It would be idle to represent that the _amigo_ played his pranks upon that shipload of long-suffering people with final impunity. The time came when they not only said something must be done, but actually did something. It was by the hand of one of the _amigo's_ sweetest and kindest friends, namely, that elderly captain, off duty, who was going out to be assigned his ship in Hamburg. From the first he had shown the affectionate tenderness for the _amigo_ which was felt by all except some obdurate hearts at the conversational end of the table; and it must have been with a loving interest in the _amigo's_ ultimate well-being that, taking him in an ecstasy of mischief, he drew the _amigo_ face downward across his knees, and bestowed the chastisement which was morally a caress. He dismissed him with a smile in which the _amigo_ read the good understanding that existed unimpaired between them, and accepted his correction with the same affection as that which had given it. He shook himself and ran off with an enjoyment of the joke as great as that of any of the spectators and far more generous. In fact there was nothing mean in the _amigo_. Impish he was, or might be, but only in the sort of the crow or the parrot; there was no malevolence in his fine malice. One fancied him in his adolescence taking part in one of the frequent revolutions of his continent, but humorously, not homicidally. He would like to alarm the other faction, and perhaps drive it from power, or overset it from its official place, but if he had the say there would be no bringing the vanquished out into the plaza to be shot. He may now have been on his way to France ultimately to study medicine, which seems to be preliminary to a high political career in South America; but in the mean time we feared for him in that republic of severely regulated subordinations.