In the morning we found that the guarda costa had sailed in the night, taking her dead commander with her; and long before the end of the week we had ceased even to speak of the circumstance at mess, and I forgot the affair as the image of Paulina came before me again, and thoughtless Jack Slingsby was as gay as ever. But I must mention, that on being relieved from guard at the New Mole Fort, I found waiting me, at my quarters, Pedro de Urquija, a well-known contrabandista, and king of the smugglers of Gibraltar, who gave me a profusion of thanks "for saving his little felucca, La Buena Fortuna, from that devil of a guarda costa," saying it was the closest run he had ever experienced in twenty years of arduous smuggling; and he insisted upon my acceptance of several boxes of prime Cubas and some dozen yards of magnificent lace, worked by the nuns of Cadiz and the poor sisters of Santa Theresa at Estrelo, and we parted the best friends in the world: but a heavy rod was in pickle for Jack and me; and the affair was destined to cost us more danger, trouble, and anxiety, than we could ever have calculated on risking. CHAPTER III. JACK SLINGSBY. The killing of the Spanish lieutenant revived among our diplomatic people the ever-rankling quarrel about the contrabandistas, and the captain-general of Andalusia wrote an angry letter to the governor of Gibraltar, remonstrating with him on the conduct of the officer in charge of the battery at the Mole Fort, in daring to fire upon a Spanish government cruiser, and requesting that the said Don Ricardo Ramble should be given up to the Spanish authorities to be sent to the galleys at Barcelona probably, or to be otherwise disposed of. This absurd demand, however, the old general commanding waived politely; but the correspondence was prolonged until the military secretary became bored to death on the subject, and lost all patience at the very mention of it. Now as the Queen of Spain designates herself sovereign lady of Gibraltar, and as the alcalde of San Roque, a little town which has sprung up within the last hundred and fifty years, still styles himself in all official documents Alcalde of San Roque and of Gibraltar, and holder of supreme authority therein, the tone assumed by the capitan-general, who was on a visit to Jaen, was pompous, high, and mighty; for no explanation we could give in writing could make the irritable old Castilian hidalgo see that the lieutenant of the guarda costa had been in the wrong. One evening, on entering the mess-room, I was startled by Colonel Morton acquainting me that by directions just arrived from the Foreign Secretary he had been requested to send the two officers who were on guard in the new Mole Fort into Spain. "Without hostage or guarantee--the devil!" said I, shrugging my shoulders; "and to whom?" "To this obstinate old bore by habit, and boar by nature, the captain-general."