“No,” Dick answered, “I never take notes. They only bother me. Sometimes a name or a date I put down, but nothing more. A thing that makes an impression upon me I never forget; a thing that makes no impression is not worth writing about.” Comacho’s affairs were soon to make an impression upon Dick that he little suspected. The Alameda dropped anchor several days later in the roadstead of Vera Cruz, a mile or more from shore and just to the south of the great Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, and the health officer of the port came out with several assistants in a handsome boat. The officer made his inspection and was rowed away, and five minutes later Dick found Comacho seated upon the grating at the stern, his face buried in his hands weeping bitterly. It was new to Dick to see a man shed tears, though he remembered that in Saratoga his throat had become rather lumpy while he was talking to Mr. Clair. But he had traveled with the young Mexican and eaten with him and met his wife, so he felt that he owed him some allegiance. “Why, what’s the matter, old fellow?” he asked, laying his hand kindly on Comacho’s shoulder. “What are you crying for?” “Oh, I’m in great trouble, Sumner,” the lieutenant answered. “A friend of mine who came out in the doctor’s boat tells me that I am suspected of carrying dispatches from my father to enemies of the government who have gone abroad, and that I am to be arrested as soon as I go ashore.” “Is that all!” Dick exclaimed. “Why, that’s nothing to cry over, man. If they can’t prove anything against you, they’ll have to let you go again.” “Ah, it is not here as it is in your country!” the lieutenant sobbed. “If they get me in jail once, they may keep me there for years. Oh! oh! oh!” “Say, now you stop this!” Dick commanded; he was becoming disgusted at the spectacle. “You are an officer in the navy, and you have a family aboard the ship to take care of, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself to sit down and cry. If you brace up and act like a man, I’ll try to help you out of the scrape.” “Oh, you can’t, you can’t!” Comacho replied; “you are only a stranger here, and you can do nothing.” But he took out his handkerchief and tried to dry his eyes. “Can’t I?” Dick asked. “Well, here’s the first thing. If you have any contraband papers with you, go down to your stateroom and read them and burn them.” [Illustration: “WHAT’S THE MATTER, OLD FELLOW?”] “I have none--not one,” Comacho answered. “Very well. Now where will they arrest you?” “At the Custom House mole. We all have to take small boats from the ship to the shore and land at the Custom House mole, and the minute I land there they will arrest me.” “Then don’t land at the Custom House mole!” Dick exclaimed. “Pay one of the boatmen to land you up or down the coast; anywhere but at the mole.” “They wouldn’t dare do it,” Comacho answered. “It would be as much as their heads were worth.”