"_Santa Virgen!_" exclaimed the lady, and fell fainting into her husband's arms. There was a moment's deep silence. All present seemed touched by the misfortunes of this youthful pair. The young officer sprang to the assistance of the husband, and relieving him of the child, enabled him to give his attention to his wife, whom he laid gently down upon the deck. "I am grieved at the necessity," said the officer, "but you must return with me." The American captain, who had been contemplating this scene apparently quite unmoved, now ejected from his mouth a huge quid of tobacco, replaced it by another, and then stepping up to the officer, touched him on the arm, and offered him the pass he had received from his passengers. The Spaniard waved him back almost with disgust. There was, in fact, something very unpleasant in the apathy and indifference with which the Yankee contemplated the scene of despair and misery before him. Such cold-bloodedness appeared premature and unnatural in a man who could not yet have seen more than five-and-twenty summers. A close observer, however, would have remarked that the muscles of his face were beginning to be agitated by a slight convulsive twitching, when, at that moment, his mate stepped up to him and whispered something. Approaching the Spaniard for the second time, Ready invited him to partake of a slight refreshment in his cabin, a courtesy which it is usual for the captains of merchant vessels to pay to the visiting officer. The Spaniard accepted, and they went below. The steward was busy covering the cabin table with plates of Boston crackers, olives, and almonds, and he then uncorked a bottle of fine old Madeira that looked like liquid gold as it gurgled into the glasses. Captain Ready seemed quite a different person in the cabin and on deck. Throwing aside his dry say-little manner, he was good-humour and civility personified, as he lavished on his guest all those obliging attentions which no one better knows the use of than a Yankee when he wishes to administer a dose of what he would call "soft sawder." Ready soon persuaded the officer of his entire guiltlessness in the unpleasant affair that had just occurred, and the Spaniard told him by no means to make himself uneasy, that the pass had been given for another person, and that the prisoner was a man of great importance, whom he considered himself excessively lucky to have been able to recapture. Most Spaniards like a glass of Madeira, particularly when olives serve as the whet. The American's wine was first-rate, and the other seemed to find himself particularly comfortable in the cabin. He did not forget, however, to desire that the prisoner's baggage might be placed in the boat, and, with a courteous apology for leaving him a moment, Captain Ready hastened to give the necessary orders.