"You therefore entrust the temporary command of your bands to one of your comrades, and yourself come into the heart of Texas, with your most faithful associates, in order to revolutionize the coast, and deal a great blow by seizing a seaport. Galveston, by its position at the mouth of the Trinidad river, is a strategical point of the utmost importance for your plans. For two months past you have been concealed in this house, which you have made the headquarters of your insurrection, and where you are making all the preparations for the audacious enterprise you wish to attempt. You have at your disposal numerous emissaries and faithful conspirators; the government of the United States supply you with abundance of arms and ammunition, which you think you will soon have need of. Your measures have been so well taken, and your machinations carried on with such great skill; you fancy yourself so nearly on the point of success, that hardly an hour back you convened here the principal members of your party, in order to give them their final instructions. Is it so? Am I correctly informed? Answer me, Caballero." "What would you have me answer, Caballero," the young man said, with a delightful smile, "since you know all?" "Then, you confess that you are the Jaguar, the Chief of the Freebooters!" "Canarios, I should think so." "You also allow that you came here with the intention of seizing the city?" "Incontestably," the other said, with an air of mockery; "it does not allow the shadow of a doubt." "Take care," the General remarked drily; "it is a much more serious matter than you seem to think." "What the deuce would you have me do General? It is not my fault. You enter my house, without giving me notice, with a crowd of officers and soldiers; you surround my residence, carry it by storm, and when you have finished this pretty job worthy of an alguazil, without showing me the slightest scrap of paper authorising you to act in that way, you tell me to my face that I am the Chief of the bandits, a conspirator, and Lord knows what; and then you request me to prove it. On my faith! Any other in my place would act as I am doing; like me, he would bow to the weight of so great a military force and such an entire conviction. All this seems to me so extraordinary and novel, that I am beginning to doubt my own identity, and I ask myself if I have not been hitherto deceived in believing myself, Martin Gutierrez, the ranchero of Santa Aldegonida, in the State of Sonora, and if I am not, on the contrary, the ferocious Jaguar, of whom you speak to me, and for whom you do me the honour of taking me. I confess to you, General, that all this perplexes me in the highest degree, and I should feel greatly obliged if you would kindly bring me to some settled conviction." "Then, Caballero, up to the present you have been jesting!" the General said hastily. The Jaguar began laughing.