Around the fort bustled little ludicrous, gay-clad figures. There was an explosion. A grape-shot skimmed the waves, a third of a mile on their port. A cloud of dust rose. The ball had cut a gaping hole in a ramshackle building on the opposite shore, and the half-naked occupants danced in frenzy on the sands, then scurried pell-mell into the palms. There was another wheezy little roar. Fragments of old iron showered the air. The little cannon had exploded and there were bright little splashes of colour on the sand, for all the ludricous soldiers in their gay uniforms lay flat on their bellies, both the sound as well as the mortally hurt.
From the prow of the row-boat wildly swished the sword of the fat official with the rakish cockade.
The gambler turned to Pete and the Pink Swede, and crooked his shoulder towards the sallow-faced practitioner of medicine.
"Overboard!"
They grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and tossed him, bag and all, his legs sprawling ridiculously in the air, clean over the port rail.
He could swim just enough to stay afloat till the row-boat reached him, and the two soldiers dragged him like a half-drowned muskrat by his heels over the stern, losing their rusty rifles in the process.
"Cuss away, ye Mocho galoots, ye flea-bitten curs, ye nicotine shrimps, ye little walking fried sausages!" was Old Man Veldmann's parting salvo, which, as Carlotta observed, was "goin' some" even for this graceless old artist.
So, after executing in this very modern way the old free-
