pect to a crew or to the
expenses of this navy. Perhaps you are to provide a crew yourself,
Senor Admiral--I do not know--but it is a very high honour that has
descended upon you. I now hand you your commission. When you are
ready for the boat I will give orders that she shall be made over
into your charge. That is as far as my instructions go."

Felipe took the commission that the collector handed to him. He gazed
through the open window at the sea for a moment, with his customary
expression of deep but vain pondering. Then he turned without having
spoken a word, and walked swiftly away through the hot sand of the
street.

"_Pobrecito loco!_" sighed the collector; and the parrot on the pen
racks screeched "Loco!--loco!--loco!"

The next morning a strange procession filed through the streets to
the collector's office. At its head was the admiral of the navy.
Somewhere Felipe had raked together a pitiful semblance of a military
uniform--a pair of red trousers, a dingy blue short jacket heavily
ornamented with gold braid, and an old fatigue cap that must have
been cast away by one of the British soldiers in Belize and brought
away by Felipe on one of his coasting voyages. Buckled around his
waist was an ancient ship's cutlass contributed to his equipment by
Pedro Lafitte, the baker, who proudly asserted its inheritance from
his ancestor, the illustrious buccaneer. At the admiral's heels
tagged his newly-shipped crew--three grinning, glossy, black Caribs,
bare to the waist, the sand spurting in showers from the spring of
their naked feet.

Briefly and with dignity Felipe demanded his vessel of the collector.
And now a fresh honour awaited him. The collector's wife, who played
the guitar and read novels in the hammock all day, had more than a
little romance in her placid, yellow bosom. She had found in an old
book an engraving of a flag that purported to be the naval flag of
Anchuria. Perhaps it had so been designed by the founders of the
nation; but, as no navy had ever been established, oblivion had
claimed the flag. Laboriously with her own hands she had made a flag
after the pattern--a red cross upon a blue-and-white ground. She
presented it to Felipe with these words: "Brave sailor, this flag is
of your country. Be true, and defend it with your life. Go you with
God."

For the first time since his appointment the admiral showed a flicker
of emotion. He took the silken emblem, and passed his hand reverently
over