"No, no, no! Don Ramon--Don Ramon!"
Something similar was going on upon the other side of the schooner,
where, grinning with delight, the Camel was seizing the poultry handed
in, and setting them at liberty upon the deck, while now an explanation
followed.
The three boat-loads of provisions were gifts from Don Ramon and his
people to those who had helped them in their time of need, while the
Don's messengers seemed wild with delight, eagerly pointing out the good
qualities of all they had brought, and chattering away as hard as ever
they could, or laughing with delight when some active chicken escaped
from the hands that held it or took flight when pitched aboard and made
its way back to the shore. It was not only the men in the
provision-barges that kept up an excited chorus, for they were joined by
those in the boats that crowded round, the delivery being accompanied by
cheers and the waving of hats and veils, the women's voices rising
shrilly in what seemed to be quite a paean of welcome and praise.
"What time would you like dinner, laddies?" came from behind just then,
in a familiar voice, and the boys turned sharply round to face the
Camel, who seemed to be showing nearly all his teeth after the fashion
of one of his namesakes in a good temper. "Ma word, isn't it grand!
Joost look! Roast and boiled cheecan and curry; and look at the
garden-stuff. I suppose it's all good to eat, but they're throwing in
things I never washed nor boiled before. It's grand, laddies--it's
grand! Why, ma word! Hark at 'em! Here's another big boat coming, and
the skipper will have to give a great dinner, or we shall never get it
all eaten."
"No," cried Poole, "it's a big boat with armed men, and--I say, Fitz,
this doesn't mean treachery? No, all right; that's Don Ramon coming on
board."
The tremendous burst of cheering from every boat endorsed the lad's
words, every one standing up shouting and cheering as the President's
craft came nearer, threading its way through the crowd of boats, whose
occupants seemed to consider that there was not the slightest risk of a
capsize into a bay that swarmed with sharks. But thanks to the
management of Don Ramon's crew, his barge reached the side of the
schooner without causing mishap, and he sprang aboard, a gay-looking
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 route_ to San Cristobal, while Velova and
the country round was entirely declaring for the victor, whose position
was but for one thing quite safe.
"Then," said the skipper, as the President ceased, "you feel that if you
marched for San Cristobal you would gain an easy victory there?"
"I know my people so well, sir," replied the President proudly, "that I
can say there will be no victory and no fight. Villarayo would not get
fifty men to stand by him, and he would either make for the mountains or
come to meet me, and throw himself upon my mercy. And all this is
through you. How great--how great the English people are!"
Poole jumped and clapped his right hand upon his left arm, while Fitz
turned scarlet as he looked an apology, for as the middy heard the
President's last words and saw him rise, a thrill of horror had run
through him, and he had thrown out one hand, to give his companion a
most painful pinch.
But the President resumed his seat, and feeling that there was for the
moment nothing to mind, the boy grew calm.
"Ah," said the skipper gravely. "Then but for one thing, Don Ramon, you
feel now that you can hold your own."
"Yes," was the reply bitterly. "But I shall not feel secure while that
gunboat commands these seas. It seems absurd, ridiculous, that that
small armour-plated vessel with its one great gun should have such
power; but yet after all it is not absurd. It is to this little State
what your grand navy is to your empire and the world. While that
gunboat commands our bays I cannot feel safe."
"But you don't know yet," said the skipper quietly. "How will it be
when her captain hears of Villarayo's defeat? He may declare for you."
"No," said the President. "That is what all my friends say. He is
Villarayo's cousin, and has always been my greatest enemy. He knows too
that my first act would be to deprive him of his command."
"Then why do so?" said the skipper. "He need be your enemy no longer.
Make him your friend."
"Impossible! I know him of old as a man I could not trust. The moment
he hears of the defeat he will be sending messages to Villarayo bidding
him fortify San Cristobal and gather his people there, while at any hour
we may expect to see him steaming into this bay. That is the main
reason of my coming to tell you now to be on your guard, and that I have
been having the guns you brought mounted in a new earthwork on the point
yonder, close to the sea."
"Well done!" cried the captain enthusiastically. "That was brave and
thoughtful of you, Don Ramon," and he held out his hand. "Why, you are
quite an engineer. Then you did not mean to forsake your friend?"
"Forsake him!" said the Don reproachfully, and he frowned. But it was
for a moment only. "Ah," he continued, "if you had only brought me over
such a gunboat as that which holds me down, commanded by such a man as
you, how changed my position would be!"
