks, too terrified and horror-stricken to say a word. At length, after the lapse of about an hour of quietness on deck, Sykes—after cautioning us most earnestly not, on any account, to move from where we were until his return—set out with the expressed intention of ascertaining how the land lay. He was absent about a quarter of an hour; and on his return he informed us in horrified accents that, out of all the officers of the ship, there remained alive only Mr Southcott the master, the gunner, the carpenter, Courtenay, myself—and Farmer, the master’s mate, who, it appeared, had taken a leading part in the mutiny, and had been elected to the command of the ship. It was evident, from the scared and horrified appearance and manner of our informant, that he had never anticipated any of this awful violence and bloodshed, though he frankly admitted that he had been a consenting party to the mutiny—the general understanding being that the officers were all to be secured in the first instance, and afterwards handed over as prisoners to the enemy—and he hurriedly explained to us that, for his own safety’s sake, it would now be necessary for him to leave us and join the rest of the mutineers without delay, but that he would return to us as soon as he possibly could; and that, in the meantime, we were on no account to leave the berth, or our lives would certainly be sacrificed.

After hearing such statements as these, no further warning was needed to keep us two unhappy mids close prisoners for the rest of the night. Further sleep was of course quite out of the question; so we hastily dressed, and, closing the door of the berth, seated ourselves on a sea-chest, where we passed the remainder of the night discussing the awful tragedy which had so suddenly been enacted, comparing notes as to our mutual forebodings of some such disaster, and, lastly, wondering what would be the ultimate fate of ourselves and the few other surviving officers.

At length, after what appeared to be a very eternity of suspense and anxiety, steps were heard approaching the berth; and, upon our throwing open the door, Sykes, somewhat the worse for liquor, made his appearance, hailing us, in tones of obviously forced joviality, with:

“Well, what cheer, my fighting cocks—my bully bantams? How goes it? Hope your honours has passed a comfortable night,” with a ghastly grin at his own facetiousness. Then, with considerably more seriousness of manner, he continued:

“Well, young uns, Farmer—orMisterFarmer, I should say—has been axing arter you, and his instructions am that you may now go ’pon deck. But—hark ’e, my bullies, keep your weather eyes a-liftin’ and a stopper upon your tongues. Whatsomever you may happen to see don’t you be led away into indulgin’ in any onpleasant remarks upon it; nor don’t you go for to try and talk over any of the lads into ‘returning to their duty,’ or any rot of that sort; for so sure as either of you attempts anything like that, so surely will you get your brains blowed out. The ship’s took—what’s done is done—and neither you nor nobody else can make or mend the job; the men is in a mighty ticklish humour, I can tell ’e, and if you wants to save your precious carcasses you’ll have to walk mighty carcumspect. And that’s the advice and opinion of a friend, all free, gratis, and for nothink. Now, come along, my hearties; show a leg!”

We followed our well-meaning guide up the ladder to the quarter-deck, where we found Farmer apparently awaiting our appearance. He was standing or rather leaning in a wearied attitude against a gun on the starboard side of the deck; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes gleamed feverishly; he looked a good twenty years older than he had appeared to be on the previous day; and, like a good many of the other mutineers, he appeared to have been indulging somewhat freely in liquor. He roused himself at our approach, and, seating himself in a negligent, careless attitude on the breech of the gun, said:

“Good morning, young gentlemen. I am glad to see you both safe and sound. Sykes has of course informed you of what has taken place—he had my instructions to do so, as also to see that you were kept out of harm’s way last night. Now, what I have to say to you is this. You two lads having invariably manifested kindness and sympathy for the men, they were especially anxious that whenever the rising might take place your lives should be spared. This has been done. You are alive and unharmed this morning, whilst others have gone to render an account of their manifold misdeeds—their countless acts of oppression and cruelty—before that Judge in whose sight their lives are not one whit more valuable than the lives of those whom they have goaded and driven to death—ay, and toworsethan death—to such frantic desperation as can only be allayed by the shedding of blood like water. Now, mark me well, both of you; you have had neither part nor lot in this matter—those who wished you well have so managed that, whether or no, you should be kept strictly neutral throughout the affair; all those to whom you owed obedience are either dead or prisoners; you are not asked or expected to join us—we do not want you and should not care to have you even if you were willing—you are therefore relieved from duty; and all that is asked of you is that you shall interfere in no way, either by word or deed, with the working of the ship or with our plans. If you are agreeable to abide by this proposal, well and good; you will be welcome to come and go as you like until we find it convenient to land you; you will be allowed to occupy your former quarters, and your rations will be regularly served out to you. But if on the other hand you make the slightest attempt to communicate with the prisoners, or endeavour in any way to seduce any of the men from their loyalty to the rest, I will hang you both that same hour, one from each yard-arm. That is understood and agreed to, is it not, men?” he continued, raising his voice and appealing to the crowd of mutineers who had gathered round us.

“Ay, ay, that’s agreed; that’s fair enough,” was the unanimous reply.

With that, Farmer waved his hand to us by way of dismissal; and considerably thrown off our balance by the address to which we had just listened, and by the terrible turn affairs had taken generally, we slunk off to the poop, so as to be as far away as possible from the murderous gang and from the ghastly puddles of coagulated blood about the quarter-deck, which still bore witness to heaven against them.

At this moment a man on the forecastle electrified all hands by shouting:

“Sail ho!”

I saw Farmer start from his seat on the gun as if shot, his flushed features turned ashen pale, and for a moment his palsied lips refused to give utterance to a sound.

“Sail ho!” repeated the man in a louder hail, thinking, I suppose, that his first intimation had passed unnoticed. This second hail fairly startled the men, and in a moment everything was bustle and confusion and panic. It aroused Farmer too; he pulled himself together sufficiently to respond to the hail with the usual question, “Where away?” and, on receiving the reply, “Two points on the larboard bow,” walked forward to personally inspect the stranger. We, of course, likewise directed our glances in the specified direction; and there she was, sure enough, a large ship, on the starboard tack, with every stitch of canvas set that would draw, and steering a course which would take her across our bows at a distance of about a mile.

“Bring me the spy-glass out of the cabin, somebody!” hailed Farmer from the forecastle. The glass—a very powerful one and a favourite instrument with the murdered captain—was handed him by one of the quarter-masters, and he applied it to his eye. A breathless silence now prevailed fore and aft for the stranger had all the look of a British man-of-war, and everybody was waiting to hear what Farmer’s verdict would be. The inspection was a long-sustained and evidently anxious one. At length, dropping the glass into the hollow of his arm Farmer turned and said:

“Bring Mr Southcott on deck, and let us hear his opinion of yonder hooker.”

In a few minutes the master was escorted on deck by a couple of armed seamen, and led forward to where Farmer was standing.

“Mr Southcott,” said the mutineer, turning toward the individual addressed, and perceptibly shrinking as their glance met, “be good enough to take this glass, and let me know wha’ you think of the stranger yonder.”

“Stranger!” ejaculated Southcott. “Where away? Ah, I see her!” and he took the glass from Farmer’s extended hand.

“Well, what think you of her?” asked Farmer impatiently, after the master had been silently working away with the glass for some two or three minutes.

“One moment, please,” answered Southcott with his eye still glued to the tube; “I think—but I am not quite sure—if she would only keep just the merest trifle more away—so as to permit of my catching a glimpse—”

“Sail ho!” shouted a man in the fore-top; “two of ’em, a brig and a ship on the starboard beam, away in under the land there!”

Farmer unceremoniously snatched the glass away from the master and levelled it in the direction indicated.

“Ay, ay, I see them,” said he. “That is theDrakenearest us, and theFavouriteinshore of her. They are all right; we have nothing to fear from them. It is this stranger here ahead of us that bothers me. Come, Mr Southcott,” he continued, “you ought to know something about her by this time—you have been looking at her long enough; do you think you ever saw her before?”

The master took the glass, had another long squint at the ship ahead, then handed the instrument back to Farmer, with the answer:

“I decline to say whether I have or not.”

“That is enough,” said Farmer; “your answer but confirms me in my conviction as to the identity of yonder frigate. It is theMermaid. Speak, sir, is it not so?”

“You are right, Farmer, itistheMermaid, thank God! and you cannot escape. See! she is already hauling up to speak us; and in another twenty minutes will be alongside. Now, sir, resign to me the command which you have with so much violence and bloodshed usurped; and you, men,” he continued, turning round and in a loud voice addressing the rest of the crew, “return at once to your duty. Support and assist me in recovering the command of the ship, and I promise—”

“Silence!” roared Farmer, striking the master a heavy blow full in the mouth with his clenched fist. “Seize him, you two,” he continued to the men who had charge of the prisoner, “and if he offers to speak again to the men clap a belaying-pin between his teeth. My lads, you now know the truth; yonder frigate is our old acquaintance theMermaid. Mr Southcott proposes that I should surrender the command of this ship to him; and if I do so we all know what will follow. Most of us will dangle at the yard-arm; and though,through the royal clemency,” (with a bitter sneer), “a few may be allowed to escape with a flogging through the fleet, with left-handed boatswains’ mates to cross the lashes—think of that, men, and compare it with the mere two or three dozen at the gangway which most of you have tasted since you joined theHermione—where is the man among you, I ask, who can point to himself and say, ‘I shall be one of thefortunatefew?’ No, no, my lads! after last night’s work there must be no talk of surrender; the ropes are already round our necks, and as surely as we ever find ourselves beneath the British flag again, so surely will those ropes be hauled taut and ourselves bowsed up to the yard-arm. And, even if our lives could be assured to us, what inducement is there to us to serve under British bunting again? I say there isnone. We must choose, then, between two alternatives; we must either fight or fly. Which is it to be?”

The rest of the mutineers huddled together, evidently irresolute; each man eagerly sought his neighbour’s opinion, theprosandconsof Farmer’s question were hurriedly discussed, and I saw with inexpressible delight that a good many of the men were more than half disposed to fall in with the master’s suggestion.

Mr Southcott must have seen this too, for he wheeled round upon Farmer and exclaimed:

“Surely, Farmer, you are not mad enough to entertain the idea of fighting theMermaid? Why, man, you could not stand up before her for five minutes with the men in their present undisciplined state and no one but yourself to direct operations. Your defeat under such circumstances is an absolute certainty; and think what would be the fate of yourself and your misguided followers if taken in arms against the flag under which they have sworn to serve. At present some at least of them may hope for mercy if they will but—”

“Away with him! Take him below!” shouted Farmer, “and if he attempts to open his mouth again put a bullet through his brains. Now, shipmates,” he continued, as the master was hurried below, “make up your minds, and quickly too; which will you have, the yard-rope or a pitched battle?”

“What occasion is there for either?” inquired a burly boatswain’s-mate. “There’s more ways of killing a cat than choking of her with cream. Let’s square dead away afore it and set stunsails alow and aloft, both sides. I’ll lay my life we run far enough away from theMermaidafore sunset to dodge her in the dark.”

“No good,” dissented Farmer. “TheMermaidcould beat us a couple of knots off the wind in this breeze.”

