A short encounter followed.  McKay was stronger than his assailant, whom he speedily disarmed; but he was not so active.  The fellow managed to slip through his fingers and run; all that McKay could do was to send three shots after him, fired quickly from his revolver, and without good aim.

“Scoundrel! he has got clear away,” said McKay, as he put up his weapon.  “Who was it, I wonder?  Not one of my own men; and yet I seemed to know him.  If I did not think he was still at Gibraltar, I should say it was that miscreant Benito.  I shall have to get him hanged, or he will do for me one of these days.”

The pistol-shots attracted no particular attention in this deserted, dead-alive Spanish town, and McKay got back to his hotel without challenge or inquiry.

A day or two later, as the organisation of his mule-train was now complete, and transports were already arriving to embark their four-footed freight, he returned to Gibraltar, meaning to go on to the Crimea without delay.

Of course he went to Bombardier Lane, where he was received by the old people like a favourite son.

Mariquita, blushing and diffident, was scarcely able to realise that her Stanislas was now at liberty to make love to her, openly and without question.

The time, however, for their tender intercourse was all too short.  McKay expected hourly the steamer that was to take him eastward, and his heart ached at the prospect of parting.  As for Mariquita, she had alternated between blithe joyousness and plaintive, despairing sorrow.

“I shall never see you again, Stanislas,” she went on repeating, when the last mood was on her.

“Nonsense!  I have come out harmless so far; I shall do so to the end.  The Russians can’t hurt me.”

“But you have other enemies, dearest—­pitiless, vindictive, and implacable.”

“Whom do you mean?  Benito?”

“You know without my telling you.  He has shown his enmity, then?  How?  Oh, Stanislas! be on your guard against that black-hearted man.”

Should he tell her of his suspicions that it was Benito who had attacked him at Alicante?  No; it would only aggravate her fears.  But he tried, nevertheless, to verify these suspicions without letting Mariquita know the secret.

“Is Benito at Gibraltar?” he asked, quietly,

“We have not seen him for weeks.  Since—­since—­you know, my life!—­since you came to our house he has kept away.  But I heard my uncle say that he had left the Rock to buy mules.  He was going, I believe, to Alicante.  Did you see him there?”

“I saw many ruffians of his stamp, but I did not distinguish our friend.”

“You must never let him come near you, Stanislas.  Remember what I say.  He is treacherous, truculent—­a very fiend.”

“If he comes across my path I will put my heel upon him like a toad.  But let us talk of something more pleasant—­of you—­of our future life.  Shall you like to live in England, and never see the sun?”