eady, we would ring a bell, the cord of which he pointed out to
us, a servant would bring us some refreshment.

We lost no time in freshening ourselves up and making ourselves as
presentable as circumstances would permit, and then sat down to a plain
but substantial meal, which, after our meagre and coarse prison fare,
seemed a veritable banquet. At the conclusion of this meal we were
informed that the commandant awaited us below, upon which we followed
our informant down a sort of back staircase, and issuing from a little
side door found ourselves in the garden before mentioned. It was walled
in on all sides, but a door in the wall adjoining the house was pointed
out to us, and issuing through it we found ourselves on the noble
terrace which stretched along the whole front of the castle. Here we
discovered the commandant pacing up and down with a cigar in his mouth,
and joining him he proposed to conduct us to the scene of our future
labours.

With all his stateliness, which he never laid aside, Don Luis de Guzman
knew how to be very affable when he chose, and he chose to be so with
us. Commencing a long conversation by courteously expressing a hope
that our apartments were to our liking, and kindly informing us that, if
they were not, a hint to the major-domo would be sufficient to secure
the rectification of whatever might be amiss, he then went on to speak
of "the unnecessary haste" with which we had been removed from the ship,
and of the inconvenience which we must have experienced from the
scantiness of our wardrobe, an inconvenience which, he said, he would
"take the liberty" of having remedied as speedily as might be. This, of
course, was very kind of him, and we ungrudgingly credited him with the
most generous of motives; at the same time I have no doubt that the
stately don was as heartily ashamed of the two scarecrows who
accompanied him as we were of our own appearance.

Having thus cleared the ground, as it were, our benefactor proceeded to
question us closely as to the circumstances connected with and which led
up to the mutiny, at which he expressed the most unqualified
reprobation; and when we had told him all we knew about it he informed
us that the British government had made a formal demand for the
restitution of the frigate and the surrender of the mutineers, as well
as the captive officers, a demand which, he said, the Spanish government
had seen fit to refuse; and I thought, from his manner