“Captain,” returned the other, “you speak my mind; and things are getting in such a state here the sooner we draw our necks out of the noose the better.” “Good,” replied Carlo, “but how is that to be done, look you? The marquis will hang us up for spies if we go over to them, and the count they say has gone off in the last boat on this coast.” “But what if most of these Frenchmen went out with us?” “That alters the case,” cried the captain with his old grin. And somewhere about midnight the commandant was roused by an uproar round the officers’ quarters, which shewed what willing soil the ringleaders had found to sow sedition in. “Kill your captains! I’ll begin with mine,” the serjeant was roaring with a volley of oaths, and menacing Captain Curzon with his halbert. The fellow had found drink somewhere, and was raging like a worried bull, his prominent bloodshot eyes sustaining the resemblance. Curzon parried the thrust and would have cut him down, when the voice of the commandant overtopped the clamor. “What!” he exclaimed, “do you plot to follow our Portuguese allies! Go, every man of you who chooses; we want none but brave men here, and will bear with no others.” “That may do for you to prate about, general mine,” answered Señor de Ladron scoffingly, the seditious talents of that young gentleman causing him to be chosen captain of the insurgents, “but it wont deceive men with their eyes open, hark ye! We all know you’re only waiting a chance to escape with your brave officers, and leave us to pull an oar apiece in the Spanish galleys. Ha, ha! M. de Chaste! Begone while you’re allowed, for you see you’re outwitted.” “Insolent dog, to your quarters!” the knight cried, advancing upon the speaker and striking him with his sheathed sword. But Hilo, instead of falling back, foaming with rage, seized a halbert with both hands, and was as promptly fastened on by a dozen embracing arms. “No, by St. Dennis! the general shan’t be harmed!” as many more voices exclaimed. “Only we’ll be ahead of him and go first.” “Friends,” answered De Chaste, with some indignation in his voice, “you hurt me more by your suspicions than if you ran a sword through my body; and I take Heaven to witness, I will be the last man to quit this island, and will die rather than abandon any of you to the mercy of the marquis, whose countrymen gave such instance of their treatment of the French last year in the Floridas. Let fifty or a hundred of you surround my house yonder, and insure my stay: it will be time enough to dishonor yourselves and nation when I set the example.” Which the mutineers did for the present, despite the taunts of their leader-elect, who, struggling furiously with his captors, had all the while been calling to the others to fall upon the officers, or loose him and he would give them example. The commandant was a favorite with the troops.