Two years elapsed before the captain again steamed into ——­ harbour.  He expected to meet his old friend the Admiral, and a few other Russian gentlemen in whom his interest was centred; but they had either gone to their rest or had been removed.  It seemed as though the incident that caused so much commotion at the time had passed out of recollection.  Indeed, there seemed quite a new order of things.  New officials were there.  The gunboats were removed from their familiar stations.  The torpedoes that had been the dread of navigators had been lifted, and it was commonly reported that many of them were loaded with sand.  No signs were visible of there having been war defences that were meant to be regarded as impregnable—­and it is not to be denied the earthworks justified that opinion.  There were whisperings that when those in high places discovered what some of the mines were charged with, the persons responsible for the laying of the mines were seized; and tradition has it that an impromptu scaffold had been erected outside the town, and every one of the suspects hanged without trial—­and merely on the suspicion that they knew of, even if they had not contributed to, the treacherous act.  In the light of the horrors that are occurring in Russia at the present time, it is not improbable that there was treachery; and that when it was discovered, suspicion centred on certain persons, who were, in accordance with Muscovite autocracy, dispatched without ceremony, guilty or not guilty.

“Ah!” said Mr. C——­ to the captain, who had just finished describing his last departure from ——­ Harbour, “you may thank your stars that the torpedoes were loaded with sand or some other rubbish, or you wouldn’t have been here this day.  The officers were in a great fury at the wires not operating when you were running out, and the men—­submarines, I think, they are called—­who were behind the earthworks were knocked about badly.  They came to my place to get to know the name of the vessel, but I bamboozled them, and gave them cigars and vodka, and they weren’t long in forgetting about what had happened.  I think there is no doubt about your being the cause of having the mines raised, as, to my certain knowledge, they tried to explode them the day after you left the port, and very few of them went off.  Things were kept a bit quiet, but I can always get to know what is going on, and if the gunboats had been properly handled that night it would have been all up with you.”

“But,” said the captain, “what on earth is the use of talking that way!  They were not properly handled, and here I am.  And what I want to know is this:  do you think there will be any more about it, now the war is over, and old Pumper Nichol [the Admiral] and his friends are not here?”

“I don’t know,” said his friend.  “You never can tell what these sly rascals are thinking or doing; but I will know as soon as there are any indications.  If I had been you, I wouldn’t have come out here so soon; or, at least, have first made sure that all danger was over.  But never mind; we’ll soon smuggle you off, if we can get the slightest hint.  ‘Palm oil squares the yards,’ as the old sailors used to say, and nobody has had more experience of that than I.”