“I shall take you first to my wife. She will be delighted to see you again, and so will the children. You can give her an outline of your story. If you had been three days later you would not have found me here. For the last four months I have been endeavouring to get my ships fitted out, but in vain, and I am putting to sea no stronger than when I came back, and there can be no doubt that, profiting by their last lesson, the Spaniards will have made Callao stronger than before. However, we will do something which shall be worthy of us, though I fear that it will not be the capture of Callao.” A few minutes later the admiral’s gig was alongside, and the admiral, his captain, and Stephen went ashore. Lady Cochrane greeted Stephen as warmly and kindly as her husband had done, and the children were exuberant in their delight at the return of their friend. “He has a wonderful story to tell you, my dear,” Lord Cochrane said. “It has taken him more than three hours to give me the details, and you will have a greater treat listening to them this evening than I shall have at this state dinner.” “It was too bad, Don Estevan,” one of his friends said to Stephen next morning, “that the admiral should have taken you on shore with him yesterday after you had been with him all the afternoon. We had been looking forward to having you all to ourselves, and hearing your story. You may imagine that we are all burning with curiosity to hear how it is that you came back all alone in that curious craft astern, and, above all, how you have brought with you this prize-money. All we have heard at present is that the whole of the boat’s crew that went with you are dead. I promised the others that I would not ask any questions until our morning’s work was over, so that we could hear your story together.” “It is just as well not to tell it by driblets,” Stephen said. “It is really a long story, as it consists of a number of small things, and not of any one special incident. It can hardly be cut as short as I should like to cut it, for I am but a poor hand at a yarn.”