“Ay, ay; that’s true enough; she could so,” assented a topman. “But we have the heels of her on a taut bowline; so why not brace sharp up on the starboard tack, pass between the islands, and then make for Porto Rico?”

“What! and run the gauntlet of those two cruisers inshore there, as well as take our chance of falling in with theMagicienneand theRegulus, which we know are knocking about somewhere in that direction! Is that the best counsel you can give, Ben?”

“Well, then, let’s haul close in with the land, set fire to the ship, and take to the boats,” answered Ben.

“And what then?” sneered Farmer.

“Why, land, to be sure, and take sarvice with Jack Spaniard,” was the reply.

“Why, man, do you suppose they would welcome us if we went to them empty-handed?” asked Farmer. “No, no, that will never do. If we join the Spaniards we must take the ship with us to ensure a welcome; and I’m half inclined to think that will be the best thing we can do. But not now; that must be thought over at leisure. Meanwhile, what is to be done in the present emergency? We have no time for further argument. Will you stand by me and obey my orders?”

“Ay, ay, we will, every man Jack of us, sink or swim, fight or fly,” was the reply from a hundred throats.

“That’s well, my lads,” exclaimed Farmer exultantly; “it shall go hard but I will bring you through somehow. Starboard your helm, there,” to the man at the wheel; “let her come to on the larboard tack; to your stations, men; let go the larboard sheets and braces, and round in on the starboard. Smartly, my bullies; let’s have no bungling, now, or Captain Otway there will at once suspect that something is amiss. That’s well; ease up the lee topgallant and royal-braces a trifle; well there of all; belay! Afterguard, muster your buckets and brushes and wash down the decks. Roberts, go below with a gang and rouse the hammocks on deck; and quarter-masters, see that they are snugly stowed. Where’s the signal-man? Bend the ensign on to the peak-halliards and our number at the main; and main-top, there I stand by to hoist away the pennant. Gunner, muster your crew; go round the quarters with them; and see that everything is ship-shape in case we should have to make a fight of it.”

I was surprised to see how, as Farmer issued his orders in a tone of authority, the instinct of discipline asserted itself; the men sprang to their stations as nimbly and executed their several duties as smartly as though Captain Pigot himself had been directing their movements. TheHermionewas braced sharp up on the larboard tack and heading as near as she would lay for theMermaid, which was now about a point and a half on our weather bow, about four miles distant, and nearing us fast; whilst theFavouriteand theDrakewere stretching out from under the land to join her.

Presently a string of tiny balls went soaring aloft to theMermaid’smain-royal mast-head, to break abroad as they reached it and stream out in the fresh morning breeze as so many gaily coloured signal flags.

“There goes theMermaid’sbunting, sir!” sang out the signal-man, “she is showing her number.”

“Ay, ay, I see it,” exclaimed Farmer. “And, by Heaven,” he added, “it never struck me until this moment that Pigot was senior captain. Hoist away your ensign and pennant! up with the number! We are all right, my hearties; I know how to trick them now.”

He raised the telescope to his eye and brought it to bear upon theMermaid.

“All right,” he exclaimed a few seconds later, “she sees our number—haul down! Now signal her to chase in the north-eastern quarter. Hurrah, my hearties, that’s your sort! There goes her answering pennant; and there she hauls to the wind on the starboard tack. That disposes of her at all events. Now signal theFavouriteandDraketo chase to the nor’ard; that will send them through the Mona Passage, and leave us with a clear sea.”

A quarter of an hour later the three cruisers which had caused the mutineers so much uneasiness were thrashing to windward under every rag they could spread; when Farmer bore up and ran away to the southward and westward with studding-sails set on both sides of the ship.

