“No,” replied the skipper, as the middy’s ears literally tingled at all he heard. “How could I land guns up here? And what could you do with them in these pathless tracts? Where are your horses and mules, even if there were roads?”
“True, true, true!” groaned the Don. “Fortune is against me now. But,” he added sharply, “the rifles—cartridges?”
“Ah, as many of them as you like,” cried the skipper, and Fitz Burnett’s sense of duty began to awaken once again as he seemed in some undefined way to be getting hopelessly mixed up with people against whom it was his duty to war.
“Excellent; and you have them in the hacienda?”
“No, no; aboard my vessel.”
“But where is this vessel? You could not get her up the river?”
“No; she is lying off the mouth. I came up here in a boat to meet you and get your instructions, after, as you know, being checked at San Cristobal and Velova, where your emissaries brought your despatches.”
“Brave, true fellows! But the gunboat! Were you seen?”
“Seen? Yes, and nearly taken. I only escaped by the skin of my teeth.”
“You were too clever,” cried the Don enthusiastically. “But you should have sunk that gunboat. It would have meant life and success to me. Why did not you send her to the bottom?”