The absence of the Vice left his late companions in possession of additional elbow room, but on a rainy day there are blessings more to be desired than elbow room. Among these is a pipe of tobacco, and four walls between which to smoke it. The Cook's precious Brazilian tobacco was wet, the Commodore and the Purser had left their pouches in their boats, but each man had a pipe in his pocket, and it was known that the Vice had in his possession a bag of delicious weed. So dispatches were sent him during a slight lull in the storm, and the Commodore and Purser made a reconnoissance in the direction of the fort. The garrison being invisible, the storming party dashed over the bridge and beneath the temporary portcullis, putting to flight a large body of chickens who were carelessly resting upon their arms in the guard-room. These alarmed the commander of the fort, who at once emerged from headquarters, with an axe upon his shoulder, and himself in dishabille. The Commodore saluted the commandant, and asked, with due formality, the courtesy of shelter for himself and companions, and for permission to walk about the fort when the rain should cease. "Is it wantin' to be out av the wet ye are?" asked the commandant; "come straight into the kitchen an dhry yerselves." "There are two more of us, yet to come," explained the Commodore. "Ah, niver ye fear," quoth the old man; "isn't the kitchen in the casemate that held the biggest gun, in the good ould times, an' hasn't a whole company av the Rifles been in there to wanst many's the time." [Illustration: The Commandant.] The casemate proved of generous size, as was also the cooking-stove that stood in the midst of it. The commandant's wife and children made haste to place chairs, while one child was detailed to bring in the Vice and the Cook at the double-quick. Soon the quartette sat about the refilled stove, and though the month was July, no one thought to push back his chair. Gradually there stole over the party that delicious drowsiness which is peculiar to a man who has been acting as clothes-horse to a wet suit--a drowsiness "That resembles slumber only As the mist resembles rain"-- a drowsiness which demands not sleep, but smoke. In short, each member of the expedition was dying for a pipe, but he would have prolonged his sensation of dissolution to its logical end rather than have got out of his chair on the one hand, or, on the other, have ventured to smoke in an apartment which was apparently the host's parlor as well as his kitchen. But the Vice, the Statesman, the moulder of men, came at the critical instant to the rescue of his companions and to that of "A nearer one Still, and a dearer one"-- himself. "You must find it quite lonesome here at times," he remarked to the commandant of the fort. "Thrue for yez, an' I do," responded her Majesty's representative.