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“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.

“Not at all,” said Judson, and as he looked at the three or four shot-blisters on the bows of his boat a brilliant idea took him. “It is we who are at your mercy. See how His Excellency’s guns knocked us about.”

“Senior Captain,” said the Governor pityingly, “that is very sad. You are most injured, and your deck too, it is all shot over. We shall not be too severe on a beat man, shall we, Captain?”

“You couldn’t spare us a little paint, could you? I’d like to patch up a little after the – action,” said Judson meditatively, fingering his upper lip to hide a smile.

“Our store-room is at your disposition,” said the captain of the “Guadala”, and his eye brightened; for a few lead splashes on gray paint make a big show.

“Mr. Davies, go aboard and see what they have to spare – to spare, remember. Their spar-colour with a little working up should be just our freeboard tint.”

“Oh, yes. I’ll spare them,” said Mr. Davies savagely. “I don’t understand this how-d’you-do and damn-your-eyes business coming one atop of the other in a manner o’ speaking. By all rights, they’re our lawful prize.”

The Governor and the captain came to lunch in the absence of Mr. Davies. Bai-Jove-Judson had not much to offer, but what he had was given as by a beaten foeman to a generous conqueror. When they were a little warmed – the Governor genial and the captain almost effusive – he explained, quite casually, over the opening of a bottle that it would not be to his interest to report the affair seriously, and it was in the highest degree improbable that the Admiral would treat it in any grave fashion.

“When my decks are cut up” (there was one groove across four planks), “and my plates buckled” (there were five lead patches on three plates), “and I meet such a boat as the ‘Guadala’, and a mere accident saves me from being blown out of the water -“

“Yes. A mere accident, Captain. The shoal-buoy has been lost,” said the captain of the ‘Guadala’.

“Ah? I do not know this river. That was very sad. But as I was saying, when an accident saves me from being sunk, what can I do but go away – if that is possible? But I fear that I have no coal for the sea voyage. It is very sad.” Judson had compromised on what he knew of the French tongue as a working language.