Gerald Van Steen waded out to the boat. He would speak for himself. That there should be any question of rescuing Nora Forbes and Miss Hollister fairly stunned him. His bearing was intrepid, but his lip quivered as he imploringly exclaimed to Colonel Calvo: “Tell him that I don’t care a hang about what happens to me if he will take the women off. And if money will tempt him, I’ll pay down my last dollar to save the lives of the whole party. He will be a rich man.” The Spanish officer laughed with a contemptuous shrug. His heavy visage was inflamed. He was of that type of his race which regarded Americans as “Yankee pigs.” Personal hatred and the desire of private vengeance made him proof against bribery. Moreover, he had no faith in the protestations of Van Steen. As O’Shea had put it, he was a man who saw red. The futility of appealing to him was so obvious that O’Shea interfered to play his trump card. “If you land your sailors to-night and try to take us,” said he, and his voice was hard and deliberate, “’twill be the toughest job ye ever tackled. We have nothing to lose, and we will be behind the earthworks yonder. You can gamble that there will be two dead Spaniards for every one of us ye wipe out. As for starving us, I have thought it over, and ye will not try it. You would be laughed at from Havana to Madrid for not daring to attack a handful of shipwrecked men. Ye have a dilemma by the horns. And your rage has made ye blind as a bat. You are all for giving us a short shrift, and no doubt your hot-headed officials in Havana have egged ye on to it. But it will make a big diplomatic row, and when the smoke clears ye will be sorry. It will sound very rotten that ye had no mercy on a crew of castaways. And I will say, for your own information, that Uncle Sam has been very touchy about these quick-action executions ever since the _Virginius_ affair.” The commander had ceased to fume. He was doing O’Shea the favor of listening to him. The stronger personality had made an impression. O’Shea perceived this and he went on to say: “What I am leading up to is this:--I am ready to surrender meself and face the consequences if you will take my guests aboard and leave my men and the Cubans on the key. They will take chances of being found by a friendly vessel. You will lose no lives. I am the man your government wants. You will win the big reward offered for the capture of Captain Michael O’Shea. And there will be no complications between your government and mine. ’Tis me own fault that the party is stranded here. I will pay the price. ’Twill be easy enough for ye to explain it. You can keep your crew quiet, and the story will go out that ye took me off the wreck of my steamer and the others got away.” This was a proposal which took the commander all aback. He considered it in silence and his gaze was less unfriendly. O’Shea concluded with dogged vehemence: