Otto rubbed his eyes. What had come over the fellow? Did he want revenge for the fright he had had? Was he going to try and cut out a prize right in the thick of the traffic? It would be like Jonsen, that: to put his head in the lion’s mouth after trembling at its roar: and Otto’s heart warmed towards him. But he asked no questions. Meanwhile Jonsen went to his cabin, opened a secret receptacle in his bunk, and took out a job-lot of ships’ papers which he had bought from a Havana dealer in such things. _The ‘John Dodson,’ of Liverpool, bound for the Seychelles with a cargo of cast-iron pots_--what use was that in these waters? The man had sold him a pup!--Ah, this was better: ‘_Lizzie Green,’ of Bristol, bound from Matanzas to Philadelphia in ballast_ ... a funny trip to make in ballast, true: but that was no one’s affair but his imaginary owner’s. Jonsen made sure all was in order--filled in the blank dates, and so on--then returned the bundle to its hiding-place for another occasion. Coming on deck, he gave a number of orders. First, stages were rigged over the bows and stern, and José and a paint-pot went over the rail to add _Lizzie Green_ to the many names which from time to time had decorated the schooner’s escutcheon. Not content with that, he had it painted on every other appropriate place--the boats, the buckets--it was as well to be thorough. Meanwhile, many of the sails were taken down and new ones bent--or rather, old ones, distinctive sails that a man would swear he couldn’t have forgotten if he had ever seen them before. Otto sewed a large patch to the mainsail, where there was no hole. In his zeal Jonsen even considered lowering the yards and rigging her as a pure fore-and-after: but luckily for his sweating crew, abandoned the idea. The master-stroke of his disguise was permanent--that he carried no guns. Guns can be hidden or thrown overboard, it is true: but the grooves they make in the deck cannot, as many a protesting-innocent sea-robber has found to his cost. Jonsen not only had no guns to hide, he had no grooves: any fool could see he had no guns, and never had had any. And who ever heard of a pirate without guns? It was laughable: yet he had proved again and again that one could make a capture just as easily without them: and further, that the captured merchantman, in making his report, could generally be counted on to imagine a greater or less display of artillery. Whether it was to save their faces, or pure conservatism--presumption that there must have been guns--nearly every vessel Jonsen had had dealings with had reported masked artillery, manned by ‘fifty or seventy ruffians of the worst Spanish type.’