"Very well. See that mob out there doesn't push in any nearer."
The Major saluted and departed.
"The whole countryside seems to have pulled itself up by its boots and jumped into town; but as for that much-bragged of English fleet, there is not a sign. I, for one, don't believe it's coming. Bah!" blustered Barcelo.
"Comandante, the foreign consuls are at the gate," announced an orderly.
"Show them here."
The Comandante received them all with words and manner ceremoniously polite.
Glasses searched sky and water line, but in vain. Colonel Barcelo went from bastion to bastion calling to his side the gunners of each piece of artillery.
Chance sentences which had fallen here and there now thickened into connected conversation, as little groups were formed.
"Your words stirred up my brother-in-law this morning," Señora Valentino said in quick aside to Captain Farquharson, who had accompanied the consuls to the castle.
"It was the eleventh hour. He asked me a blunt question and I could do nothing but give him a plain answer. He cannot harm us."