"Face you slapped? Ha!" Miller snorted. "I hope you'll never slap my
face. Why, don't you know who he is?" he exclaimed, with a grin. "I
thought, of course, you did. I thought that's why you hit him. He's
young Fiske, the old man's son. That was his sister riding ahead of
them. Didn't you see that girl?"




V


The day we attacked the capital Joseph Fiske and his party were absent
from it, visiting Graham, the manager of the Copan Mines, at his
country place, and when word was received there that we had taken the
city, Graham urged Mr. Fiske not to return to it, but to ride at once
to the coast and go on board the yacht. They told him that the capital
was in the hands of a mob.

But what really made Graham, and the rest of the Copan people, and the
Isthmian crowd, who now were all working together against us, so
anxious to get Fiske out of Honduras, was that part of Laguerre's
proclamation in which he said he would force the Isthmian Line to pay
its just debts. They were most anxious that Fiske should not learn
from us the true version of that claim for back pay. They had told him
we were a lot of professional filibusters, that the demand we made for
the half-million of dollars was a gigantic attempt at blackmail. They
pointed out to him that the judges of the highest courts of Honduras
had decided against the validity of our claim, but they did not tell
him that Alvarez had ordered the judges to decide in favor of the