Chapter Eight.La Guayra.After breakfast that morning the men were mustered on the quarter-deck; and Farmer, with some half a dozen of the other mutineers, discussed in their presence and hearing the question of what should be done with the ship now that they had her. There was, of course, a great deal of wild talk, especially among the foreigners—of whom, most unfortunately for the ill-fated officers of the ship, there were far too many on board—and at one period of the discussion it seemed by no means improbable that the frigate would be converted into a pirate, in which event there can be no doubt but that, for a time at least, she would have proved a terrible scourge to all honest navigators in those seas. Farmer, however, was strongly in favour of going over to the Spaniards; and in the end his counsels prevailed, though he met with a great deal of opposition.This point settled, the ship’s head was laid to the southward; and sunrise on the fourth morning succeeding the mutiny found us off La Guayra, with a flag of truce flying. The signal was duly observed and answered from the shore; upon which the gig was lowered, and, with a white flag floating from her ensign staff, her crew in their holiday rig, and Farmer with three other ringleaders of the mutiny in her stern-sheets, she shoved off for the harbour. She was absent for the greater part of the day, it being seven bells in the afternoon watch before she was observed pulling out of the harbour again; and when she made her appearance it was at once observed that she was accompanied by several heavy launches full of men. It took the flotilla fully an hour to pull off to us, and when they reached the frigate it was seen that the occupants of the shore-boats were Spanish seamen, with a sprinkling of officers among them. On coming alongside the entire rabble at once boarded; the ship was formally handed over by Farmer to an officer in a resplendent uniform, whose first act was to direct one of his aides to strike the white flag and hoist the Spanish ensign at the peak; and the surviving officers—five of us in number—were then mustered and ordered into one of the boats alongside. We were compelled to bundle down over the side just as we were, without a single personal belonging, or article of clothing except what we stood in; and, the boat being manned by some twenty as bloodthirsty-looking desperadoes as I ever clapped eyes on, we were forthwith pulled ashore and at once marched off to prison.It was dark by the time that we reached the harbour; we were consequently unable to see much of the place that night beyond the fact that it lay at the base of a lofty range of hills. We were received at the landing-place by a party of soldiers with fixed bayonets, who had evidently been awaiting our arrival, and, escorted by them, we arrived—after a march of about a mile—at the gates of a most forbidding-looking edifice constructed of heavy blocks of masonry, and which had all the appearance of being a fortress. Passing through the gloomy gateway—which was protected by a portcullis—we found ourselves in a large open paved courtyard, across which we marched to a door on the opposite side. Entering this door, we wheeled to the right and passed along a wide stone passage which conducted us to a sort of guard-room. We were here received by a lanky, cadaverous-looking individual with a shrivelled yellow parchment skin, hands like the claws of a vulture, piercing black eyes, and grizzled locks and moustache, who, with but scant courtesy, took down the name and rank of each of us in a huge battered volume; after which we were conducted through another long echoing passage, and finally ushered into a sort of hall, about sixty feet long by forty feet wide, with a lofty stone groined roof, and six high, narrow, lancet-shaped windows in each of the two longer walls. These windows we subsequently found were closely grated on the outside with heavy iron bars. The moment that we crossed the threshold the heavy oaken door was closed and barred upon us, and we were left to shift for ourselves as best we could.The first thing of which I was distinctly conscious on entering the hall was the volume of sound which echoed from the walls and the groined roof. Singing, laughter, conversation, altercation were all going on at the same moment at the utmost pitch of the human voice, and apparently with the whole strength of the assembled company, which, after winking and blinking like an owl for several moments, I succeeded in dimly making out through the dense cloud of suffocating smoke which pervaded the place, and which appeared to emanate from a wood fire burning on the pavement at the far end of the hall, and from some three or four flaring oil lamps which were suspended from nails driven into the walls between the joints of the masonry.It was a minute or two before any of the noisy company appeared to notice us. At length, however, one man, rising to his feet and shading his eyes with his hand as he looked in our direction, ejaculated:“Who have we here? More companions in misfortune?”Then advancing with outstretched hand he exclaimed uproariously:“What cheer, my hearties? Welcome to Equality Hall!”Then, as he for the first time noticed our uniforms, he muttered:“Why, dash my old frizzly wig if they ain’t navy gents!” adding in a much more respectful tone of voice: “Beg pardon, gentlemen, I’m sure, for my familiarity. Didn’t notice at first what you was. Come forward into the range of the light and bring yourselves to an anchor. I’m afraid you’ll find these but poor quarters, gentlemen, after what you’ve been used to aboard a man-o’-war. And you’ll find us a noisy lot too; but the fact is we’re just trying to make the best of things here, trying to be as happy as we can under the circumstances, as you may say. Here, you unmannerly lubbers,” he continued, addressing a group who were sprawling at full length on a rough wooden bench, “rouse out of that and make room for your betters.”The men scrambled to their feet and made way for us good-naturedly enough; and we seated ourselves on the vacated bench, feeling—at least I may answer for myself—forlorn enough in the great dingy, dirty, comfortless hole into which we had been so unceremoniously thrust. Our new friend seated himself alongside Mr Southcott, and, first informing that gentleman that the company in which we found ourselves were the crews of sundry British merchantmen which had been captured by the Spaniards, and that he was the ex-chief mate of a tidy little Liverpool barque called theSparkling Foam, proceeded to inquire into the circumstances which had led to our captivity. The account of the mutiny was received by the party, most of whom had gathered round to listen to it, with expressions of the most profound abhorrence and indignation, which were only cut short by the appearance of a sergeant and a file of soldiers bearing the evening’s rations, which were served out raw, to be immediately afterwards handed over to a black cook who answered to the name of “Snowball,” and who had good-naturedly constituted himself the cook of the party. The rations, which included a portion for us newcomers, consisted of a small modicum of meat, a few vegetables, a tolerably liberal allowance of coarse black bread, and waterad libitum. The little incident of the serving out of rations having come to an end, and the sergeant having retired with his satellites, our friend of theSparkling Foam—whose name, it transpired, was Benjamin Rogers—resumed his conversation with us by proceeding to “put us up to a thing or two.”“I’ve no doubt, gentlemen,” he said, “but what you’ll be asked to give your parole to-morrow, if you haven’t already—you haven’t, eh? well, so much the better; you’ll be asked to-morrow. Now, if you’ll take my advice you won’t give it; if you do, you’ll simply be turned adrift into the town to shift for yourselves and find quarters where you can. If you’ve got money, and plenty of it, you might manage to rub along pretty well for a time; but when your cash is gone where are you? Why, simply nowheres. Now, this is a roughish berth for gentlemen like you, I’ll allow; but within the last few days we’ve been marched out every morning and set to work patching up an old battery away out here close to the beach, and we’ve been kept at it all day, so that we get plenty of fresh air and exercise, and merely have to ride it out here during the night. There’s only some half-a-dozen soldiers sent out to watch us; and it’s my idea that it might be no such very difficult matter to give these chaps the slip some evening, and at nightfall make our way down to the harbour, seize one of the small coasting craft which seem to be always there, and make sail for Jamaica. At least that’s my notion, gentlemen; you are welcome to it for what it’s worth, and can think it over.”We thanked our new friend for his advice, which we followed so far as to think and talk it over before stowing ourselves away for the night upon the bundle of straw which constituted the sole apology for a bed and covering allowed us by the Spaniards.Mr Southcott, the master, was indignant beyond measure at the scurvy treatment thus meted out to us as prisoners of war, and talked a great deal about the representations he intended to make to the authorities with regard to it; but in the meantime he decided to give his parole, in the hope of a speedy exchange, and strongly recommended us to do the same. He was possessed of a little money, it seemed, which he had taken the precaution of secreting about his person immediately on the ship making the land, in anticipation of his speedily finding a use for it; and this money he most generously offered to share with us as far as it would go. To this, however, none of us would listen; and as we were wholly without means the only alternative left to us was to refuse our parole, and put up as best we could with such board and lodging as the Spaniards might be disposed to give us, and to bend all our energies to the accomplishment of a speedy escape. As for me, I still held in vivid remembrance the statement which my father had made to me on the eve of my departure for school, and the caution he had given me against expecting any assistance from him after I had once fairly entered upon my career; and I resolved to endure the worst that could possibly befall me rather than act upon a suggestion which the master threw out, to the effect that possibly someone might be found in the town willing to cash (for a heavy premium) a draft of mine upon my father.Rogers’ expectation that we should be asked for our parole was verified next morning; and Southcott, giving his, bade us a reluctant farewell after a further ineffectual effort to persuade us to reconsider our decision. Finding that we were not to be persuaded he bade us take heart and keep up our spirits, as his very first task should be to make such representations to the authorities as must result in a very speedy and considerable amelioration of our condition. We parted with many expressions of mutual regret; and that was the last any of us ever saw of the poor fellow, nor were our subsequent inquiries as to what had become of him in the slightest degree successful.As for us who remained, upon our explaining, through the medium of a very inefficient interpreter, that the lack of means to support ourselves precluded the possibility of our giving our parole upon the terms offered us, we were brusquely informed that we must then be content to be classed among the common prisoners, to put up with their accommodation, and to take part in the tasks allotted to them. We were then abruptly dismissed, and, without further ceremony, marched off to the scene of our labours, which we found to be the fort mentioned by Rogers—an antiquated structure in the very last stage of dilapidation, which it was the task of the prisoners to repair.To be obliged to work was, after all, no very great hardship. We were in the fresh open air all day, which was infinitely better than confinement between four walls, even had those walls inclosed a far greater measure of comfort than was to be found within the confines of our prison-house. The physical exertion kept us in a state of excellent health, and consequently in fairly good spirits; the labour, though of anything but an intellectual character, kept our minds sufficiently employed to prevent our brooding over our ill fortune; we were allowed to take matters pretty easily so long as we did not dawdle too much, and thus entail upon our lounging guard the unwelcome necessity of scrambling to their feet and hunting up our whereabouts; our daily labours brought with them just that amount of fatigue which ensured sound sleep and a happy oblivion of the dirt and manifold discomforts of our night quarters; and finally, there was the prospect that at any moment some lucky chance might favour our escape.Four days from the date of our incarceration the muster-roll of the prison was increased by the addition of the names of half a dozen Spanish smugglers, who had been captured a few miles up the coast by one of the guarda-costas and brought into La Guayra. They were a rough, reckless-looking set of vagabonds; but their looks were the worst part of them, for they all turned out to be gay, jovial spirits enough, taking their reverse of fortune with the utmost nonchalance, and having a laugh and a jest for everything and everybody, the guards included, with whom they soon became upon the most amicable terms. One of these men, a fellow named Miguel—I never learned his other name—was attached to the gang of labourers to which I belonged; and though I fought rather shy of him for a time his hearty good-nature and accommodating disposition soon overcame my reserve, and I gradually grew to be on the best of terms with him. He could speak a word or two of English, and, seeming to have taken a fancy to me, he would strike up a conversation with me as often as the opportunity offered, much to his own amusement and mine, since we rarely succeeded in comprehending each other. These efforts at conversation, however, inspired me with the idea that this man’s companionship afforded me an opportunity to acquire a knowledge of Spanish, which could not fail to be of service to me; and this idea I at length with some difficulty succeeded in conveying to my smuggler friend. He pantomimically expressed himself as charmed with the suggestion, which he intimated might be improved upon by my undertaking in return to teach him English; and, a satisfactory understanding being arrived at, we commenced our studies forthwith. We were of course utterly destitute of all aid from books, and we were therefore compelled to fall back upon the primitive method of pointing out objects to each other and designating them alternately in English and Spanish, each repeating the word until the other had caught its proper pronunciation. From this we advanced to short simple sentences, the meaning of which we conveyed as well as we could by appropriate gestures; and though we sometimes made the most ridiculous mistakes through misunderstanding the meaning of those gestures, yet on the whole we managed tolerably well. The first steps were the most difficult, but every word mastered cleared the way to the comprehension of two or three others; so that by the time we had been a couple of months at our studies we found ourselves making really satisfactory progress. And when seven months had been thus spent, though neither could speak the language of the other like a native, each could converse in the other’s language with tolerable fluency and make himself perfectly understood. I had, long before this, however, after considerable hesitation and cautious feeling of my ground, broached to Miguel the question of escape, and had been considerably chagrined to learn from him that, unless aided by friends outside the prison, there was hardly the remotest chance of success. The only way in which it could be done was, in his opinion, to obtain shelter and concealment for, say a month, in some family in the immediate neighbourhood; andthen, when the scent had grown cold and the zeal of the pursuers had died away, a dark night and some assistance might enable one to get safely off the coast. Ifhewere free now, he was good enough to say, the thing might be managed, for a consideration, without any very great difficulty; but—a shrug of the shoulders and a glance at the prison dress which he was condemned to wear for more than a year longer eloquently enough closed the sentence.About this time—or, to speak more definitely, some eight months from the date of our landing at La Guayra—a change in our fortunes occurred, which, whilst it had the immediate result of considerably ameliorating Courtenay’s and my own condition, was destined to ultimately—but avast! I must not get ahead of my story. It happened in this way. One morning after we had been out at work about a couple of hours the military engineer who was in charge of our operations rode up to the battery, accompanied by a very fine, handsome, middle-aged man, evidently also a soldier, for he was attired in an undress military uniform.“Hillo!” exclaimed Miguel, as he noticed the new arrivals, “what is in the wind now? That is the commandant of the district with Señor Pacheco.”The appearance of such a notability naturally created a profound sensation; but we were of course obliged to go on with our work all the same. The commandant dismounted, and, accompanied by Señor Pacheco, proceeded to make an inspection of the battery, which by this time was beginning to assume the appearance of a tolerably strong fortification. That done, the sergeant of the guard was summoned, and something in the nature of a consultation ensued, which terminated in Courtenay and myself being ordered to drop our tools and step forward to where the commandant was standing.The great man regarded us both fixedly for a moment or two, and then said, of course in Spanish:“I understand that you are two of the officers who were landed here from the British frigateHermione?”I replied that we were.“Well,” he said, “I suppose, in that case, you know all about ships, or, at all events, sufficient to be able to construct and rig a few models?”I answered that we certainly did.“Very well,” said he, turning to Señor Pacheco, “in that case they will serve my purpose very well, and you may send them up to the castle at once. And, as they are, after all, merely a couple of boys, I think we shall run no very great risk of losing them if we arrange for them to stay about the place altogether; what say you?—it will be much more convenient for me; and I will find rations and quarters for them; and they can report themselves periodically at the citadel, if need be.”Señor Pacheco expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with the proposed arrangement; and we were forthwith instructed to leave work there and then and make the best of our way to a chateau which was pointed out to us, and which lay embosomed in trees some three miles to the westward of the town and about a mile from the shore. We had no packing to do, as we possessed nothing in the world but the clothes we stood up in—and which, by the way, were now in the very last stage of “looped and windowed raggedness”—so we simply nodded a “good-bye” to such of our envious acquaintances as happened to be within saluting range, and at once set off up the road which we were informed would conduct us to our destination.Once fairly away from the scene of our late labours, Courtenay and I gave full rein both to our tongues and to our imaginations, discussing and wondering what in the world the commandant could possibly want with ship-models; but that, after all was a question which we did not greatly trouble ourselves to solve; the dominant thought and reflection in our minds that we were likely to be, for some time at least, absentees from the prison and all the discomfort and wretchedness connected with it, and which I have not dwelt upon or attempted to describe for the one simple reason that it was wholly undescribable. We never thought of escaping, although we soon found ourselves passing through a thinly-inhabited country where our abandonment of the high-road and concealment in the neighbouring woods could have been accomplished without the slightest risk of observation; but we had learned by this time that escape was no such easy matter; it was a something which would have to be carefully planned beforehand and every possible precaution adopted to ensure success, and had we been foolishly tempted to try it then and there our non-arrival at the chateau would speedily have been reported, with the result that a search would have been instituted, followed by our speedy recapture and ignominious return to the abhorred prison. No; we were very thankful for and very well satisfied with the sudden change in our fortunes which had been so unexpectedly wrought, for, though we could of course form no very clear idea of what our lot would be in the service of the commandant, we felt pretty certain it would be much easier than what we had been obliged to put up with since our landing from the frigate; and, for the rest, we were content to wait and see what time had in store for us, whilst we were fully resolved to keep a bright lookout for and to take the utmost advantage of any opportunity for escape which might be opened out to us.We had just arrived at a handsome pair of park gates which we conjectured gave admittance to the castle grounds when we were overtaken by the commandant, on horseback. He nodded to us; remarked, “I see you have found your way all right;” shouted for the ancient custodian to open the gates; and then, as the heavy iron barriers swung back, dismounted, threw the bridle over his arm, and walked up the long avenue with us.We now had an opportunity to observe him a little more closely than at our first interview; and we found him to be a tall and strikingly handsome man, somewhere about fifty years of age, as we judged; with piercing black eyes which seemed to read one’s very thoughts, yet which were by no means devoid of amiable expression, and black hair and moustache thickly dashed with grey. Somewhat to our surprise, we found that he could speak English very fairly. His demeanour to us was characterised by that lofty stately courtesy peculiar to the old nobility of Castile (of which province he was a native); and we subsequently learned that he was as gallant a warrior as he was a polished gentleman, having served with much distinction in various parts of the world. His style and title, we afterwards ascertained, was El Commandant Don Luis Aguirre Martinez de Guzman; and we speedily found that he had a very strong predilection for the English, attributable to the fact—which ultimately leaked out—that his first and deepest love had been won by an English girl, whom, however,—the course of true love not running smoothly—he never married.As we walked up the noble avenue side by side he questioned us as to our names, ages, and rank, how long we had been prisoners, and so on; and expressed his astonishment at the harsh treatment which we had received at the hands of the prison authorities. Upon this I thought it advisable to mention to him our refusal to give our parole, stating as our reason our total lack of funds.“Oh, well,” he said laughingly, “that need no longer influence you, you know. You will have free quarters and rations at the castle, in addition to the remuneration to which you will be entitled for your services, so you can give your parole when next you report yourselves at the citadel, and that will end the matter.”This, however, would not suit our views at all, though we did not choose to say so; we therefore changed the subject by asking him what more particularly were the services which we should be asked to perform. His answer was to the effect that his especial hobby was the study of fortification, respecting which, it seems, he had several rather novel theories, in the working out and testing of which—and also by way of amusement—he had constructed the model of a fortified town on the shores of a small lake within the castle grounds; and he had sought our assistance to enable him to place a fleet of ship-models before this town, to illustrate his method of overcoming the difficulties attendant upon a state of siege and blockade. By the time that this fancy of his had been fully explained we had reached the castle—a noble building as to size but of no very great pretensions from an architectural point of view—and, the major-domo having been summoned, we were handed over to him with the necessary instructions for our proper housing and so on.

