"Sixty thousand pesetas is a large sum, monsieur; it amounts to more than £2,000 in your money—that was my price!"
"For what?"
"I will set you a riddle: on the Maria Braganza we had one hundred officers and men——"
T. B. saw light.
"You are a deserter from the Maria Braganza," he said—but the man shook his head smilingly.
"On the contrary I have my discharge from the navy, properly attested and signed by my good captain. You will find it at my lodgings, in a tin trunk under a picture of the blessed Saint Teresa of Avila, or, as some say, Sergovia. No, monsieur officer, I am discharged honourably. Listen."
His cigarette was nearly finished, and T. B. opened his case again, and the man, with a grateful inclination of his head, helped himself. Slowly, he began his story, a story which, before all others, helps the mind to grasp the magnitude of a combination which made the events he described possible.
"I was a sub-officer on the Maria Braganza," he began, and went on to narrate the history of the voyage of that remarkable battleship from the day it left Rio until it steamed into the roadstead off Cadiz.
"We stayed at Cadiz much longer than we expected, and the men were grumbling—because our next port was to have been Rio. But for some reason our Captain Lombrosa did not wish to sail. Then one day he came on board—he spent most of his time ashore—looking extremely happy. Previous to this he had lived and walked in gloom, as though some matter were preying on his mind. But this was all changed now. Whatever troubles he had were evaporated. He walked about the deck, smiling and cracking jokes, and we naturally concluded that he had received his orders to sail back to Brazil at once.
"That same day we were ordered to take on board stores which the Government had purchased. Whatever stores these were, they were extremely heavy. They were packed in little square boxes, strongly made and clamped with steel. Of these boxes we took two hundred and fifty, and the business of transporting them occupied the greater part of a whole day."