I vaulted out after my usual fashion. But instead of alighting fairly and squarely on the floor, my bare feet struck something soft, a good distance short of it, and I came down on my hands and knees--to form part of the queerest tableau upon which a cabin-lamp ever shone. There was I, lightly clothed in pyjamas, glaring into the eyes of a dingy-faced man, who was likewise on his hands and knees on the floor, but with more than half the breath knocked out of his body by my descent upon him. I do not know which was the more astonished. "Hallo! how do you come here?" I cried, after we had stared at one another for some seconds. He raised his hand. "Hush!" he whispered: and obeying his gesture I crouched where I was, while he listened. Then we rose to our feet as by one motion. I had not time to feel afraid, though it was far from a pretty countenance that was close to mine. Terror was written too plainly upon it. "You are English?" he said sullenly. I nodded. I saw that he had a pistol half-hidden behind him, but somehow I felt master of the position. His fear of being overheard seemed so much greater than my fear of his pistol; and it is not easy to do much with a pistol without being overheard. "You are English, too," I added, below my breath. "Perhaps you will kindly tell me what you are doing in my cabin?" "You will not betray me?" he cried. "Betray you, my man!" I replied, with a prudent remembrance of his weapon and the late hour of the night. "If you have taken nothing of mine, you may go to the deuce for me, so long as you don't pay me another visit." "Taken anything!" he retorted, almost forgetting his caution, "do you take me for a thief? I will be bound----" he went on with a pride that seemed to me very pitiable when I understood it--"that you are about the only man in Spain who would not know me at sight. There is a price upon my head! There are two thousand pesetas for whoever takes me--dead or alive! There are bills of me in every town in Spain! Ay, of me! in every town from Irun to Malaga!" I knew now who he was. "You were at Carthagena," I said sternly, thinking of the old grey-headed general who had died at his post. He nodded. The momentary excitement was gone from his face, leaving him what he was, a man, dirty, pallid, half famished. About my height, he wore clothes, shabby and soiled, but like mine in make and material. In his desperate desire for sympathy, for communion with some one, he had already laid aside his fear of me. When I asked him how he came to be in my cabin he told me freely. "I intended to ship from Valencia to France, but they watched all the boats. I crept on board this one in the night, thinking that as she was bound for Carthagena she would not be searched. I was right; they did not think I should venture back into the lion's jaws." "But what will you do when we reach Carthagena?" I asked.