ugging at the oars, your negroes here might help along
matters some. Did you sail from port without boats, Don Benito?"

"They were stove in the gales, Senor."

"That was bad. Many men, too, you lost then. Boats and men. Those must
have been hard gales, Don Benito."

"Past all speech," cringed the Spaniard.

"Tell me, Don Benito," continued his companion with increased interest,
"tell me, were these gales immediately off the pitch of Cape Horn?"

"Cape Horn?--who spoke of Cape Horn?"

"Yourself did, when giving me an account of your voyage," answered
Captain Delano, with almost equal astonishment at this eating of his own
words, even as he ever seemed eating his own heart, on the part of the
Spaniard. "You yourself, Don Benito, spoke of Cape Horn," he
emphatically repeated.

The Spaniard turned, in a sort of stooping posture, pausing an instant,
as one about to make a plunging exchange of elements, as from air to
water.

At this moment a messenger-boy, a white, hurried by, in the regular
performance of his function carrying the last expired half hour forward
to the forecastle, from the cabin time-piece, to have it struck at the
ship's large bell.

"Master," said the servant, discontinuing his work on the coat sleeve,
and addressing the rapt Spaniard with a sort of timid apprehensiveness,
as one charged with a duty, the discharge of which, it was foreseen,
would prove irksome to the very person who had imposed it, and for whose
benefit it was intended, "master told me never mind where he was, or how
engaged, always to remind him to a minute, when shaving-time comes.
Miguel has gone to strike the half-hour afternoon. It is _now_, master.
Will master go into the cuddy?"

"Ah--yes," answered the Spaniard, starting, as from dreams into
realities; then turning upon Captain Delano, he said that ere long he
would resume the conversation.

"Then if master means to talk more to Don Amasa," said the servant, "why
not let Don Amasa sit by master in the cuddy, and master can talk, and
Don Amasa can listen, while Babo here lathers and strops."

"Yes," said Captain Delano, not unpleased with this sociable plan, "yes,
Don Benito, unless you had rather not, I will go with you."

"Be it so, Senor."

As the three passed aft, the American could not but think it another
strange instance of his host's capriciousness, this being shaved with
such uncommon punctuality in the middle of the day. But he deemed it
more than likely