“Come, _muchachos_,” said the admiral; “it seems that the government is poor. It has no money to give us. We will earn what we need to live upon. Thus will we serve our country. Soon”—his heavy eyes almost lighted up—“it may gladly call upon us for help.” Thereafter _El Nacional_ turned out with the other coast craft and became a wage-earner. She worked with the lighters freighting bananas and oranges out to the fruit steamers that could not approach nearer than a mile from the shore. Surely a self-supporting navy deserves red letters in the budget of any nation. After earning enough at freighting to keep himself and his crew in provisions for a week Felipe would anchor the navy and hang about the little telegraph office, looking like one of the chorus of an insolvent comic opera troupe besieging the manager’s den. A hope for orders from the capital was always in his heart. That his services as admiral had never been called into requirement hurt his pride and patriotism. At every call he would inquire, gravely and expectantly, for despatches. The operator would pretend to make a search, and then reply: “Not yet, it seems, _Señor el Almirante—poco tiempo!_” Outside in the shade of the lime-trees the crew chewed sugar cane or slumbered, well content to serve a country that was contented with so little service. One day in the early summer the revolution predicted by the collector flamed out suddenly. It had long been smouldering. At the first note of alarm the admiral of the navy force and fleet made all sail for a larger port on the coast of a neighbouring republic, where he traded a hastily collected cargo of fruit for its value in cartridges for the five Martini rifles, the only guns that the navy could boast. Then to the telegraph office sped the admiral. Sprawling in his favourite corner, in his fast-decaying uniform, with his prodigious sabre distributed between his red legs, he waited for the long-delayed, but now soon expected, orders. “Not yet, _Señor el Almirante_,” the telegraph clerk would call to him—“_poco tiempo!_” At the answer the admiral would plump himself down with a great rattling of scabbard to await the infrequent tick of the little instrument on the table. “They will come,” would be his unshaken reply; “I am the admiral.” IX THE FLAG PARAMOUNT At the head of the insurgent party appeared that Hector and learned Theban of the southern republics, Don Sabas Placido. A traveller, a soldier, a poet, a scientist, a statesman and a connoisseur—the wonder was that he could content himself with the petty, remote life of his native country.