In the bows, under an awning extemporised out of an old sail, were squatting the two Spaniards, playing at _monte_ with a very dirty pack of cards. Now and then would be heard the sonorous oaths of the Basque, as he savagely reviled his bad luck, or the triumphant chuckle of El Chico, whom fortune was favouring. These two had been gambling almost incessantly during the calm, for the money they were to receive from Carew on their arrival at Buenos Ayres. The Galician had already succeeded in winning El Toro's pay for many weeks in advance. Neither of the men could read or write, but they kept a tally of their debts of honour--over which there was much wrangling--by cutting notches on a beam in the forecastle. A few minutes before noon Carew came on deck, sextant in hand, and the mate rose to his feet lazily. Carew's face was now bronzed by the tropical sun, and was fuller than it had been two months back. The haggard expression, the restless anxiety of his eye, had gone. He looked like a man with the easiest of consciences. He glanced at the two card-players forward. "Have you taken the precaution I ordered?" he asked the mate. "I have, captain; here they are," and Baptiste produced two formidable knives from his pocket. Since the incident I have mentioned, Carew had instituted a rule, to the effect that the men should not play at cards or dice unless they had previously delivered their weapons to one of the two officers. El Chico overheard the mate's reply. "Ah, captain," he cried, "you'll have to hand both knives over to me at the end of this game. I shall have won everything El Toro possesses in the world if my luck holds as it is doing now." "_Caramba!_ it is too much; a plague on the cards!" cried the Basque furiously, hurling the pack across the deck. "I'll have no more of them. If I have no knife, I have these hands," and he opened them out with a gesture of rage in front of the Galician. "I could circle your little neck with these, and throttle you in half a minute, El Chico." El Chico said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders with a provoking coolness. "El Toro, come aft," cried Carew, who had acquired enough Spanish to give his orders in that tongue; "come aft, and set up that mizzen rigging; it's as slack as possible." The wild beast acknowledged its master and proceeded to obey his orders in a surly fashion, even as Caliban might have reluctantly carried out some behest of the superior intelligence that had enslaved him. "This calm seems as if it would never end," said Carew to the mate. "It looks black yonder. Another squall, I suppose. Just enough to entice us to hoist our sails, and then to die away again." "I don't see anything like the trade-wind sky about," said Baptiste, who had sailed the tropical seas before. Carew took his midday observation of the sun; then, lowering his sextant, called out, "Make it eight bells, Baptiste," and went below to work out his position.