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“Skittles!” said Bai-Jove-Judson. “I can’t shell that old hencoop.”

“Then come to dinner. Madeira, she are still to us, and I have of the best she manufac.”

He skipped over the side beaming, and Bai-Jove-Judson went into the cabin to laugh his laugh out. When he had recovered a little he sent Mr. Davies to the head of the Pioneers, the dusty man with the gatlings, and the troops who had abandoned the pursuit of arms watched the disgraceful spectacle of two men reeling with laughter on the quarter-deck of a gunboat.

“I’ll put my men to build him a custom-house,” said the head of the Pioneers, gasping. “We’ll make him one decent road at least. That Governor ought to be knighted. I’m glad now that we didn’t fight ’em in the open, or we’d have killed some of them. So he’s won great battles, has he? Give him the compliments of the victims, and tell him I’m coming to dinner. You haven’t such a thing as a dress-suit, have you? I haven’t seen one for six months.”

That evening there was a dinner in the village – a general and enthusiastic dinner, whose head was in the Governor’s house, and whose tail threshed at large throughout all the streets. The Madeira was everything that the Governor had said, and more, and it was tested against two or three bottles of Bai-Jove-Judson’s best Vanderhum, which is Cape brandy ten years in the bottle, flavoured with orange-peel and spices. Before the coffee was removed (by the lady who had made the flag of truce) the Governor had sold the whole of his governorship and its appurtenances, once to Bai-Jove-Judson for services rendered by Judson’s grandfather in the Peninsular War, and once to the head of the Pioneers, in consideration of that gentleman’s good friendship. After the negotiation he retreated for a while into an inner apartment, and there evolved a true and complete account of the defeat of the British arms, which he read with his cocked hat over one eye to Judson and his companion. It was Judson who suggested the sinking of the flat-iron with all hands, and the head of the Pioneers who supplied the list of killed and wounded (not more than two hundred) in his command.

“Gentlemen,” said the Governor from under his cocked hat, “the peace of Europe are saved by this raporta. You shall all be Knights of the Golden Hide. She shall go by the ‘Guadala’.”

“Great Heavens!” said Bai-Jove Judson, flushed but composed, “that reminds me I’ve left that boat stuck on her broadside down the river. I must go down and soothe the commandante. He’ll be blue with rage. Governor, let us go a sail on the river to cool our heads. A picnic, you understand.”

“Ya – as, everything I understand. Ho! A picnica! You are all my prisoner, but I am good gaoler. We shall picnic on the river, and we shall take all the girls. Come on, my prisoners.”

“I do hope,” said the head of the Pioneers, staring from the verandah into the roaring village, “that my chaps won’t set the town alight by accident. Hullo! Hullo! A guard of honour for His Excellency the most illustrious Governor!”

Some thirty men answered the call, made a swaying line upon a more swaying course, and bore the Governor most swayingly of all high in the arms as they staggered down to the river. And the song that they sang bade them, “Swing, swing together their body between their knees”; and they obeyed the words of the song faithfully, except that they were anything but “steady from stroke to bow.” His Excellency the Governor slept on his uneasy litter, and did not wake when the chorus dropped him on the deck of the flat-iron.

“Good-night and good-bye,” said the head of the Pioneers to Judson; “I’d give you my card if I had it, but I’m so damned drunk I hardly know my own club. Oh, yes! It’s the Travellers. If ever we meet in Town, remember me. I must stay here and look after my fellows. We’re all right in the open, now. I s’pose you’ll return the Governor some time. This is a political crisis. Good-night.”