y friend. Ho! Babette! Babette! Some anisette for Don
Ignacio. _Presto!_ my good Baba. There--that will do!" he said, merrily,
as the liqueur and glasses were placed on the table. "And don't omit the
turtle-soup for dinner, and tell Lascar Joe to make it. Ah! I
forget--the best cook I had--the devil's making soup of him now.
However, do the best you can, my Baba, and let us have dinner about
sunset."

Then turning to his visitor, with a graceful bow and a laugh, he added,
"And we'll have the doctor to join us, and tell how he cut off our poor
friend Gibbs's leg with a hand-saw. _Dios! amigo!_ Capital joke, 'pon my
honor!"

Captain Brand's honor! Lord have mercy upon us! And he had very few
jokes, and never told one himself.

"Hum!" replied the Tuerto, in the pause of the conversation. "There's
better jokes than that to hear. _Mira!_ look!"

With this brief rejoinder he threw a bundle of newspapers on the table,
and, pulling out a packet of letters from a breast pocket, pitched it
toward his host. Then helping himself to a thimbleful of anisette, he
took off his narrow-brimmed chip hat for the first time, polished up his
eye a bit with the knuckle of his fore finger, and looked at his
companion fixedly.

"Letters, I see, from our old friend Moreno, at Havana," said Captain
Brand, as he sat down on the settee, and with a pretty tortoise-shell
knife cut round the seals. "Ah! what says he? 'Happy to inform you,' is
he? 'Packages of French silks seized by custom-house on account of
informal invoice and clearance.' Why didn't the fool forge others, then?
Well, what next? 'Schooner "Reel," from Barbadoes, with cargo of rum and
jerked beef, wrecked going into Principe, and crew thrown into prison on
suspicion of being engaged in--' Oh! ah! served them right, when I
ordered them to St. Jago--delighted they must be! 'Bills for advances
and stores now due, please remit, per hands of Don Ignacio Sanchez--'"

Here Captain Brand caught a ray from the one eye of his companion, which
he returned with interest; and then laying the letters down on the table
with the softest motion in life, he exclaimed, with a sigh,

"Not the best news in the world, as you say, _compadre_; all those rich
goods, and those bags of coffee, and pipes of rum gone to the devil. But
these are little accidents in our profession."

"_Como?_" said Senor Ignacio, "_our_ profession?" shaking his fore
finger before his paper cigar in a deprecating manner. "S