eported.

"Not in her?" incredulously repeated Bascomb--"Not in her? Then what a
plague do the Dons mean by coming off to us at all? Surely I made it
plain enough to them all that the surrender of our Captain was the very
first article of our demand? Then what--?"

"Nay, nay; let be," interposed Winter, speaking quite calmly, but his
lips white, and his eyes glowing sombrely like smouldering fires. "No
need to work thyself into a passion, Will Bascomb, until thou hast heard
what their lordships have to say. Maybe they have not seen the Captain
and know naught of him."

"Not seen him? Know naught of him? Why--why--!" spluttered Bascomb.
Then he suddenly calmed down. This was no time for disputatiousness or
the display of warm feeling between himself and the man who, if haply
anything had gone wrong with the Captain, might become the head of them
all. Besides, there was wisdom in that suggestion to wait and hear what
the Dons had to say before jumping to a conclusion. Thus the little
group of Englishmen on the high poop of the _Adventure_ lapsed into
sudden silence as the boat drew near; but it was a silence that was
ominous, menacing, a silence of set lips and burning eyes, pregnant with
dire possibilities for the city and all within it if aught of evil had
befallen their Captain therein. For not only was Marshall, rough almost
to uncouthness of manner though he was at times, beloved by all there,
but also there was the feeling stirring in every breast that it was
vitally important to each one of them that the Spaniard must be taught,
once and for all, to regard an Englishman's life as sacred, no matter
what the circumstances might be under which he might fall into their
hands, or however helpless and friendless he might at the moment seem.
So it was a very grim-visaged, uncompromising-looking group of
Englishmen at whom the newcomers stared upward when the boat arrived
within easy hailing-distance and lay upon her oars.

An elderly man, attired in the usual mariner's costume of the period,
rose in the stern-sheets of the boat and, doffing his cap, opened the
conversation by remarking in English:

"Good morning, gentlemen! I am Gaspar Pacheco, lately a master of
mariners, but now retired from the sea; and I am here to-day to act the
part of interpreter between yourselves and the illustrious Senors Don
Luis Maria Alfonso Calderon, Governor of the city of Cartagena; Don
Ricardo Picador Garcia, Alcalde of C