d; and we trust that the plan will consequently commend
itself to you. The only feature of the plan which may perhaps be
distasteful to any of you is that I shall feel myself compelled to keep
Don Juan Alvarez, your worthy alcalde, as well as yourselves, a prisoner
until the transfer has been effected; and I do this solely because he
happens to be the only person among you who wields any authority, and it
may possibly be necessary for him to exercise that authority from time
to time, in order to restrain the crews of the various ships from
causing trouble. Now, senores, what think you of my plan?"

For a few moments dead silence reigned in the cabin, the fact being that
the Dons were literally smitten speechless by the paralysing enormity of
the proposed insult and injury to the dignity of that Government which,
in their eyes, was only a shade less sacred than the Church, and their
first emotion was one of overwhelming indignation against those whose
colossal insolence and audacity rendered them capable of such an
overwhelmingly humiliating proposal. But the offence to their national
pride was quickly swamped by considerations of their own personal
safety, and as one man they soon came to the conclusion that anything--
yes, _anything_, even the humiliation of their king, was better than the
sacrifice of their own lives and the destruction of their own property
which would be involved in a retaliatory bombardment and sack of the
town. If the Government chose to leave San Juan de Ulua in so
defenceless a condition as to render such an outrage possible, then let
Government suffer the humiliation and the loss! Such were, in
substance, the dominant thoughts in the minds of the alcalde and his
fellow prisoners; and at length, perceiving that none of the others were
willing to speak, one, Don Martin de Sylva, the oldest as well as the
most prominent and important of the hostages, rose to his feet and said,
slowly and impressively:

"Senor Capitan, you have asked for our opinion of your most astounding
proposal; and I will give you mine, which I put forward as my own
exclusively, and which I do not pretend to advance as in the slightest
degree representative of those of my companions. In the first place, I
must be permitted to remind you that, although one of the avowed
purposes of your visit to our city is to avenge and exact compensation
for an attack upon your countrymen in our harbour, last year, which we
all deplore