item of information Jim
did not feel exactly jubilant; but the fellow, he considered, might only
have been speaking thus to vent his ill-will; and in any case Jim was
not going to let him see that what he had said affected him in the
least. He therefore merely answered: "We shall see what we shall see;
fate is fate, and nobody can alter that."

The fellow made no reply in words, but, uttering a raucous laugh, bade
Jim precede him out of the cell, and mind that he played no tricks or he
would get a bullet through him. Then the seaman locked the door,
pocketed the key, and placing his rifle with its fixed bayonet at the
"charge," ordered the prisoner to walk on in front, which Jim did;
keeping his eyes very wide open, meanwhile, so as to make a note of the
position of the cell and its surroundings for possible use on some
future occasion.

They first passed along a passage flanked with other cells, similar to
Jim's, that in which he had been confined being the last of a row, and
then they came to an iron-studded door, which the prisoner was commanded
to open. It opened at his touch, and the Englishman and his guard
passed through it, finding themselves immediately upon the _Union's_
lower deck. As the Peruvian marine guided Jim through the ship, with
the point of his fixed bayonet, the young Englishman took the
opportunity to satisfy his curiosity regarding this famous craft--a
curiosity which was perfectly natural in view of the fact that he had
himself fought an action with her, and chased her while he was in the
_Angamos_. He smiled as his eyes fell upon one of the beams supporting
the main deck, for in it were embedded several pieces of shell which the
Peruvians had not seen fit to remove; and he knew that they were the
fragments of a missile, fired by his own cruiser, which had entered one
of the _Union's_ open gun-ports that day of the battle in the Second
Narrows.

But his examination of the interior of the corvette was necessarily only
a very cursory one, for he was hurried forward by a prod from the
sentry's bayonet whenever he showed a disposition to loiter. They
presently mounted a ladder leading from the lower to the main deck,
walked along the latter toward the stern, and presently Jim found
himself outside the door of a cabin in the extreme after-end of the
ship, which he shrewdly surmised belonged to the skipper.

The sentry then grounded his rifle, knocked upon the door, opened it
slightly, and