The officer so alluded to, turned rapidly from red to white, and white to red. He mumbled and grumbled to himself, and then forced out somewhat about its being known; that he, a simple soldier, could not compete in word-sallies and figures of speech with so renowned a courtier as Don José. He was interrupted by the alcaide, who said that it was ever his pleasure to honour so honourable and great a gentleman as Don José; but here was a matter in which he but spoke the written words of the law, and these words said that the doom of pirates was death. ‘Yes, I grant thee,’ exclaimed my unexpected advocate; ‘but is the youth a pirate? You go too fast, good Master Alcaide. Justice is blind; but you see more than there is to behold!’ The alcaide, who evidently wished to keep well with Don José, and who as evidently wished to string me up, began to get very red in the face, and to mutter half-suppressed words of passion. Just then, the ferret-eyed man whispered him at one ear, while Captain Guzman possessed himself of the other. After listening for a few seconds, the judge seemed to decide what he should do; accordingly, he hemmed twice, and began in a loud pompous style— ‘The court,’ he said, ‘hath been in an unseemly manner interrupted by a noble person now present. Such irregularities cannot in any way be permitted, even to the highest of the land; and it is therefore craved that the noble person in question do refrain henceforth from interrupting the course of justice.’ Don José, at this laughed scornfully, and flung himself back in his chair, which he balanced upon the hinder legs, twisting and twirling his moustache at the same time, with the air of a man who deems his company vastly beneath him, and curling his lip as he did when relating the miracle of Our Lady of the Hill blowing up the ‘Oxford’ man-of-war. The wrinkled man next took up the speech. Peering with the bitterest glances out of the corner of his blinking eyes at Don José, he squeaked out, that those suffering banishment for offences committed against the law, were not the most proper supporters of the authority of his Majesty. The hidalgo answered, by removing his sombrero, and bowing, with a wonderful air of mock gravity and condescension, to his reprover. Then the examination recommenced: ‘Did you not arrive with your comrades off this peaceful coast in an armed ship, your intent being to kill, sink, burn, and destroy?’ the alcaide next demanded, with ruffled brow, and a savage eagerness in his speech. I remained mute. ‘Silence gives consent,’ said the clerk. Don José shrugged his shoulders, and leisurely used a golden pick-tooth. The clerk wrote down something, probably an entry, that I had confessed that such were our intentions. ‘Were you not taken in the act of playing the spy in the harbour of Carthagena?’ roared the alcaide again.