With all due observance of the courtesies of the sea the graceful, white-hulled _Thetis_ dipped a farewell salute to the Spanish warships in Havana harbour as she next morning swept past them, outward bound, shortly after nine o'clock in the morning of a glorious April day. Jack was on the navigating bridge with Milsom, and as the beautiful little ship, looking as spick and span as though just fresh from the stocks, and with all her brasswork gleaming and flashing like burnished gold in the brilliant morning sunlight, brought the lighthouse abeam and gaily plunged her keen, shapely bows into the heart of the first blue, wind- whipped, foam-crested surge that met her, and in joyous greeting playfully flung a shower of diamond-tinted spray over her starboard cathead, the young man sighed a sigh of relief, and flung from his shoulders the heavy load of care and anxiety that had of late been wearing him down a great deal more than he knew or even suspected: for now, at last, the expedition that meant so much to him had actually begun, and very soon he would know the best and the worst that was to be known; and perhaps, after all, the worst might prove to be not nearly so bad as he had been led to believe. Alvaros, he was convinced, was not only a blatant braggart, but also an unmitigated liar, and it might be that the foul deed of which he had boasted had never happened, and that the boast was merely another lie. Milsom, regarding his companion with a sympathetic eye, noted how Jack straightened up and flung back his shoulders like a fighter preparing for the fray, and how his eye brightened and his cheek flushed as the strong, salt breeze met his nostrils and swept into his lungs, exhilarating as a draught of wine--and chuckled, for he knew now that the worst was over, and that the collapse which he had been half- dreading would not now come. As for himself, he was as happy as a man can be who is unable to forget that a calamity has befallen certain of his friends. But he was a keen, light-hearted sailor, intensely fond of his profession, and he was now fairly started upon an expedition that very strongly appealed to his professional instincts; he felt like a hunter, and the exhilarating excitement of stalking and running down his prey tended to very largely obliterate the memory of everything else. And he was throwing himself heart and soul into this mad undertaking of Jack's for the deliverance of their friends; he saw the difficulty and recognised the extreme danger of the adventure, and with keen zest he laid himself out to conquer the one and evade the other. Even now, when the yacht had but barely cleared the harbour mouth, he adopted his first ruse for the mystification of the foe, for he understood that it was quite possible that some curious eye might follow the course of the vessel and possibly suspect something if it were seen that she was going the same road that the convict steamer would be following a few days