"Does your mother approve of your accepting this calling?"

She did not answer this question as readily as she had the others, but after a moment said:

"Mother does not wholly approve it now, but she does not oppose it as she did in the beginning. She says I am too good to spend all my life in a junkshop or on a bumboat as she has done, and she does not pretend to know what is for the best."

As they sat there side by side gazing upon the ocean birds poising on white pinions above the cruiser, strange thoughts came over his mind. Wild, romantic ideas ran through his brain, filling it with strange, impossible stories of one of better birth being the supposed child of people of humbler birth. It could not be that this gentle little being was the offspring of that coarse woman who jollied the sailors; who had made her fortune at trade a part of which at least was questionable. But when he asked her if she was certain that Bumboat Kate was her real mother, she answered that there was no doubt of it. She did not tell him what a kind mother Bumboat Kate had always been, and how she loved her, despite her coarseness.

One thing was quite apparent, that Bumboat Kate, whatever her evil qualities might have been, had shielded this gentle child from the fiercer blasts of life's storm. If her own breast had grown mascu

line, and her manners hard and coarse in facing the world's buffeting, Hallie had been heroically shielded.

All this the young midshipman thought as he sat gazing into that sweet, innocent young face, and into the depths of those soft brown eyes upon a soul that had never entertained a thought not pure and holy.

Meanwhile, old Bumboat Kate was having a scene with the commander of the cruiser. On her entering his cabin, he fixed his awful eyes upon her and said:

"Kate, you have been selling whisky to the boys." "How do you know I have?" she asked rather defiantly, as she flounced herself down upon one of the captain's easy-chairs and gave him an impudent stare.

"I know it," he answered with a firmness in his voice that was always noticeable just before giving the order to loose the heavy guns. "They are drunk two thirds of the time, and my officers have watched you and discovered that the jackies are always drunker just after one of your visits than before. Now, Kate, you can not bumboat this ship any more. I am going to issue an order that you shall not be permitted on board at all."

The old woman's anger rose and her chin quivered with uncontrollable rage. There was a fire kindling

* A true incident.

within. Bumboat Kate's nature was compounded with the niter of irritability, the carbon of latent passion, and the sulfur of rage, so that when the captain's order, like a spark, ignited the compound, there was an explosion which made even old Fighting Bob quake in his seat.

“Turn me away from yer boat, will ye, Bob Evans? Think I don't know ye, hey? Bob Evans, hain't I known ye since ye were a middy, afore the war, and a nice chap you were too? Oh, ye needn't think, now that ye've got a command, that I'm afraid o' ye! Yes, I did sell the boys rum, and I got the gold right here for it, Bob Evans," and she produced from under her shawl a thick canvas bag filled with gold, which she had made by selling the smuggled rum to the quarantined bluejackets.

She

Then, after taking a single moment to breathe, she began an invective tirade on Commander Evans. He sat in his easy-chair in his cabin, twirling his thumbs and taking in all she said. She started him off as a middy and punctured his whole career. bombarded him for every year of his life with her terrific tongue, and he sat smiling through it all. She shook her fists frightfully close to his pleasant face, and called him everything the English language could stand. could stand. Commander Evans took out his penknife and began to

old harridan went on.

pare his nails, and still the There was a grin of eminent

satisfaction on the face of Fighting Bob, but he never tried to work in a word. After about fifteen minutes' tirade the old woman wound up with a withering peroration, and started for the cabin door.

"Oh, I say, Kate," said Evans, rising from his comfortable chair, "you're not done already, I hope, are you? Why, I thought you were a stayer. You ought to be able to keep it going longer than this. Oh, I say there, Kate"

But the old woman, turning around at the cabin door to shake her fist at him, bobbed out, called to "Hallie," got her wares together, and pulled away from the ship.

When she was gone Fighting Bob Evans strolled out of his cabin with a grin on his face.

"She surely burnt you up, sir," said the marine orderly, who, as an old timer, was privileged.

"Well, she's got a direct way of speaking, if that's what you mean," replied Evans, the broad smile on his good-natured face deepening.

Bumboat Kate was never permitted near the cruiser again. Days, weeks, months, and years glided by; and while time softened the stern visage of the mother in the memory of the midshipman, the image of her beautiful daughter seemed so indelibly imprinted on his heart that it grew more and more as the years rolled by.

CHAPTER IX.

FERNANDO'S ESCAPE.

THE baleful eyes of the Spanish officer watching Fernando Stevens and Viola from the ramparts of old Morro seemed to augur ill to the young AmeriViola occasionally turned to cast a glance behind her, then hid her face in her hands and murmured:

can.

"Oh, señor, he means ill toward you!"

"Don't be alarmed about that surly fellow's looks," answered the brave young American, as he sent their small craft up the harbor with the incoming tide toward the ancient city of Santiago,

They reached the city, and after conducting Viola to her home, the young American returned to the Hotel Hispano Americano, where he met many friends from his own country. The incidents of the next few days were startling and disheartening to all lovers of freedom, both Americans and Cubans.

On May 19, 1895, only a few days after the visit to Morro, José Marti left Gomez and started for the coast with the intention of returning to the United