After breakfast that morning the men were mustered on the quarter-deck; and Farmer, with some half a dozen of the other mutineers, discussed in their presence and hearing the question of what should be done with the ship now that they had her. There was, of course, a great deal of wild talk, especially among the foreigners—of whom, most unfortunately for the ill-fated officers of the ship, there were far too many on board—and at one period of the discussion it seemed by no means improbable that the frigate would be converted into a pirate, in which event there can be no doubt but that, for a time at least, she would have proved a terrible scourge to all honest navigators in those seas. Farmer, however, was strongly in favour of going over to the Spaniards; and in the end his counsels prevailed, though he met with a great deal of opposition.

This point settled, the ship’s head was laid to the southward; and sunrise on the fourth morning succeeding the mutiny found us off La Guayra, with a flag of truce flying. The signal was duly observed and answered from the shore; upon which the gig was lowered, and, with a white flag floating from her ensign staff, her crew in their holiday rig, and Farmer with three other ringleaders of the mutiny in her stern-sheets, she shoved off for the harbour. She was absent for the greater part of the day, it being seven bells in the afternoon watch before she was observed pulling out of the harbour again; and when she made her appearance it was at once observed that she was accompanied by several heavy launches full of men. It took the flotilla fully an hour to pull off to us, and when they reached the frigate it was seen that the occupants of the shore-boats were Spanish seamen, with a sprinkling of officers among them. On coming alongside the entire rabble at once boarded; the ship was formally handed over by Farmer to an officer in a resplendent uniform, whose first act was to direct one of his aides to strike the white flag and hoist the Spanish ensign at the peak; and the surviving officers—five of us in number—were then mustered and ordered into one of the boats alongside. We were compelled to bundle down over the side just as we were, without a single personal belonging, or article of clothing except what we stood in; and, the boat being manned by some twenty as bloodthirsty-looking desperadoes as I ever clapped eyes on, we were forthwith pulled ashore and at once marched off to prison.

It was dark by the time that we reached the harbour; we were consequently unable to see much of the place that night beyond the fact that it lay at the base of a lofty range of hills. We were received at the landing-place by a party of soldiers with fixed bayonets, who had evidently been awaiting our arrival, and, escorted by them, we arrived—after a march of about a mile—at the gates of a most forbidding-looking edifice constructed of heavy blocks of masonry, and which had all the appearance of being a fortress. Passing through the gloomy gateway—which was protected by a portcullis—we found ourselves in a large open paved courtyard, across which we marched to a door on the opposite side. Entering this door, we wheeled to the right and passed along a wide stone passage which conducted us to a sort of guard-room. We were here received by a lanky, cadaverous-looking individual with a shrivelled yellow parchment skin, hands like the claws of a vulture, piercing black eyes, and grizzled locks and moustache, who, with but scant courtesy, took down the name and rank of each of us in a huge battered volume; after which we were conducted through another long echoing passage, and finally ushered into a sort of hall, about sixty feet long by forty feet wide, with a lofty stone groined roof, and six high, narrow, lancet-shaped windows in each of the two longer walls. These windows we subsequently found were closely grated on the outside with heavy iron bars. The moment that we crossed the threshold the heavy oaken door was closed and barred upon us, and we were left to shift for ourselves as best we could.

The first thing of which I was distinctly conscious on entering the hall was the volume of sound which echoed from the walls and the groined roof. Singing, laughter, conversation, altercation were all going on at the same moment at the utmost pitch of the human voice, and apparently with the whole strength of the assembled company, which, after winking and blinking like an owl for several moments, I succeeded in dimly making out through the dense cloud of suffocating smoke which pervaded the place, and which appeared to emanate from a wood fire burning on the pavement at the far end of the hall, and from some three or four flaring oil lamps which were suspended from nails driven into the walls between the joints of the masonry.

It was a minute or two before any of the noisy company appeared to notice us. At length, however, one man, rising to his feet and shading his eyes with his hand as he looked in our direction, ejaculated:

“Who have we here? More companions in misfortune?”

Then advancing with outstretched hand he exclaimed uproariously:

“What cheer, my hearties? Welcome to Equality Hall!”

Then, as he for the first time noticed our uniforms, he muttered:

“Why, dash my old frizzly wig if they ain’t navy gents!” adding in a much more respectful tone of voice: “Beg pardon, gentlemen, I’m sure, for my familiarity. Didn’t notice at first what you was. Come forward into the range of the light and bring yourselves to an anchor. I’m afraid you’ll find these but poor quarters, gentlemen, after what you’ve been used to aboard a man-o’-war. And you’ll find us a noisy lot too; but the fact is we’re just trying to make the best of things here, trying to be as happy as we can under the circumstances, as you may say. Here, you unmannerly lubbers,” he continued, addressing a group who were sprawling at full length on a rough wooden bench, “rouse out of that and make room for your betters.”

The men scrambled to their feet and made way for us good-naturedly enough; and we seated ourselves on the vacated bench, feeling—at least I may answer for myself—forlorn enough in the great dingy, dirty, comfortless hole into which we had been so unceremoniously thrust. Our new friend seated himself alongside Mr Southcott, and, first informing that gentleman that the company in which we found ourselves were the crews of sundry British merchantmen which had been captured by the Spaniards, and that he was the ex-chief mate of a tidy little Liverpool barque called theSparkling Foam, proceeded to inquire into the circumstances which had led to our captivity. The account of the mutiny was received by the party, most of whom had gathered round to listen to it, with expressions of the most profound abhorrence and indignation, which were only cut short by the appearance of a sergeant and a file of soldiers bearing the evening’s rations, which were served out raw, to be immediately afterwards handed over to a black cook who answered to the name of “Snowball,” and who had good-naturedly constituted himself the cook of the party. The rations, which included a portion for us newcomers, consisted of a small modicum of meat, a few vegetables, a tolerably liberal allowance of coarse black bread, and waterad libitum. The little incident of the serving out of rations having come to an end, and the sergeant having retired with his satellites, our friend of theSparkling Foam—whose name, it transpired, was Benjamin Rogers—resumed his conversation with us by proceeding to “put us up to a thing or two.”

“I’ve no doubt, gentlemen,” he said, “but what you’ll be asked to give your parole to-morrow, if you haven’t already—you haven’t, eh? well, so much the better; you’ll be asked to-morrow. Now, if you’ll take my advice you won’t give it; if you do, you’ll simply be turned adrift into the town to shift for yourselves and find quarters where you can. If you’ve got money, and plenty of it, you might manage to rub along pretty well for a time; but when your cash is gone where are you? Why, simply nowheres. Now, this is a roughish berth for gentlemen like you, I’ll allow; but within the last few days we’ve been marched out every morning and set to work patching up an old battery away out here close to the beach, and we’ve been kept at it all day, so that we get plenty of fresh air and exercise, and merely have to ride it out here during the night. There’s only some half-a-dozen soldiers sent out to watch us; and it’s my idea that it might be no such very difficult matter to give these chaps the slip some evening, and at nightfall make our way down to the harbour, seize one of the small coasting craft which seem to be always there, and make sail for Jamaica. At least that’s my notion, gentlemen; you are welcome to it for what it’s worth, and can think it over.”

We thanked our new friend for his advice, which we followed so far as to think and talk it over before stowing ourselves away for the night upon the bundle of straw which constituted the sole apology for a bed and covering allowed us by the Spaniards.

Mr Southcott, the master, was indignant beyond measure at the scurvy treatment thus meted out to us as prisoners of war, and talked a great deal about the representations he intended to make to the authorities with regard to it; but in the meantime he decided to give his parole, in the hope of a speedy exchange, and strongly recommended us to do the same. He was possessed of a little money, it seemed, which he had taken the precaution of secreting about his person immediately on the ship making the land, in anticipation of his speedily finding a use for it; and this money he most generously offered to share with us as far as it would go. To this, however, none of us would listen; and as we were wholly without means the only alternative left to us was to refuse our parole, and put up as best we could with such board and lodging as the Spaniards might be disposed to give us, and to bend all our energies to the accomplishment of a speedy escape. As for me, I still held in vivid remembrance the statement which my father had made to me on the eve of my departure for school, and the caution he had given me against expecting any assistance from him after I had once fairly entered upon my career; and I resolved to endure the worst that could possibly befall me rather than act upon a suggestion which the master threw out, to the effect that possibly someone might be found in the town willing to cash (for a heavy premium) a draft of mine upon my father.

Rogers’ expectation that we should be asked for our parole was verified next morning; and Southcott, giving his, bade us a reluctant farewell after a further ineffectual effort to persuade us to reconsider our decision. Finding that we were not to be persuaded he bade us take heart and keep up our spirits, as his very first task should be to make such representations to the authorities as must result in a very speedy and considerable amelioration of our condition. We parted with many expressions of mutual regret; and that was the last any of us ever saw of the poor fellow, nor were our subsequent inquiries as to what had become of him in the slightest degree successful.

As for us who remained, upon our explaining, through the medium of a very inefficient interpreter, that the lack of means to support ourselves precluded the possibility of our giving our parole upon the terms offered us, we were brusquely informed that we must then be content to be classed among the common prisoners, to put up with their accommodation, and to take part in the tasks allotted to them. We were then abruptly dismissed, and, without further ceremony, marched off to the scene of our labours, which we found to be the fort mentioned by Rogers—an antiquated structure in the very last stage of dilapidation, which it was the task of the prisoners to repair.

To be obliged to work was, after all, no very great hardship. We were in the fresh open air all day, which was infinitely better than confinement between four walls, even had those walls inclosed a far greater measure of comfort than was to be found within the confines of our prison-house. The physical exertion kept us in a state of excellent health, and consequently in fairly good spirits; the labour, though of anything but an intellectual character, kept our minds sufficiently employed to prevent our brooding over our ill fortune; we were allowed to take matters pretty easily so long as we did not dawdle too much, and thus entail upon our lounging guard the unwelcome necessity of scrambling to their feet and hunting up our whereabouts; our daily labours brought with them just that amount of fatigue which ensured sound sleep and a happy oblivion of the dirt and manifold discomforts of our night quarters; and finally, there was the prospect that at any moment some lucky chance might favour our escape.

