The other three ships, it was settled, were to stay at Hydra to guard the place, and that evening Nikola and the wife set off down the path of the land-breeze to join the fleet. In the six weeks that had passed since the Capsina had taken in hand the repairs of the fortifications of the Burdjee, she had so strengthened the place by buttressing it with huge, rough masses of stone and rubble and demolishing dangerous walls that passed her skill to put in a state of safety, that it no longer had much to fear from the Turkish fire and, what was almost the greater testimonial, hardly more from its own. Hastings was still away, superintending the building of a steamship which he was to devote to the national cause, and Jourdain, the proud inventor of the smoky balls, had been seen once only on the island fort. On that occasion, finding there a very handsome girl and not knowing who she was, he had, with the amiable gallantry of his race, incontinently kissed her. For this ill-inspired attention he received so swinging a slap on the ear that his head sang shrilly to him for the remainder of the day, and he did not again set foot on the island while that "hurricane woman"--for so he called her after his reception--remained on it. Hane had come back a day or two before, but he suggested that the somewhat scanty ammunition in the island fort had better be reserved for the Ottoman fleet, in case they reached the harbor of Nauplia, rather than be used up against the walls of the town. "For, indeed," he said, "we have no quarrel with those walls. As long as the fleet comes not, they pen the Turks inside, and it will be false policy to destroy them, since, if the fleet does not relieve the town, it will soon be a Greek fortress; and a fortress is ever the better for having walls." The Capsina was on the point of setting off again on the _Revenge_ to join the Greek fleet, and was in a hurry; but though she would have preferred to storm away at Nauplia off-hand, she saw the force of the reasoning. "You have the elements of good sense," she conceded; "so good-bye, and good luck to you! The _Revenge_ sails to-day, and has a very pretty plan in her little head. Oh, you shall see! If there is a scrimmage between the fleets in the harbor, don't fire unless you are sure of your aim. If you touch my ship, I will treat you as I treated the little Frenchman; at least, I will try to. But you are as big as I." "I will take my punishment like a man from so fair a hand," said Hane, with mock courtesy. And the Capsina glanced darkly at him.