"Yes," said the skipper quietly. "But I did not; and I had hard work to
bring you what I did, eh, Mr Burnett? The British Government did not
much approve of what it called my filibustering expedition, Don."
"The British Government does not know Villarayo, sir, and it does not
know me."
"That's the evil of it, sir," replied the captain. "Unfortunately the
British Government recognises Villarayo as the President of the State,
and you only as the head of a revolution; but once you are the accepted
head of the people, the leader of what is good and right, Master
Villarayo's star will set; and that is bound to come."
"Yes," said Don Ramon proudly; "that is bound to come in the future, if
I live. For all that is good and right in this little State is on my
side. But there is the gunboat, captain."
"Yes," was the reply; "there is the gunboat, and as to my schooner, if I
ventured everything on your side at sea, with her steaming power she
would have me completely at her mercy, and with one shot send me to the
bottom like a stone."
"Yes, I know," said the Don, "as far as strength goes you would be like
an infant fighting against a giant. But you English are clever. It was
due to the bright thought of this young officer here that I was able to
turn the tables upon Villarayo."
The blood flushed to Fitz's forehead again--for he was, as Poole
afterwards told him, a beggar to blush--and he gave a sudden start which
made Poole move a little farther off to avoid a pinch.
"What say you, Don Burnett?"
If possible Fitz's face grew a deeper scarlet.
"Have you another such lightning stroke of genius to propose?"
"No, sir," said the boy sharply; "and if I had I must recollect that I
am a neutral, a prisoner here, and it is my duty to hold my tongue."
"Ah, yes," said the Don, frowning a little; "I had forgotten. You are
in the Government's service, and my good friend Captain Reed has told me
how you happen to be here. But if the British Government knew exactly
how things were, they would honour you for the way in which you have
helped me on towards success."
"Yes, sir, no doubt," said the lad frankly; "but the British Government
doesn't know what you say, and it doesn't know me; but Captain Glossop
does. He's my government, sir, and it will be bad enough when I meet
him, as it is. What will he say when he knows I've been fighting for
the people in the schooner I came to take?"
"Hah!" said the President thoughtfully, and he was silent for a few
moments. Then rising he turned to the skipper. "I must go back,
Captain Reed," he said, "for there is much to do. But I have warned you
of the peril in which you stand. You will help me, I know, if you can;
but you must not have your brave little schooner sunk, and I know you
will do what is best. Fate may favour us still more, and I shall go on
in that hope."
Then without another word he strode out of the cabin, and went down into
his barge amidst a storm of cheers and wavings of scarves and flags,
while those on deck watched him threading his way towards the little
fort.
"He's the best Spaniard I ever met, Burgess," said the skipper.
"Yes," said the mate. "He isn't a bad sort for his kind. If it was not
for the poor beggars on board, who naturally enough all want to live, I
should like to go some night and put a keg of powder aboard that
gunboat, and send her to the bottom."
"Ah, but then you'd be doing wrong," said the skipper.
"Well, I said so, didn't I? I shouldn't like to have it on my
conscience that I'd killed a couple of score fellow-creatures like
that."
"Of course not; but that isn't what I mean. That gunboat's too valuable
to sink, and, as you heard the Don say, the man who holds command of
that vessel has the two cities at his mercy."
"Yes, I heard," said Burgess; "and t'other side's got it."
"That's right," said the skipper; "and if we could make the change--"
"Yes," said Burgess; "but it seems to me we can't."
"It seems to me we can't. It seems to me we can't," said Poole,
repeating the mate's words, as the two lads stood alone watching the
cheering people in the boats.
"Well," cried Fitz pettishly, "what's the good of keeping on saying
that?"
"None at all. But don't you wish we could?"
"No, I don't, and I'd thank you not to talk to me like that. It's like
playing at trying to tempt a fellow situated as I am. Bother the
gunboat and both the Dons! I wish I were back in the old _Tonans_
again."
"I don't believe you," said Poole, laughing. "You're having ten times
as much fun and excitement out here. I say," he added, with a sniff, "I
can smell something good."
And strangely enough the next minute the Camel came smiling up to them.
"I say, laddies," he said, "joost come for'ard as far as the galley. I
don't ask ye to come in, for, ma wud, she is hot! But just come and
take a sniff as ye gang by. There's a dinner cooking as would have
satisfied the Don. I thot he meant to stay, but, puir chiel, I suppose
he dinna ken what's good."