The Captain desired him to come on board, and then drew him aside, conversing earnestly with him. The Spanish fisherman was a very powerful man; he was equipped in a blue cotton shirt, Osnaburg trowsers, sandals of untanned bullock’s hide, a straw hat, and wore the eternal greasy red sash and long knife. He was a bold, daring looking fellow, and frequently looked frowningly on me, and shook his head impatiently, while the Captain, as it seemed, was explaining to him who I was. Just in this nick of time my friend Potomac handed up my uniform coat, (I had previously been performing my ablutions on deck in my shirt and trowsers,) which I put on, swab and all, thinking no harm. But there must have been mighty great offence nevertheless, for the fisherman, in a twinkling, casting a fierce look at me, jumped overboard like a feather, clearing the rail like a flying fish, and swam to his canoe that had shoved off a few paces. When he got on board he stood up and shook his clenched fist at Obed, shouting, “Picaro, traidor, Ingleses hay abordo, quieres enganarnos!” He then held up the blade of his paddle, a signal which all the canoes answered in a moment in the same manner, and then pulled towards the land, from whence a felucca, invisible until that moment, now swept out, as if she had floated up to the surface by magic, for I could see neither creek nor indentation on the shore, nor the smallest symptom of any entrance to a port or cove. For a few minutes the canoes clustered round this necromantic craft, and I could notice that two or three hands from each of them jumped on board; they then paddled off in a string, and vanished one by one amongst the mangrove bushes as suddenly as the felucca had appeared. All this puzzled me exceedingly I looked at Obed he was evidently sorely perplexed. “I had thought to have put you on board a British vessel before this, or failing that, to have run down, and landed you at St Jago, Mr Cringle, as I promised; but you see I am prevented by these honest men there. Get below, and as you value your life, and, I may say, mine, keep your temper, and be civil.” I did as he suggested but peeped out of the cabin skylight to see what was going on, notwithstanding. The felucca was armed with a heavy carronade on a pivot, and as full of men as she could hold, fierce, half naked, savage looking fellows,--she swept rapidly up to us, and closing on our larboard quarter, threw about five-and-twenty of her genteel young people on board, who immediately secured the crew, and seized Obed. However, they, that is, the common sailors, seemed to have no great stomach for the job, and had it not been for the fellow I had frightened overboard, I don’t think one of them would have touched him. Obed bore all this with great equanimity.