Four days from the date of our incarceration the muster-roll of the prison was increased by the addition of the names of half a dozen Spanish smugglers, who had been captured a few miles up the coast by one of the guarda-costas and brought into La Guayra. They were a rough, reckless-looking set of vagabonds; but their looks were the worst part of them, for they all turned out to be gay, jovial spirits enough, taking their reverse of fortune with the utmost nonchalance, and having a laugh and a jest for everything and everybody, the guards included, with whom they soon became upon the most amicable terms. One of these men, a fellow named Miguel—I never learned his other name—was attached to the gang of labourers to which I belonged; and though I fought rather shy of him for a time his hearty good-nature and accommodating disposition soon overcame my reserve, and I gradually grew to be on the best of terms with him. He could speak a word or two of English, and, seeming to have taken a fancy to me, he would strike up a conversation with me as often as the opportunity offered, much to his own amusement and mine, since we rarely succeeded in comprehending each other. These efforts at conversation, however, inspired me with the idea that this man’s companionship afforded me an opportunity to acquire a knowledge of Spanish, which could not fail to be of service to me; and this idea I at length with some difficulty succeeded in conveying to my smuggler friend. He pantomimically expressed himself as charmed with the suggestion, which he intimated might be improved upon by my undertaking in return to teach him English; and, a satisfactory understanding being arrived at, we commenced our studies forthwith. We were of course utterly destitute of all aid from books, and we were therefore compelled to fall back upon the primitive method of pointing out objects to each other and designating them alternately in English and Spanish, each repeating the word until the other had caught its proper pronunciation. From this we advanced to short simple sentences, the meaning of which we conveyed as well as we could by appropriate gestures; and though we sometimes made the most ridiculous mistakes through misunderstanding the meaning of those gestures, yet on the whole we managed tolerably well. The first steps were the most difficult, but every word mastered cleared the way to the comprehension of two or three others; so that by the time we had been a couple of months at our studies we found ourselves making really satisfactory progress. And when seven months had been thus spent, though neither could speak the language of the other like a native, each could converse in the other’s language with tolerable fluency and make himself perfectly understood. I had, long before this, however, after considerable hesitation and cautious feeling of my ground, broached to Miguel the question of escape, and had been considerably chagrined to learn from him that, unless aided by friends outside the prison, there was hardly the remotest chance of success. The only way in which it could be done was, in his opinion, to obtain shelter and concealment for, say a month, in some family in the immediate neighbourhood; andthen, when the scent had grown cold and the zeal of the pursuers had died away, a dark night and some assistance might enable one to get safely off the coast. Ifhewere free now, he was good enough to say, the thing might be managed, for a consideration, without any very great difficulty; but—a shrug of the shoulders and a glance at the prison dress which he was condemned to wear for more than a year longer eloquently enough closed the sentence.

About this time—or, to speak more definitely, some eight months from the date of our landing at La Guayra—a change in our fortunes occurred, which, whilst it had the immediate result of considerably ameliorating Courtenay’s and my own condition, was destined to ultimately—but avast! I must not get ahead of my story. It happened in this way. One morning after we had been out at work about a couple of hours the military engineer who was in charge of our operations rode up to the battery, accompanied by a very fine, handsome, middle-aged man, evidently also a soldier, for he was attired in an undress military uniform.

“Hillo!” exclaimed Miguel, as he noticed the new arrivals, “what is in the wind now? That is the commandant of the district with Señor Pacheco.”

The appearance of such a notability naturally created a profound sensation; but we were of course obliged to go on with our work all the same. The commandant dismounted, and, accompanied by Señor Pacheco, proceeded to make an inspection of the battery, which by this time was beginning to assume the appearance of a tolerably strong fortification. That done, the sergeant of the guard was summoned, and something in the nature of a consultation ensued, which terminated in Courtenay and myself being ordered to drop our tools and step forward to where the commandant was standing.

The great man regarded us both fixedly for a moment or two, and then said, of course in Spanish:

“I understand that you are two of the officers who were landed here from the British frigateHermione?”

I replied that we were.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose, in that case, you know all about ships, or, at all events, sufficient to be able to construct and rig a few models?”

I answered that we certainly did.

“Very well,” said he, turning to Señor Pacheco, “in that case they will serve my purpose very well, and you may send them up to the castle at once. And, as they are, after all, merely a couple of boys, I think we shall run no very great risk of losing them if we arrange for them to stay about the place altogether; what say you?—it will be much more convenient for me; and I will find rations and quarters for them; and they can report themselves periodically at the citadel, if need be.”

Señor Pacheco expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with the proposed arrangement; and we were forthwith instructed to leave work there and then and make the best of our way to a chateau which was pointed out to us, and which lay embosomed in trees some three miles to the westward of the town and about a mile from the shore. We had no packing to do, as we possessed nothing in the world but the clothes we stood up in—and which, by the way, were now in the very last stage of “looped and windowed raggedness”—so we simply nodded a “good-bye” to such of our envious acquaintances as happened to be within saluting range, and at once set off up the road which we were informed would conduct us to our destination.

Once fairly away from the scene of our late labours, Courtenay and I gave full rein both to our tongues and to our imaginations, discussing and wondering what in the world the commandant could possibly want with ship-models; but that, after all was a question which we did not greatly trouble ourselves to solve; the dominant thought and reflection in our minds that we were likely to be, for some time at least, absentees from the prison and all the discomfort and wretchedness connected with it, and which I have not dwelt upon or attempted to describe for the one simple reason that it was wholly undescribable. We never thought of escaping, although we soon found ourselves passing through a thinly-inhabited country where our abandonment of the high-road and concealment in the neighbouring woods could have been accomplished without the slightest risk of observation; but we had learned by this time that escape was no such easy matter; it was a something which would have to be carefully planned beforehand and every possible precaution adopted to ensure success, and had we been foolishly tempted to try it then and there our non-arrival at the chateau would speedily have been reported, with the result that a search would have been instituted, followed by our speedy recapture and ignominious return to the abhorred prison. No; we were very thankful for and very well satisfied with the sudden change in our fortunes which had been so unexpectedly wrought, for, though we could of course form no very clear idea of what our lot would be in the service of the commandant, we felt pretty certain it would be much easier than what we had been obliged to put up with since our landing from the frigate; and, for the rest, we were content to wait and see what time had in store for us, whilst we were fully resolved to keep a bright lookout for and to take the utmost advantage of any opportunity for escape which might be opened out to us.

We had just arrived at a handsome pair of park gates which we conjectured gave admittance to the castle grounds when we were overtaken by the commandant, on horseback. He nodded to us; remarked, “I see you have found your way all right;” shouted for the ancient custodian to open the gates; and then, as the heavy iron barriers swung back, dismounted, threw the bridle over his arm, and walked up the long avenue with us.

We now had an opportunity to observe him a little more closely than at our first interview; and we found him to be a tall and strikingly handsome man, somewhere about fifty years of age, as we judged; with piercing black eyes which seemed to read one’s very thoughts, yet which were by no means devoid of amiable expression, and black hair and moustache thickly dashed with grey. Somewhat to our surprise, we found that he could speak English very fairly. His demeanour to us was characterised by that lofty stately courtesy peculiar to the old nobility of Castile (of which province he was a native); and we subsequently learned that he was as gallant a warrior as he was a polished gentleman, having served with much distinction in various parts of the world. His style and title, we afterwards ascertained, was El Commandant Don Luis Aguirre Martinez de Guzman; and we speedily found that he had a very strong predilection for the English, attributable to the fact—which ultimately leaked out—that his first and deepest love had been won by an English girl, whom, however,—the course of true love not running smoothly—he never married.

As we walked up the noble avenue side by side he questioned us as to our names, ages, and rank, how long we had been prisoners, and so on; and expressed his astonishment at the harsh treatment which we had received at the hands of the prison authorities. Upon this I thought it advisable to mention to him our refusal to give our parole, stating as our reason our total lack of funds.

“Oh, well,” he said laughingly, “that need no longer influence you, you know. You will have free quarters and rations at the castle, in addition to the remuneration to which you will be entitled for your services, so you can give your parole when next you report yourselves at the citadel, and that will end the matter.”

This, however, would not suit our views at all, though we did not choose to say so; we therefore changed the subject by asking him what more particularly were the services which we should be asked to perform. His answer was to the effect that his especial hobby was the study of fortification, respecting which, it seems, he had several rather novel theories, in the working out and testing of which—and also by way of amusement—he had constructed the model of a fortified town on the shores of a small lake within the castle grounds; and he had sought our assistance to enable him to place a fleet of ship-models before this town, to illustrate his method of overcoming the difficulties attendant upon a state of siege and blockade. By the time that this fancy of his had been fully explained we had reached the castle—a noble building as to size but of no very great pretensions from an architectural point of view—and, the major-domo having been summoned, we were handed over to him with the necessary instructions for our proper housing and so on.

