“Guess I’ll do ’s well ‘s the nex’ hand,” volunteered Captain Glover.  “Got a sore ear, ‘n’ a hole in my nose, but reckon I’m ’n able-bodied seaman for all that. Hev rowed some in my time.  Rowed forty mile after a whale onct, ‘n’ caught the critter—­fairly rowed him down.  Current’s putty lively.  Sh’d say ‘t was tearin’ off ’bout five knots an hour.  But guess I’ll try it.  Sh’d kinder like to feel water under me agin.”

“Captain, you shall handle the ship,” smiled Thurstane.  “I’ll mention you by name in my report.  Who next?”

“Me,” yelped Sweeny.

“Can you row, Sweeny?”

“I can, Liftinant.”

“You may try it.”

“Can I take me gun, Liftinant?” demanded Sweeny, who was extravagantly fond and proud of his piece, all the more perhaps because he held it in awe.

“Yes, you can take it, and Glover can have Shubert’s.  Though, ’pon my honor, I don’t know why we should carry firearms.  It’s old habit, I suppose.  It’s a way we have in the army.”

The lieutenant had no sort of anxiety on the score of his enterprise.  His plan was to swing out into the current, and, if the boat proved perfectly manageable, to cut loose from the towline and paddle across, sounding the whole breadth of the channel.  It seemed easy enough and safe enough.  When he left the Casa Grande after breakfast he contrived to kiss Clara’s hand, but it did not once occur to him that it would be proper to bid her farewell.  He was very far indeed from guessing that in the knot of the lariat which was fast to the bow of his coracle there was a fatal gash.  It was not suspicion of evil, but merely a habit of precaution, a prudential tone of mind which he had acquired in service, that led him at the last moment to say (making Coronado tremble in his boots), “Mr. Glover, have you thoroughly overhauled the cord?”

“Give her a look jest before we went up to breakfast,” replied the skipper.  “She’ll hold.”

Coronado, who stood three feet distant, blew a quiet little whiff of smoke through his thin purple lips, meanwhile dreamily contemplating the speaker.

“Git in, you paddywhack,” said Glover to Sweeny.  “Grab yer paddle.  T’other end; that’s the talk.  Now then.  All aboard that’s goin’.  Shove off.”

In a few seconds, impelled from the shore by the paddles, the boat was at the full length of the towline and in the middle of the boiling current.

“Will it never break?” thought Coronado, smoking a little faster than usual, but not moving a muscle.

Yes.  It had already broken.  At the first pause in the paddling the mangled lariat had given way.

In spite of the renewed efforts of the oarsmen, the boat was flying down the San Juan.

CHAPTER XXV.

When Thurstane perceived that the towline had parted and that the boat was gliding down the San Juan, he called sharply, “Paddle!”