Here we waited nearly half-an-hour, at the conclusion of which a door at the upper end of the chamber opened, and a tall, rather good-looking man, dressed entirely in white, entered. At his appearance Carlos sprang to his feet and, saluting, handed over the note which Mateo had scrawled. The stranger, who was none other than “Don” Victor Fernandez, Captain Manuel Garcia’s second-in-command, took the note, read it, glanced at me curiously, and then nodded curtly to Carlos and his companions.
“Good!” he ejaculated. “The Captain will highly appreciate the thoughtfulness of your new chief, Mateo, in sending him this Englishman. In his name I desire to tender his warmest thanks to Mateo, and request you to convey them, with every expression of his highest consideration. Do you leave us to-night, or will you remain until the morning? If the latter—”
“Mille gracias, señor!” answered Carlos; “we should greatly like to stay here for the night, and rest, for this day has been an exceptionally trying and fatiguing one for us; but Mateo’s instructions that we should rejoin him at the earliest possible moment were imperative and must not be neglected. But if we may be permitted to stay long enough to share your people’s supper, we will gladly do so.”
“So be it,” answered Fernandez. “Find Pacheco, and tell him that you will sup in the great hall with the rest of the hands, and then request him to come to me.” Whereupon Carlos and his two fellow-cut-throats saluted and retired.
For a minute or two after the departure of the trio, Fernandez sat meditatively regarding me in silence, twisting and turning Mateo’s note in his fingers meanwhile. At length, with just the ghost of a smile flickering over his features, he said, tapping the note in his hand:
“The worthy Mateo tells me that you were the officer in command of the little schooner that gave the Tiburon such a severe dressing down a little while ago. Is that really the fact?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I am proud to say that it is.”
“Well,” he returned, “I can scarcely credit it. Why, you are only a boy!”
“So people are constantly reminding me,” I retorted. “But in the British Navy boys soon learn to do men’s work.”
“So it would appear,” assented my interlocutor, apparently in nowise offended at my brusque method of answering him. “And you are an Englishman, of course. What is your name?”