Hasting back to the slaves’ hall, I found that Raoul had ranged them all in readiness for departure. I had bidden Stubbs see to it that the slaves in the guard-room should don as much as they could of the soldiers’ garments and cover their bald pates with their morions, and bring also the weapons from his bundles, and then, myself going at the head, holding Captain Badillo by the sleeve, we marched out and made our way as swiftly as we might without sign of hurry to where the galley awaited us. There was a sentry at the gate of the munition-house some two-score paces distant, but the dusk in some sort enshrouded us, and certain it is we came to the galley without molestation or so much as a cry. But there a peril that I had not foreseen lay in wait for us. The cookmen, having bestowed their burdens aboard, stood carelessly on the quay to witness our embarkation. A dozen of the slaves had shipped themselves before these men were aware of aught amiss; but then one spied the villainous countenance of a notorious desperado beneath a soldier’s morion, and communicating his discovery to his fellows, they with one consent took to their heels and fled towards their quarters with hue and cry. Sundry of them were felled by the slaves whom they encountered, but the rest got themselves clear away, and it was plain that ere long the alarm would be sounded in every part of the town. I cast Captain Badillo into the galley, and urged the rest of the men to quicken their speed, and they came helter-skelter, falling one over another in their haste. Now it seemed that all were aboard, but I had not observed Stubbs among them, and began to fear lest he had been intercepted. But I then perceived him, and three of the galley-slaves, staggering towards me with a heavy burden which as they drew near I discerned to be none other than the mountainous bulk of Don Ygnacio de Acosta. I cried to them to hasten their steps, the which they did, and arriving at the quayside they let their load fall with no more tenderness than if it had been a bale of merchandise, and the Captain-General fell with a monstrous thwack upon the galley’s deck. At Raoul’s bidding the men had already gotten out the sweeps. But at this the eleventh hour I observed a pile of sails lying over against the sea-wall, and I commanded Stubbs and those with him to bring them to the galley. The men who were aboard, in their haste to depart, had slipped the moorings, and could hardly be restrained from pushing off without us. I heard Raoul upbraid them with great vehemency, and ask them how they supposed they could escape with oars alone, whereupon they left their striving and gave us time to tumble the sails in among them. Then the rest of us leapt aboard, I last of all, and the slaves, thrusting their oars with desperate violence against the quay-wall, drove the rocking vessel out into the basin.