Chapter Nine.Inez De Guzman.We were conducted by our guide—an ancient and somewhat pompous individual—to a large and very pleasantly situated room in the north wing of the castle, from whence, through an opening between the trees, a glimpse of the sea was to be obtained; the foreground being occupied by a kitchen-garden. This room, it seemed, was to be our sleeping apartment. It was somewhat meagrely furnished, according to our English ideas, and there was only one bed in it—our guide informing us, however, that the commandant had ordered another to be placed there forthwith—but what little furniture the apartment contained was good, and everything was scrupulously clean, so that, in comparison with our recent quarters, those we were now to occupy seemed absolutely palatial. And our gratification was considerably increased when we were informed that another very large and handsomely furnished room, through which we had passed to gain access to our sleeping quarters, was to be devoted to our exclusive use and occupation during the day at such times as we were not engaged in the park. We voted the commandant a trump, there and then, and mutually resolved to do all that in us lay to retain our exceedingly comfortable berths until we should find opportunity to quit them of our own accord for good and all.Having duly installed us, and suggestively directed our attention to the toilet gear—of which in truth we both most grievously stood in need—the major-domo left us, first informing us, however, that if, when we were ready, we would ring a bell, the cord of which he pointed out to us, a servant would bring us some refreshment.We lost no time in freshening ourselves up and making ourselves as presentable as circumstances would permit, and then sat down to a plain but substantial meal, which, after our meagre and coarse prison fare, seemed a veritable banquet. At the conclusion of this meal we were informed that the commandant awaited us below, upon which we followed our informant down a sort of back staircase, and issuing from a little side door found ourselves in the garden before mentioned. It was walled in on all sides, but a door in the wall adjoining the house was pointed out to us, and issuing through it we found ourselves on the noble terrace which stretched along the whole front of the castle. Here we discovered the commandant pacing up and down with a cigar in his mouth, and joining him he proposed to conduct us to the scene of our future labours.With all his stateliness, which he never laid aside, Don Luis de Guzman knew how to be very affable when he chose, and he chose to be so with us. Commencing a long conversation by courteously expressing a hope that our apartments were to our liking, and kindly informing us that, if they were not, a hint to the major-domo would be sufficient to secure the rectification of whatever might be amiss, he then went on to speak of “the unnecessary haste” with which we had been removed from the ship, and of the inconvenience which we must have experienced from the scantiness of our wardrobe, an inconvenience which, he said, he would “take the liberty” of having remedied as speedily as might be. This, of course, was very kind of him, and we ungrudgingly credited him with the most generous of motives; at the same time I have no doubt that the stately don was as heartily ashamed of the two scarecrows who accompanied him as we were of our own appearance.Having thus cleared the ground, as it were, our benefactor proceeded to question us closely as to the circumstances connected with and which led up to the mutiny, at which he expressed the most unqualified reprobation; and when we had told him all we knew about it he informed us that the British government had made a formal demand for the restitution of the frigate and the surrender of the mutineers, as well as the captive officers, a demand which, he said, the Spanish government had seen fit to refuse; and I thought, from his manner of speaking upon the subject, that he by no means favourable regarded the action of his countrymen in the matter. This conversation, and indeed all that we subsequently held with him, was, I ought to say, conducted in English. He asked us questions innumerable—indeed more than we were able to fully answer—respecting the habits and customs of our nation, our mode of government, and what not; and it was not long before we were able to perceive that his liking for the English was as strong as it was possible for a thorough-bred Spanish noble to entertain.A walk, or rather a saunter, of about a mile and a half through the park brought us to the scene of our future operations—a lake of, I should say, some four or five acres in extent - and here the subject of our conversation was diverted to the theme of the commandant’s requirements of us.The lake, it appeared, was a natural feature of the landscape, with a stream some twenty feet in width flowing through it. A walk had been constructed right round it, crossing the stream by a couple of rustic bridges; and for about one-half its length the banks had been most beautifully laid out as a flower-garden. For the remaining half of its length, however, nature had been allowed to have pretty much her own way, except at the point where the stream entered the lake. There the ground had been carefully cleared of trees, and trimmed so as to present the aspect of a low flat shore, with hills in the rear. And on this shore, covering an area of some fifty feet square on each side of the stream, the commandant had caused to be constructed an exceedingly pretty and carefully finished model of a town, with streets, houses, public buildings, squares, and even monuments, with a harbour, including moles, piers, lighthouses, batteries, etcetera, complete down to the minutest detail. It had evidently been a labour of love with him, as could be seen at a glance from the care and finish lavished upon the work; and we afterwards learned that it had occupied him and a staff of a dozen workmen for more than a year. It was to blockade this miniature town and port that the fleet of ships which we were to construct was required, the trenches and investing earthworks and batteries on the land side being already finished. It was surprising to see how this most dignified Spaniard unbent, and how enthusiastic he became as he described his plans to us and gave us instructions respecting the dimensions and number of his pigmy fleet. He was evidently much pleased with the admiration we expressed at the care and skill exhibited in working out his quaint idea; and when we had minutely inspected every part of it he led us to a comfortable airy little workshop, concealed in a kind of brake among the trees, where we found a good stock of wood, with a capital supply of tools and everything necessary to the proper carrying out of our task. We did not do anything in the way of work on that day, however, for by the time that we had seen everything and had taken a walk to the seaward extremity of the park the sun was getting low, and the time had arrived for us to see about getting back to the castle.Oh, how we enjoyed the luxury of that first dinner at the castle!—the only decent meal of which we had partaken since our landing—with the quiet evening which followed it, spent in a large, lofty, well-furnished apartment, lighted up by a massive silver lamp of elaborate workmanship, and cooled by the light evening breeze which floated in through the widely-opened casements. Stretched luxuriously in a couple of low comfortable sloping-backed chairs, we sat at one of these open casements discussing a bottle of excellent wine, and looking out upon the dark woods which surrounded the building, watching the full moon soar into the cloudless sky from behind the gently-swaying foliage, and listening to the song of the nightingale, amidst which we once or twice thought we detected the tinkling sounds of a guitar apparently issuing from one of the open windows in another wing of the castle.We retired early to rest that night, after a bath, not so much because we were tired, but rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury of rest in an actual bed, with the pleasant accompaniment of clean sweet-smelling linen.We were disappointed, however, in our anticipations of a sound night’s sleep. After making shift for so long with a heap of straw spread on a hard pavement, the beds seemed too soft and yielding to our unaccustomed limbs, and we lay tossing to and fro for a long time before we eventually dropped off to sleep. This trifling inconvenience disappeared, however, after a few nights’ experience.We were up and stirring by daybreak next morning, and a few minutes later we might have been seen scudding across the park on our way to a certain rocky pool on the beach, which the commandant had pointed out to us the day before as a place where we might safely venture to indulge in a swim without fear of the sharks. Taking his word for it we plunged in and swam off, until we found ourselves almost among the breakers, then returned to the shore, dressed, and made our way back to the castle, which we reached in good time for breakfast. That meal over we set out for the workshop, Pedro—the servant who seemed to have been appointed to wait upon us—informing us as we started that he had orders to have luncheon ready for us by one o’clock. Arrived at the scene of our labours we each selected a suitable block of wood, and whilst Courtenay set to work upon a model of theHermione, I, with greater ambition, devoted all my energies to the hewing out of a line-of-battle ship. Thus occupied the time passed swiftly away, and almost before we were aware of it the commandant, who had looked in upon us to see how we were progressing, announced that it was time for us to see about returning to the castle. He walked back with us, chatting most affably all the way; and on reaching our rooms we found a tailor awaiting us, by his orders, to take our measures for a new outfit of rigging. The first instalment of this, in the shape of a loose white nankin suit apiece, with shirt, stockings, light shoes of tan-coloured leather, crimson silk sashes—to serve instead of braces—and broad-brimmed cane-hat, all complete, awaited us on our waking a couple of mornings later, much to our gratification, as the idea grew upon us that the castle contained other inmates besides the commandant, and we were anxious to avoid a rencontre with these so long as we retained our ragged, scarecrow appearance.We had been at work about a week; Courtenay had completed the hull of his frigate, and was busy about her spars, whilst I was putting the finishing touches to a figure-head for my seventy-four, when, about four o’clock in the afternoon, our workshop suddenly became darkened to such an extent that we could no longer see to work. Looking up and glancing out of the window, we observed that, unnoticed by us, a heavy thunder-storm had been gathering over the sea, and the clouds, setting shoreward, were now hovering immediately overhead. That it was likely to be a severe storm was manifest, the sky being blacker than I had ever seen it before. We were debating upon the advisability of effecting an immediate retreat to the castle, and taking our chance of reaching it before the storm should burst, when a vivid flash of lightning, green and baleful, quickly succeeded by a most deafening peal of thunder, decided us to remain where we were. Another flash and another rapidly followed, and then down came the rain in a perfect deluge. It fell, not in drops but in regularsheetsof water, lashing the surface of the lake into a plain of milky foam, and so completely flooding the ground that in five minutes the water everywhere, as far as we could see from the window at which we had taken our stand, must have been ankle-deep. The storm gained in intensity with startling rapidity, the lightning blazing and flashing about us so uninterruptedly that the whole atmosphere seemed a-quiver with the greenish-blue glare; whilst the rattling crash and roar of the thunder went on absolutely without any intermission, filling the firmament with one continuous chaos of deafening sound and causing the very earth beneath our feet to tremble. This had been going on for some eight or ten minutes, perhaps, when we caught sight, through the streaming deluge outside, of a couple of white-clad flying figures making their way down the path from the rustic bridge toward the workshop. I sprang to the door and threw it open; and in another moment two young women plunged through the doorway—their light flimsy garments streaming with water and clinging about their limbs—and flung themselves breathlessly down upon a bench, the taller and darker of the two panting out:“A thousand thanks, señors! Madre de Dios, what a storm!”“It is indeed terrible,” I replied in my best Spanish, as I closed the door again. “And you have been fairly caught in it. Have you come from a distance?”“Only from the castle. I am Inez de Guzman, the commandant’s daughter, and this,” pointing to her companion, “is Eugenia Gonzalez, my foster-sister. We left home about two hours ago to walk through the park as far as the beach; and it was not until we had emerged from among the trees near the shore that we noticed the gathering storm. Then we hastened back homeward as quickly as possible, but were overtaken before we could gain shelter anywhere. I hope you will excuse our bursting in so unceremoniously upon you. You are the young English officers who have come to assist my father, I presume?”Courtenay and I bowed our affirmatives with all the grace we could muster.“Poor papa!” she continued. “Are you not amused at his having taken so much, soverymuch trouble just to work out and illustrate his pet theories?”“By no means,” we hastened to assure her. “On the contrary,” said I, “I regard it as an evidence of the thoroughness with which the commandant carries out all his undertakings.”“Ah, yes!” said she, evidently well pleased, “I see you understand my father. He is just the same in everything. Heavens, what a flash! Will the stormnevercease!”“There is no present indication of its ending,” said I as I glanced through the window at the blackness outside illumined only by the quivering lightning flashes. “However, it surelycannotlast very much longer. Meanwhile you are both wet to the skin, and I fear we are utterly destitute of means to remedy the disaster. I am afraid you will be chilled sitting there in your drenched garments; and indeed—if you will forgive me for saying so—I think that, since you cannot possibly be made more wet than you now are, you would run less risk of taking cold if you were to proceed home to the castle at once, even though you would have to walk through the storm. We would of course accompany you if you would permit us that honour.”“But,” said she with a little shudder indicative of incipient chill, “you are both of you dry and comfortable.”“That is nothing,” said I. “It is evident that we shall have to go through it sooner or later; so perhaps the sooner the better.”After a little more persuasion on our part and protestations on theirs our fair companions acceded to our suggestion, and we set out, I leading the van with the commandant’s daughter, and Courtenay following with the foster-sister.We stepped out briskly, so as to avert, if possible, any evil consequences of the drenching already received; and as we picked our way along the partially submerged footpath, giving the trees as wide a berth as possible for fear of the lightning which still played vividly about us, my fair companion informed me that the commandant on returning from his visit to us that morning had found an urgent summons to Cartagena awaiting him, and that he had started in obedience thereto within half an hour of its receipt, mentioning, as he hastily bade her farewell, that he could not get back in less than a fortnight at the earliest. We discussed this subject and her father’s probable present whereabouts for a few minutes, and then the young lady asked me to detail to her the particulars of the mutiny on board theHermione, which I did as fully as I possibly could, exciting thereby her keenest anger against the mutineers and her tenderest commiseration for the sufferers.“Poor boy!” said she as I concluded my narrative, “what a dreadful experience for you to pass through!”After that we seemed to get along capitally together; and in due time—an incredibly short time it seemed to me—we reached the castle without misadventure; and, parting with our charges at the chief entrance, Courtenay and I repaired to our own quarters to take a bath and don dry clothing preparatory to sitting down to dinner.Courtenay, it seemed, had been as favourably impressed with his companion as I had been with mine; and for the next two or three days we could talk of little but the two charming girls who had burst in upon us so unexpectedly on the afternoon of that, for us, lucky thunder-storm, reiterating our hopes that the soaking had done them no harm, and wondering whether we should ever be favoured with another meeting, and, if so, when. And, indeed, trivial as the incident may seem, it exercised an important and beneficial influence on our lives after the eight months of hardship and misery unspeakable which we had so recently experienced; it gave us something fresh and pleasant to think about, and prevented our dwelling for ever upon the subject of our escape, which event seemed every day to assume a more thoroughly impossible aspect.On the fourth day after the eventful one of the storm, and just when we were beginning to despair of ever seeing our fail acquaintances again, we were agreeably surprised by seeing them enter the workshop one afternoon, about half an hour after we had returned from luncheon.They paused just within the threshold, and Dona Inez, glancing somewhat shyly at me, said:“Will you allow us to come in and sit down for a little while? We should like to watch you at your work.”We replied, as coherently as our fluster of delight would allow us, that nothing would give us greater pleasure; and, flinging down our tools, Courtenay and I hastened to dust down a bench, place a tool-box in such a position that it would serve for a footstool, and in other ways arrange as far as we could to make our visitors comfortable.Our preparations completed, the young ladies sat down, and, Courtenay and I pairing off as before, an animated conversation ensued which lasted for the remainder of the afternoon, during which I am ashamed to say that very little work was done.If we were charmed at our first interview with these young ladies, when they appeared under all the disadvantages incidental to a condition of utter limpness of soaked and draggled clothing, I fear I should lay myself open to the charge of indulging in unbridled rhapsody were I to attempt a description of the effect produced upon our rather susceptible hearts on the occasion of this their second visit. Not that on the present occasion their charms were very greatly enhanced by the adventitious aid of dress; far from it—but the present opportunity is as good as any to describe their appearance.Dona Inez Isolda Aurora Dolores Maria Francesca de Guzman was a little above the average height of her countrywomen, with a somewhat slender yet perfectly-proportioned figure. Her skin was dazzlingly fair; her luxuriant hair, which floated unconfined in long wavy tresses down her back, was of so deep a chestnut hue that it might easily have been mistaken for black; and her eyes—well, they sparkled and flashed so brilliantly that it was difficult for a stranger to determine their precise colour. Her features were perhaps scarcely formed with sufficient regularity to warrant her being termed strictlybeautiful, but she was most assuredly, at least in my eyes, bewitchingly lovely. She possessed just sufficient colour in her cheeks and lips to give assurance of her being in the most perfect health, and the music of her voice and laugh was nothing short of a revelation to me. I could see that, being an only child, she had not wholly escaped being spoiled; but the slight touch of hauteur and imperiousness which was noticeable in her manner was only just sufficient to add to it another piquant charm. Like her foster-sister she was attired in white, the bodice being fastened with a white silken lace or cord, and having no sleeves, a couple of shoulder-straps trimmed with lace taking their place. That was the fashion of the country, and was doubtless adopted for the sake of coolness and comfort. Neither of the girls wore a hat or head-gear of any description, a most graceful and picturesque substitute therefore being a lace mantilla folded over the crown of the head with the ends brought down over the shoulders and knotted across the bosom. A handsome feather fan fastened to the loose silken girdle or sash about the waist was both useful and ornamental, and gave the only finishing touch required to as piquant and graceful a costume as I ever saw.Courtenay’s companion, little Eugenia Gonzalez, was a striking contrast to her foster-sister. She was a couple of inches shorter in stature, and less slender in figure; a blonde, with blue eyes and just the faintest suggestion of ruddiness in the tints of her hair; a merry, good-humoured expression of countenance; and altogether, though of humble parentage, as dainty, piquant a little beauty as anyone would wish to see.As may be supposed, with such visitors as these to entertain, our work that afternoon did not progress very rapidly; but Courtenay and I quieted our consciences by entering into a mutual compact to exercise such increased diligence in the future as should fully make up for lost time. But when, an afternoon or two later, we overtook our fair friends in the park as we were making our way back to the workshop after our mid-day meal, and they seemed again inclined to favour us with their company, our good resolves took flight and we once more neglected our work in the enjoyment of their society.This, however, I saw would never do. It seemed pretty evident that, being so strictly secluded within the confines of the castle demesne as these two girls were, our appearance upon the scene had assumed almost the importance of an event in their lives, and had wrought so interesting a change in the somewhat monotonous daily routine of their existence that the unsophisticated creatures had each inwardly resolved to make the most of the novelty whilst the opportunity to do so remained. And in that case our work was likely to suffer both in quality and quantity. This, I felt, ought not to be allowed. At the same time the pleasure to be derived from their society was a thing not to be lightly given up; and so the end of it all was that we prevailed upon the two girls to walk with us in the park after dinner instead of visiting the workshop. This arrangement was rendered all the more easy by the arrival of a letter from the commandant announcing his detention at Cartagena, and the probable delay of a month in the date of his return.

