filas legitimas."

Mills was heard, unmoved, like Jove in his cloud: "He's on leave
here."

"Of course I don't shout that fact on the housetops," the Captain
addressed me pointedly, "any more than our friend his shipwreck
adventure. We must not strain the toleration of the French
authorities too much! It wouldn't be correct--and not very safe
either."

I became suddenly extremely delighted with my company. A man who
"lived by his sword," before my eyes, close at my elbow! So such
people did exist in the world yet! I had not been born too late!
And across the table with his air of watchful, unmoved benevolence,
enough in itself to arouse one's interest, there was the man with
the story of a shipwreck that mustn't be shouted on housetops.
Why?

I understood very well why, when he told me that he had joined in
the Clyde a small steamer chartered by a relative of his, "a very
wealthy man," he observed (probably Lord X, I thought), to carry
arms and other supplies to the Carlist army. And it was not a
shipwreck in the ordinary sense. Everything went perfectly well to
the last moment when suddenly the Numancia (a Republican ironclad)
had appeared and chased them ashore on the French coast below
Bayonne. In a few words, but with evident appreciation of the
adventure, Mills described to us how he swam to the beach clad
simply in a money belt and a pair of trousers. Shells were falling
all round till a tiny French gunboat came out of Bayonne and shooed