The lookouts clinging to the railing in the bow were peering anxiously ahead in the darkness, and the sailors in the pilot house were wrestling with the wheel; it was quite a task to keep that vessel headed straight, for she was going into the very teeth of the gale. And as for Clif, he was watchfulness personified. When he was not eyeing the compass carefully he was hurrying about the vessel, now down in the fire-rooms, making sure that those Spaniards were doing as they were ordered, and again looking the prisoners over to make sure that the sly rascals had not wriggled themselves free. "It would be a fine thing to do," he thought to himself, "if they managed to recapture the ship." There was something quite prophetic in that thought. It is hard to keep awake all night, but a man can do it if he has to even though he has been working like a Trojan all day. Clif kept moving to work off the sleepiness whenever he felt it coming on. "I'll have time enough to sleep by and by," he muttered. He was thinking, grimly enough, of how he would be stalled in the town of Key West with his prize, waiting for a chance to get out to the fleet again. The vessel did not attempt to make more than half speed during the trip, and that, against the storm, was very little. But there was no need to hurry thought every one. And so for some two hours the vessel crept on, wearily as it seemed and monotonously. The only thing to vary matters was when some extra high wave would fling itself over the bow in a shower of spray. But that was not a welcome incident, for it made it harder for the weary sailors to keep the course straight. The cadet paced up and down the deck; he had been doing that for perhaps the last half hour, stopping only to say a cheery word to the lookouts and once to prop up Ignacio, who was being rolled unceremoniously about the deck. The cunning Spaniard looked so bedraggled and miserable that Clif would have felt sorry for him if he had not known what a villain he was. "He'd stab me again if he got a chance," he mused. For Clif had saved that fellow's life once; but it had not made the least difference in his vindictive hatred. "I'm afraid," Clif muttered, "that Ignacio will have to suffer this time." The Spaniard must have heard him, for he muttered an oath under his breath. "It would be wiser if it was a prayer," said the cadet. "Ignacio, you are near the end of your rope, and you may as well prepare for your fate." The man fairly trembled all over with rage as he glared at his enemy; such rage as his was Clif was not used to, and he watched the man with a feeling of horror. "I don't like Spaniards!" was the abrupt exclamation, with which he turned away. And Ignacio gritted his teeth and simply glared at him, following back and forth his every move, as a cat might. "I may have a chance yet," he hissed, under his breath. "Carramba, if I only had him by the throat!"