We were conducted by our guide—an ancient and somewhat pompous individual—to a large and very pleasantly situated room in the north wing of the castle, from whence, through an opening between the trees, a glimpse of the sea was to be obtained; the foreground being occupied by a kitchen-garden. This room, it seemed, was to be our sleeping apartment. It was somewhat meagrely furnished, according to our English ideas, and there was only one bed in it—our guide informing us, however, that the commandant had ordered another to be placed there forthwith—but what little furniture the apartment contained was good, and everything was scrupulously clean, so that, in comparison with our recent quarters, those we were now to occupy seemed absolutely palatial. And our gratification was considerably increased when we were informed that another very large and handsomely furnished room, through which we had passed to gain access to our sleeping quarters, was to be devoted to our exclusive use and occupation during the day at such times as we were not engaged in the park. We voted the commandant a trump, there and then, and mutually resolved to do all that in us lay to retain our exceedingly comfortable berths until we should find opportunity to quit them of our own accord for good and all.

Having duly installed us, and suggestively directed our attention to the toilet gear—of which in truth we both most grievously stood in need—the major-domo left us, first informing us, however, that if, when we were ready, we would ring a bell, the cord of which he pointed out to us, a servant would bring us some refreshment.

We lost no time in freshening ourselves up and making ourselves as presentable as circumstances would permit, and then sat down to a plain but substantial meal, which, after our meagre and coarse prison fare, seemed a veritable banquet. At the conclusion of this meal we were informed that the commandant awaited us below, upon which we followed our informant down a sort of back staircase, and issuing from a little side door found ourselves in the garden before mentioned. It was walled in on all sides, but a door in the wall adjoining the house was pointed out to us, and issuing through it we found ourselves on the noble terrace which stretched along the whole front of the castle. Here we discovered the commandant pacing up and down with a cigar in his mouth, and joining him he proposed to conduct us to the scene of our future labours.

With all his stateliness, which he never laid aside, Don Luis de Guzman knew how to be very affable when he chose, and he chose to be so with us. Commencing a long conversation by courteously expressing a hope that our apartments were to our liking, and kindly informing us that, if they were not, a hint to the major-domo would be sufficient to secure the rectification of whatever might be amiss, he then went on to speak of “the unnecessary haste” with which we had been removed from the ship, and of the inconvenience which we must have experienced from the scantiness of our wardrobe, an inconvenience which, he said, he would “take the liberty” of having remedied as speedily as might be. This, of course, was very kind of him, and we ungrudgingly credited him with the most generous of motives; at the same time I have no doubt that the stately don was as heartily ashamed of the two scarecrows who accompanied him as we were of our own appearance.

Having thus cleared the ground, as it were, our benefactor proceeded to question us closely as to the circumstances connected with and which led up to the mutiny, at which he expressed the most unqualified reprobation; and when we had told him all we knew about it he informed us that the British government had made a formal demand for the restitution of the frigate and the surrender of the mutineers, as well as the captive officers, a demand which, he said, the Spanish government had seen fit to refuse; and I thought, from his manner of speaking upon the subject, that he by no means favourable regarded the action of his countrymen in the matter. This conversation, and indeed all that we subsequently held with him, was, I ought to say, conducted in English. He asked us questions innumerable—indeed more than we were able to fully answer—respecting the habits and customs of our nation, our mode of government, and what not; and it was not long before we were able to perceive that his liking for the English was as strong as it was possible for a thorough-bred Spanish noble to entertain.

A walk, or rather a saunter, of about a mile and a half through the park brought us to the scene of our future operations—a lake of, I should say, some four or five acres in extent - and here the subject of our conversation was diverted to the theme of the commandant’s requirements of us.

The lake, it appeared, was a natural feature of the landscape, with a stream some twenty feet in width flowing through it. A walk had been constructed right round it, crossing the stream by a couple of rustic bridges; and for about one-half its length the banks had been most beautifully laid out as a flower-garden. For the remaining half of its length, however, nature had been allowed to have pretty much her own way, except at the point where the stream entered the lake. There the ground had been carefully cleared of trees, and trimmed so as to present the aspect of a low flat shore, with hills in the rear. And on this shore, covering an area of some fifty feet square on each side of the stream, the commandant had caused to be constructed an exceedingly pretty and carefully finished model of a town, with streets, houses, public buildings, squares, and even monuments, with a harbour, including moles, piers, lighthouses, batteries, etcetera, complete down to the minutest detail. It had evidently been a labour of love with him, as could be seen at a glance from the care and finish lavished upon the work; and we afterwards learned that it had occupied him and a staff of a dozen workmen for more than a year. It was to blockade this miniature town and port that the fleet of ships which we were to construct was required, the trenches and investing earthworks and batteries on the land side being already finished. It was surprising to see how this most dignified Spaniard unbent, and how enthusiastic he became as he described his plans to us and gave us instructions respecting the dimensions and number of his pigmy fleet. He was evidently much pleased with the admiration we expressed at the care and skill exhibited in working out his quaint idea; and when we had minutely inspected every part of it he led us to a comfortable airy little workshop, concealed in a kind of brake among the trees, where we found a good stock of wood, with a capital supply of tools and everything necessary to the proper carrying out of our task. We did not do anything in the way of work on that day, however, for by the time that we had seen everything and had taken a walk to the seaward extremity of the park the sun was getting low, and the time had arrived for us to see about getting back to the castle.

Oh, how we enjoyed the luxury of that first dinner at the castle!—the only decent meal of which we had partaken since our landing—with the quiet evening which followed it, spent in a large, lofty, well-furnished apartment, lighted up by a massive silver lamp of elaborate workmanship, and cooled by the light evening breeze which floated in through the widely-opened casements. Stretched luxuriously in a couple of low comfortable sloping-backed chairs, we sat at one of these open casements discussing a bottle of excellent wine, and looking out upon the dark woods which surrounded the building, watching the full moon soar into the cloudless sky from behind the gently-swaying foliage, and listening to the song of the nightingale, amidst which we once or twice thought we detected the tinkling sounds of a guitar apparently issuing from one of the open windows in another wing of the castle.

We retired early to rest that night, after a bath, not so much because we were tired, but rather to enjoy the unwonted luxury of rest in an actual bed, with the pleasant accompaniment of clean sweet-smelling linen.

We were disappointed, however, in our anticipations of a sound night’s sleep. After making shift for so long with a heap of straw spread on a hard pavement, the beds seemed too soft and yielding to our unaccustomed limbs, and we lay tossing to and fro for a long time before we eventually dropped off to sleep. This trifling inconvenience disappeared, however, after a few nights’ experience.

