"Now, beloved commander of the Guardian-Mother, can you tell me what possible chance there is for an adventure in the excursion we have arranged?" asked Louis, rather more seriously. "If you should undertake to capture the Rock of Gibraltar, it will be well for you to know that it is garrisoned by about five thousand soldiers of all arms; and that number of full-grown men are too many for even the big four," continued the commander, not disposed to be serious. "The big four don't mind five thousand soldiers; if there were ten thousand of them, we might hesitate." "Perhaps you will prefer to pick up the entire Rock and drop it into the bay; but the water is not deep enough to cover up the highest points of it, and somebody might find out what you had been about." "Now, Captain, could you be reasonably serious for a moment, only long enough to guess the conundrum I put to you just now?" asked Louis. "I might try. What was the conundrum?" asked the commander, smoothing off his face. "If my mother knew I was going ashore, or off in a boat, she would immediately conclude that I was to be shot, pitched over a precipice, or sunk to the bottom of the bay with a fifty-six tied around my neck." "Formerly she would; but Dr. Hawkes has wonderfully improved her nervous system, so that she would not conclude that anything of the sort would happen to you. You have got into so many scrapes and always come out of them without the singeing of a hair of your head, that she has acquired some confidence in your happy destiny," replied the captain. "Then can you indicate nearly or remotely what possible adventure I can fall into in this excursion?" "I give up the conundrum; I cannot guess as to how it is to come about; but if I were a sporting man, I should be willing to wager that you will have an adventure of some kind; but I should wish to wager at the same time that you would come out of it unscathed, and with the head of the enemy under your arm," answered the captain, resuming his mirthful rallying. "I cannot see for the life of me where the adventure is to come in. John Scoble is hard at work in Sing Sing prison, and"-- "He may have been pardoned, or escaped from the stone walls that held him," interposed the commander, very cheerfully, as though he did not anticipate either of these events. "Mr. Fobbington, _alias_ Wilson Frinks, is mending roads with his ankles chained together in Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe; these two were the most virulent enemies I ever had, and I do not know where to look for any others," replied Louis, as he saw his mother with the rest of the party come out of the boudoir. Captain Ringgold told her all about the proposed excursion of the big four; but Mrs. Belgrave did not offer a single objection. She asked her son some questions about it, and then joined Mrs. Sharp in a walk on the deck. "But which of the big four is to be the engineer of the Salihé?" asked the commander.