oking
object in gold-laced uniform, not to grasp the skipper's extended hand,
but to fall upon his neck in silence and with tears in his eyes, while
directly afterwards the two lads had to submit to a similar embrace.

"Oh, I say," whispered Fitz, as soon as the President had gone below
with the skipper; "isn't it horrid!"

"Yes," said Poole; "I often grumble at what I am, only a sort of
apprentice aboard a schooner, though I am better off through the dad
being one of the owners than most chaps would be; but one is English,
after all."

"Yes," said Fitz, with a sigh of content; "there is no getting over
that."

Further conversation was ended by the approach of Burgess, the mate, who
at a word from the captain had followed him and the President below, and
who now came up to them with a peculiar grim smile about his lips, and
the upper part of his face in the clouds, as Poole afterwards expressed
it, probably meaning that the mate's brow was wrinkled up into one of
his fiercest frowns.

"Here," he growled, "you two young fellows have got to go below."

"Who said so?" cried Fitz. "The skipper?"

"No, the President."

"But what for?" cried the middy.

"Oh, I dunno," replied the mate grimly, and with the smile expanding as
he recalled something of which he had been a witness. "I thinks he
wants to kiss you both again."

"Then I'll be hanged if I go," cried Fitz; "and that's flat!"

"Haw haw!" came from the mate's lips, evidently meant for a laugh, which
made the middy turn upon him fiercely; but there was no vestige of even
a smile now as he said gruffly, "Yes, you must both come at once. The
Don's waiting to speak, and he said that he wouldn't begin till you were
there to hear it too."

"Come on, Burnett," said Poole seriously, and then with his eyes
twinkling he added, "You can have a good wash afterwards if he does."

"Oh," cried Fitz, with his face scarlet, "I do hate these people's
ways;" and then, in spite of his previous remark about suspension, he
followed the skipper's son down into the cabin, with Burgess close
behind, to find the President facing the door ready to rise with a
dignified smile and point to the locker for the boys to take their
seats.

This done, he resumed his own, and proceeded to relate to the skipper as
much as he could recall of what had been taking place, the main thing
being that Villarayo's large force had completely scattered on its way
back through the mountains _en ro