‘And, so it could last continually, we might count ourselves the very blest of Providence?’ ‘God’s ’slid, Sir--I think so.’ ‘Look you, Master Clerivault! is not that a Spanish sail under the sun?’ Clerivault spun round. Brion scrambled to his feet:-- ‘Where, Tony--where, o’ God’s name?’ ‘No, I was mistaken: it was a mosquito on my nose. But, how thankful we should be!’ Brion threw himself upon him and the two struggled and rolled on the deck together. Presently Tony emerged, and, sitting up dishevelled, blew out an eldritch shriek, at the moment that a party, coming from the cabin, set foot on the poop. ‘Who was that?’ said Grenville’s deep voice. ‘’Twas little Johnny Nobody,’ murmured the culprit. ‘O! it’s you, Master Russe,’ said the General. ‘Still looking for trouble?’ ‘No, he has just found it, Sir Richard,’ said Brion. ‘A mosquito hath bit his nose.’ Grenville gave a gruff laugh:-- ‘All that? By the token, a prick from a Spanish-pike should bring a cry from him to split our mainsail.’ But he liked the boy well enough, and could appreciate at its worth the spirit which chafed under such tame inaction. Still the fine weather held, while they ran up the Leeward Islands under a halcyon sky, making for St John’s, in the Virgin group, where was reported to be a Spanish settlement. On the 10th May they dropped anchor under the green shores of a little island called Cotesa, a day’s run from St John’s, and there landed, rejoiced to stretch their cramped limbs, and spent the day in rest and pleasant feasting; whence, resuming their course on the 12th they reached St John’s itself, and coming to anchor in a small bay of the island, called the Bay of Mosquitos, at a falcon’s shot from the beach, prepared for the first time for a show of business. Here the best part of the company, going ashore, engaged to throw up a temporary fort, in view of any possible mischief which might be designed them, seeing the nature of their mission, and how the Spaniards, deeming themselves owners of the New World, might desire to nip in the bud any such invasion of their self-elected privileges. And here Brion got his first true estimate of the forceful and tyrannical character of their commander; for Sir Richard, the moment hard action was called for, neither spared nor considered his men at anything less than the utmost which by oaths and violence he could wring out of them. Despatch was necessary, and despatch he would have, even to the exhaustion in such tropic heat of many of the crew. But the result was he got his fort built timely--though much of the wood for it had to be felled and fetched on trucks from a point three miles and more inland--and all the while till it was finished not a Spaniard showed his face. It was set against the estuary of a shallow river which here ran into the sea, and, having its back to the ocean, was encompassed on its two remaining sides with thick woodland. And now, his fort once completed,