"What leads you to think so?" I asked languidly, as I lay stretched at length on the Windsor chairs, watching the smoke which ascended from my lips to the ceiling. "It is quite plain, dear Don Ricardo." "You cannot mimic her, so don't attempt it, Jack; but how is it plain, eh?" "As clear as when the right is in front, the left is the pivot." "A technical reply." "Dick Ramble, my boy, you are quite sad about her, and there is no use in attempting to conceal it," continued Slingsby. "Not sad, exactly," said I, making an effort to look brave; "never was I fool enough to be sad about any woman yet; there are as good fish, &c., and as for the Spanish girl--try another Cuba, the box is beside you." "Thanks--about this Spanish girl?" "Fill your glass, and push across the decanter; has not that bottle been a little corked, think you?" "Perhaps--about this Spanish girl?" continued Jack doggedly. "Well, what the deuce about her?" "You were just on the point of remarking some thing." "Only that her eyes were very fine, were they not?" "Very, but I prefer blue-- "'No fair fräulein nor dem-----' "For heaven's sake, Jack, don't begin that ever-lasting ditty!" said I, pettishly; "yes, Paulina's eyes were beautiful; they seemed, as the Spaniards say, to be in mourning for the murders they committed." "A stale compliment," was Jack's retort to my interruption of a song with which he had favoured the mess every night since we left Southampton, for a small amount of vocal talent will go a long way to charm a mess-table; "she murdered you, however, with very little compunction; but to think of the doctor's botanising with the mother being mistaken for love-making--was it not glorious, Dick?" "I have sometimes thought of a month's leave, just between musters," said I, without joining in Jack's boisterous laugh. "Leave! for what purpose?" "A ride into Spain--say, as far as Seville; what do you think of it?" "Seventy miles or more to help you to continue a flirtation begun in the casemates of Gibraltar. Thank you, Ramble; I would rather hold myself excused. I had a little adventure in Spain once before, and its devilish concomitants quite cured me of all taste for another; though if I had not lost this unlucky 500_l._ perhaps--" "Well, why the deuce did you not let Halim Pasha and his nag alone? What did their race matter to you?" "But lend me the telescope--what is that puff--a gun?" "It is a smuggler running right for the harbour, pursued by a Spanish guarda costa; bang! there goes another gun from the Don." "And right through the felucca's sail too!" "Hollo! they will be within gunshot of us ere long," said I, springing up: "and this will be work for us. Sentry, call the gunner of the guard." "Gunner of the guard!" reiterated the sentinel, who stood, bayonet in hand, under a sunshade, at the guard-house door.