We were up and stirring by daybreak next morning, and a few minutes later we might have been seen scudding across the park on our way to a certain rocky pool on the beach, which the commandant had pointed out to us the day before as a place where we might safely venture to indulge in a swim without fear of the sharks. Taking his word for it we plunged in and swam off, until we found ourselves almost among the breakers, then returned to the shore, dressed, and made our way back to the castle, which we reached in good time for breakfast. That meal over we set out for the workshop, Pedro—the servant who seemed to have been appointed to wait upon us—informing us as we started that he had orders to have luncheon ready for us by one o’clock. Arrived at the scene of our labours we each selected a suitable block of wood, and whilst Courtenay set to work upon a model of theHermione, I, with greater ambition, devoted all my energies to the hewing out of a line-of-battle ship. Thus occupied the time passed swiftly away, and almost before we were aware of it the commandant, who had looked in upon us to see how we were progressing, announced that it was time for us to see about returning to the castle. He walked back with us, chatting most affably all the way; and on reaching our rooms we found a tailor awaiting us, by his orders, to take our measures for a new outfit of rigging. The first instalment of this, in the shape of a loose white nankin suit apiece, with shirt, stockings, light shoes of tan-coloured leather, crimson silk sashes—to serve instead of braces—and broad-brimmed cane-hat, all complete, awaited us on our waking a couple of mornings later, much to our gratification, as the idea grew upon us that the castle contained other inmates besides the commandant, and we were anxious to avoid a rencontre with these so long as we retained our ragged, scarecrow appearance.

We had been at work about a week; Courtenay had completed the hull of his frigate, and was busy about her spars, whilst I was putting the finishing touches to a figure-head for my seventy-four, when, about four o’clock in the afternoon, our workshop suddenly became darkened to such an extent that we could no longer see to work. Looking up and glancing out of the window, we observed that, unnoticed by us, a heavy thunder-storm had been gathering over the sea, and the clouds, setting shoreward, were now hovering immediately overhead. That it was likely to be a severe storm was manifest, the sky being blacker than I had ever seen it before. We were debating upon the advisability of effecting an immediate retreat to the castle, and taking our chance of reaching it before the storm should burst, when a vivid flash of lightning, green and baleful, quickly succeeded by a most deafening peal of thunder, decided us to remain where we were. Another flash and another rapidly followed, and then down came the rain in a perfect deluge. It fell, not in drops but in regularsheetsof water, lashing the surface of the lake into a plain of milky foam, and so completely flooding the ground that in five minutes the water everywhere, as far as we could see from the window at which we had taken our stand, must have been ankle-deep. The storm gained in intensity with startling rapidity, the lightning blazing and flashing about us so uninterruptedly that the whole atmosphere seemed a-quiver with the greenish-blue glare; whilst the rattling crash and roar of the thunder went on absolutely without any intermission, filling the firmament with one continuous chaos of deafening sound and causing the very earth beneath our feet to tremble. This had been going on for some eight or ten minutes, perhaps, when we caught sight, through the streaming deluge outside, of a couple of white-clad flying figures making their way down the path from the rustic bridge toward the workshop. I sprang to the door and threw it open; and in another moment two young women plunged through the doorway—their light flimsy garments streaming with water and clinging about their limbs—and flung themselves breathlessly down upon a bench, the taller and darker of the two panting out:

“A thousand thanks, señors! Madre de Dios, what a storm!”

“It is indeed terrible,” I replied in my best Spanish, as I closed the door again. “And you have been fairly caught in it. Have you come from a distance?”

“Only from the castle. I am Inez de Guzman, the commandant’s daughter, and this,” pointing to her companion, “is Eugenia Gonzalez, my foster-sister. We left home about two hours ago to walk through the park as far as the beach; and it was not until we had emerged from among the trees near the shore that we noticed the gathering storm. Then we hastened back homeward as quickly as possible, but were overtaken before we could gain shelter anywhere. I hope you will excuse our bursting in so unceremoniously upon you. You are the young English officers who have come to assist my father, I presume?”

Courtenay and I bowed our affirmatives with all the grace we could muster.

“Poor papa!” she continued. “Are you not amused at his having taken so much, soverymuch trouble just to work out and illustrate his pet theories?”

“By no means,” we hastened to assure her. “On the contrary,” said I, “I regard it as an evidence of the thoroughness with which the commandant carries out all his undertakings.”

“Ah, yes!” said she, evidently well pleased, “I see you understand my father. He is just the same in everything. Heavens, what a flash! Will the stormnevercease!”

“There is no present indication of its ending,” said I as I glanced through the window at the blackness outside illumined only by the quivering lightning flashes. “However, it surelycannotlast very much longer. Meanwhile you are both wet to the skin, and I fear we are utterly destitute of means to remedy the disaster. I am afraid you will be chilled sitting there in your drenched garments; and indeed—if you will forgive me for saying so—I think that, since you cannot possibly be made more wet than you now are, you would run less risk of taking cold if you were to proceed home to the castle at once, even though you would have to walk through the storm. We would of course accompany you if you would permit us that honour.”

“But,” said she with a little shudder indicative of incipient chill, “you are both of you dry and comfortable.”

“That is nothing,” said I. “It is evident that we shall have to go through it sooner or later; so perhaps the sooner the better.”

After a little more persuasion on our part and protestations on theirs our fair companions acceded to our suggestion, and we set out, I leading the van with the commandant’s daughter, and Courtenay following with the foster-sister.

We stepped out briskly, so as to avert, if possible, any evil consequences of the drenching already received; and as we picked our way along the partially submerged footpath, giving the trees as wide a berth as possible for fear of the lightning which still played vividly about us, my fair companion informed me that the commandant on returning from his visit to us that morning had found an urgent summons to Cartagena awaiting him, and that he had started in obedience thereto within half an hour of its receipt, mentioning, as he hastily bade her farewell, that he could not get back in less than a fortnight at the earliest. We discussed this subject and her father’s probable present whereabouts for a few minutes, and then the young lady asked me to detail to her the particulars of the mutiny on board theHermione, which I did as fully as I possibly could, exciting thereby her keenest anger against the mutineers and her tenderest commiseration for the sufferers.

“Poor boy!” said she as I concluded my narrative, “what a dreadful experience for you to pass through!”

After that we seemed to get along capitally together; and in due time—an incredibly short time it seemed to me—we reached the castle without misadventure; and, parting with our charges at the chief entrance, Courtenay and I repaired to our own quarters to take a bath and don dry clothing preparatory to sitting down to dinner.

Courtenay, it seemed, had been as favourably impressed with his companion as I had been with mine; and for the next two or three days we could talk of little but the two charming girls who had burst in upon us so unexpectedly on the afternoon of that, for us, lucky thunder-storm, reiterating our hopes that the soaking had done them no harm, and wondering whether we should ever be favoured with another meeting, and, if so, when. And, indeed, trivial as the incident may seem, it exercised an important and beneficial influence on our lives after the eight months of hardship and misery unspeakable which we had so recently experienced; it gave us something fresh and pleasant to think about, and prevented our dwelling for ever upon the subject of our escape, which event seemed every day to assume a more thoroughly impossible aspect.

On the fourth day after the eventful one of the storm, and just when we were beginning to despair of ever seeing our fail acquaintances again, we were agreeably surprised by seeing them enter the workshop one afternoon, about half an hour after we had returned from luncheon.

They paused just within the threshold, and Dona Inez, glancing somewhat shyly at me, said:

“Will you allow us to come in and sit down for a little while? We should like to watch you at your work.”

We replied, as coherently as our fluster of delight would allow us, that nothing would give us greater pleasure; and, flinging down our tools, Courtenay and I hastened to dust down a bench, place a tool-box in such a position that it would serve for a footstool, and in other ways arrange as far as we could to make our visitors comfortable.

Our preparations completed, the young ladies sat down, and, Courtenay and I pairing off as before, an animated conversation ensued which lasted for the remainder of the afternoon, during which I am ashamed to say that very little work was done.

If we were charmed at our first interview with these young ladies, when they appeared under all the disadvantages incidental to a condition of utter limpness of soaked and draggled clothing, I fear I should lay myself open to the charge of indulging in unbridled rhapsody were I to attempt a description of the effect produced upon our rather susceptible hearts on the occasion of this their second visit. Not that on the present occasion their charms were very greatly enhanced by the adventitious aid of dress; far from it—but the present opportunity is as good as any to describe their appearance.

Dona Inez Isolda Aurora Dolores Maria Francesca de Guzman was a little above the average height of her countrywomen, with a somewhat slender yet perfectly-proportioned figure. Her skin was dazzlingly fair; her luxuriant hair, which floated unconfined in long wavy tresses down her back, was of so deep a chestnut hue that it might easily have been mistaken for black; and her eyes—well, they sparkled and flashed so brilliantly that it was difficult for a stranger to determine their precise colour. Her features were perhaps scarcely formed with sufficient regularity to warrant her being termed strictlybeautiful, but she was most assuredly, at least in my eyes, bewitchingly lovely. She possessed just sufficient colour in her cheeks and lips to give assurance of her being in the most perfect health, and the music of her voice and laugh was nothing short of a revelation to me. I could see that, being an only child, she had not wholly escaped being spoiled; but the slight touch of hauteur and imperiousness which was noticeable in her manner was only just sufficient to add to it another piquant charm. Like her foster-sister she was attired in white, the bodice being fastened with a white silken lace or cord, and having no sleeves, a couple of shoulder-straps trimmed with lace taking their place. That was the fashion of the country, and was doubtless adopted for the sake of coolness and comfort. Neither of the girls wore a hat or head-gear of any description, a most graceful and picturesque substitute therefore being a lace mantilla folded over the crown of the head with the ends brought down over the shoulders and knotted across the bosom. A handsome feather fan fastened to the loose silken girdle or sash about the waist was both useful and ornamental, and gave the only finishing touch required to as piquant and graceful a costume as I ever saw.

Courtenay’s companion, little Eugenia Gonzalez, was a striking contrast to her foster-sister. She was a couple of inches shorter in stature, and less slender in figure; a blonde, with blue eyes and just the faintest suggestion of ruddiness in the tints of her hair; a merry, good-humoured expression of countenance; and altogether, though of humble parentage, as dainty, piquant a little beauty as anyone would wish to see.

As may be supposed, with such visitors as these to entertain, our work that afternoon did not progress very rapidly; but Courtenay and I quieted our consciences by entering into a mutual compact to exercise such increased diligence in the future as should fully make up for lost time. But when, an afternoon or two later, we overtook our fair friends in the park as we were making our way back to the workshop after our mid-day meal, and they seemed again inclined to favour us with their company, our good resolves took flight and we once more neglected our work in the enjoyment of their society.

This, however, I saw would never do. It seemed pretty evident that, being so strictly secluded within the confines of the castle demesne as these two girls were, our appearance upon the scene had assumed almost the importance of an event in their lives, and had wrought so interesting a change in the somewhat monotonous daily routine of their existence that the unsophisticated creatures had each inwardly resolved to make the most of the novelty whilst the opportunity to do so remained. And in that case our work was likely to suffer both in quality and quantity. This, I felt, ought not to be allowed. At the same time the pleasure to be derived from their society was a thing not to be lightly given up; and so the end of it all was that we prevailed upon the two girls to walk with us in the park after dinner instead of visiting the workshop. This arrangement was rendered all the more easy by the arrival of a letter from the commandant announcing his detention at Cartagena, and the probable delay of a month in the date of his return.

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