The _Fashion_ was condemned for having sailed from Mobile under a false clearance, and sold by the United States marshal for two hundred dollars. Her cargo, which was brought back by the frigates _Saratoga_ and _Wabash_, showed that the filibusters had made ample preparations for the equipment of a force sufficient to have easily reconquered the country had they been able to secure a foothold. That their failure should be caused by the action of their fellow countrymen they had never dreamed. Walker, before his departure, had satisfied himself that he should suffer no harm if only he could get away in quiet. Least of all did he dream of being molested on foreign soil. Proof came readily, when it was too late to be of any service, that Paulding had transgressed his powers in breaking up the expedition. The cause of his enmity was not difficult to fathom. Paulding was an old shipmate and intimate friend of Walker's enemy, Commander Davis. Fate seems to rejoice in a certain kind of ironical cruelty, whereby she sends to a Napoleon the gad-fly, Hudson Lowe, and thwarts the ambition of a Walker by the pipe-clay petulance of a naval martinet. It is as though Cæsar had caught a cold, and died of it, in crossing the Rubicon. Paulding and other petty potentates chose to take offence at the disrespectful manner in which Walker, a mere uncommissioned adventurer, had dared speak of Commander Davis. They resented it as an insult to "the service," and when the subsequent correspondence with Commander Chatard was laid before the Commodore, his indignation knew no bounds. The man who would threaten to shoot a naval officer for penetrating his military lines without a pass could be only a pirate and outlaw. As such, Paulding had the filibuster arrested, although permitting him, with charming inconsistency, to go to New York on parole. But the irreparable mischief was done, and Walker found slight consolation in having his persecutor suspended from active service, or in the prosecution of endless civil suits for damages, a species of vengeance which carries its own punishment. CHAPTER XVII Walker's "History of the War "--Lands at Ruatan and takes Trujillo --Retreats before the English forces--Surrender--Trial and execution of the last of the Filibusters.