“Captain, I warn you that as soon as she floats again I will fight you.”
“Humbug! You'll have lunch with me, and then you'll take the Governor up the river.”
The captain was silent for some time. Then he said: “Let us drink. What must be, must be; and after all we have not forgotten the Peninsula. You will admit, Captain, that it is bad to be run upon a shoal like a mud-dredger?”
“Oh, we'll pull you off before you can say knife. Take care of His Excellency. I shall try to get a little sleep now.”
They slept on both ships till the morning, and then the work of towing off the “Guadala” began. With the help of her own engines, and the tugging and puffing of the flat-iron, she slid off the mud-bank sideways into the deep water, the flatiron immediately under her stern, and the big eye of the four-inch gun almost peering through the window of the captain's cabin.
Remorse in the shape of a violent headache had overtaken the Governor. He was uneasily conscious that he might, perhaps, have exceeded his powers; and the captain of the “Guadala”, in spite of all his patriotic sentiments, remembered distinctly that no war had been declared between the two countries. He did not need the Governor's repeated reminders that war, serious war, meant a Republic at home, possible supersession in his command, and much shooting of living men against dead walls.
“We have satisfied our honour,” said the Governor in confidence. “Our army is appeased, and the raporta that you take home will show that we were loyal and brave. That other captain? Bah! he is a boy. He will call this a—a-. Judson of my soul, how you say this is—all this affairs which have transpirated between us?”
Judson was watching the last hawser slipping through the fairlead. “Call it? Oh, I should call it rather a lark. Now your boat's all right, Captain. When will you come to lunch?”
“I told you,” said the Governor, “it would be a larque to him.”
“Mother of the Saints! then what is his seriousness?” said the captain. “We shall be happy to come when you please. Indeed, we have no other choice,” he added bitterly.