"Never say our luck has broken," said he. "I've just performed a regular four-cornered miracle. That port-authority person called again about two hours back, and it began to dawn upon me that we were done for. He fairly bristled with suspicion. I could see it even in the set of his clothes. If I'd told him that as soon as our fleet was gone you and I were going to take possession of the island in the name of the king of Ireland, he'd have believed it. But I temporized, having no yarn ready, and luck came down in a tornado. Not one Spaniard in a thousand has a soul above a single miserable liqueur--glass; but this one was the exception. He supped down that vermouth, pannikin after pannikin; and as he got more drunk, so did I get more eloquent. I believe at my strongest then I could have blarneyed Old Nick into giving me a draughty corner." "But what in the plague did you say to the man? How could you get over the fact of having no clearance papers, and all the rest of it?" "Simplest thing in the world, my dear chap, when once I'd grasped the idea. The cutter put out of Savona some two months ago--this being a fact, as I put documentary evidence under his nose to prove. Then she sailed to Corsica, and lay in a tiny coaster's harbour where there was no Captain of the Port or any one else who could scribble on stamped paper. There we stayed all the time till the crew deserted, and we ourselves were evilly entreated, the yacht being gutted by unprincipled natives. _Apres_, you and I brought her across here alone, knowing this to be the abode of bliss. Of course, in his sober senses he'd never have believed a word of it; but, thanks to that lovely vermouth, he swallowed the whole yarn, lock, stock, and barrel, and wrote me out the wherewithal, and then tumbled off to sleep, swearing by three local saints that he wanted to go to the same heaven I landed at." "But," said I, "when he's sober, he'll be down on us like a thousand of bricks." "Not a bit of it, my dear boy. Don't you know that all Spaniards can look upon a murder without emotion, but no Spaniard can see a drunken man without being filled with loathing? Our beauty on the locker there will be the last to give himself away. But never mind raging about this now. I woke you up for something else. Come on deck. There, do you see that steamer just opening out from the Hospital island? That's the _Antiguo Mahones_, the mail-boat from Barcelona. Unless he's broken down somewhere, your man Weems should be on board." "I'm afraid not. According to the book of Steamer Sailings I looked at in Genoa, he ought to have left Barcelona three days ago."