WHAT PORTUGAL HAS DONE IN THE WORLD.
Mr. Lowington and the two vice-principals had a hearty laugh over the misadventure of poor Bill Stout, and then discussed their plans for the future. The Prince had been in the river five days; and the Josephines and Tritonias were all ready to start for Badajos the next morning. It was Friday night; and if the party left the next morning they would be obliged to remain over Sunday at Badajos; or, if they travelled all the next night, they would arrive at Toledo on Sunday morning, and this was no place for them to be on that day. It was decided that they should remain on board of the Prince till Monday morning, and that the Princes should go on board the next morning to hear Professor’s Mapps’s lecture on Portugal.
“Have you heard any thing of Raimundo or Lingall?” asked the principal.
“Only what we got out of Stout,” replied Mr. Pelham. “But he was too tipsy to tell a very straight story.”
“I don’t see how he got tipsy so quick; for he must have reached the Prince within fifteen or twenty minutes after he left this hotel,” added Mr. Lowington. “However, he told me all he knew—at least, I suppose he did—about the others who ran away with him. It seems that Raimundo did not leave the Tritonia, and must have stowed himself away in the hold.”
“But we searched the hold very thoroughly,” said Mr. Pelham.
“Did you look under the dunnage?”
“No, sir: he could not have got under that.”
“Probably he did,—made a hole in the ballast. He must have had some one to help him,” suggested the principal.
“If any one assisted him it must have been Hugo; for, as he is a Spaniard, they were always very thick together.”