“It is true, señorita, what you say,” Sydney came to the rescue, “but peace for us is very monotonous, always the same eternal grind. War is exciting; it stirs the blood and makes men of us.” “Yes, señor,” the girl answered in a low, hard voice, “and it arouses all the evil passions in us. We forget all our training, all our ideals, all our instincts for good, and give way to the instincts of the beasts. My people in war are not men, señor, they are demons.” While the girl was talking the steamer had drawn closer to the lorcha which Phil had sighted earlier in the afternoon. The night was not bright; a crescent moon cast a dim light on the hull scarcely a hundred yards on the weather bow. The breeze had freshened, and with wind free the lorcha’s sails bellied out, giving it a speed almost equal to that of the steamer. “Why doesn’t he give that sail a wider berth?” Phil exclaimed suddenly as the girl’s voice died away. “If she should yaw now, she’d be into us.” “Look out!” Sydney cried in alarm as the lorcha suddenly sheered to leeward and the great mass of tautening canvas careened toward the unsuspecting steamer. The midshipmen were on their feet in an instant, while O’Neil came running up from the deck below. The Spanish captain, calling loudly to all his saints to witness that it was not his fault, jammed the helm to starboard, throwing the steamer’s bow away from the rapidly approaching lorcha. The engine bell clanked riotously, as the excited Spanish captain rang for more speed. Then the Americans’ blood froze in their veins, for the chugging of the noisy engines had ceased in a wheezy wail, and the “Negros” lay helpless, almost motionless in the path of the strange sail to windward. The lads looked at each other in consternation. The suddenness of the emergency had rendered them powerless to act. “Was it only a stupid blunder? Or was it by design that the silent lorcha had shifted its helm and stood down upon the demoralized steamer?” were the questions that came into their minds. A guttural hail from the lorcha accompanied by a fusillade of rifle-shots put an end to all doubt. “Pirates!” O’Neil gasped as he dislodged an iron crowbar from a boat skid. “And there isn’t a gun among us.” A bright glare suddenly darted from the bridge of the steamer as some one turned on the current for the search-light, and the Americans saw in the bright beam a motley crew of natives lining the lorcha’s rail, their eager bodies crouched ready to spring upon the deck of their helpless victim. “Tagalos,” the girl cried out in sudden alarm as she instinctively put her small brother behind her, shielding him from the flying bullets. “Don’t do it, sir,” O’Neil commanded hoarsely as Phil started precipitously forward. “We can’t stand them off, we’re too few. Here we can make a stand if they attack us. We can’t save the ship.”