Don Miguel looked at him, smiling.  “And what shall the night avail them in this narrow passage, under the very muzzles of my guns?  Be sure, Esteban, that to-night your father will be paid for.”

He raised his telescope to continue his observation of the buccaneers.  He saw that the piraguas towed by each vessel were being warped alongside, and he wondered a little what this manoeuver might portend.  Awhile those piraguas were hidden from view behind the hulls.  Then one by one they reappeared, rowing round and away from the ships, and each boat, he observed, was crowded with armed men.  Thus laden, they were headed for the shore, at a point where it was densely wooded to the water’s edge.  The eyes of the wondering Admiral followed them until the foliage screened them from his view.

Then he lowered his telescope and looked at his officers.

“What the devil does it mean?” he asked.

None answered him, all being as puzzled as he was himself.

After a little while, Esteban, who kept his eyes on the water, plucked at his uncle’s sleeve.  “There they go!” he cried, and pointed.

And there, indeed, went the piraguas on their way back to the ships.  But now it was observed that they were empty, save for the men who rowed them.  Their armed cargo had been left ashore.

Back to the ships they pulled, to return again presently with a fresh load of armed men, which similarly they conveyed to Palomas.  And at last one of the Spanish officers ventured an explanation: 

“They are going to attack us by land — to attempt to storm the fort.”

“Of course.”  The Admiral smiled.  “I had guessed it.  Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”

“Shall we make a sally?” urged Esteban, in his excitement.

“A sally?  Through that scrub?  That would be to play into their hands.  No, no, we will wait here to receive this attack.  Whenever it comes, it is themselves will be destroyed, and utterly.  Have no doubt of that.”

But by evening the Admiral’s equanimity was not quite so perfect.  By then the piraguas had made a half-dozen journeys with their loads of men, and they had landed also — as Don Miguel had clearly observed through his telescope — at least a dozen guns.

His countenance no longer smiled; it was a little wrathful and a little troubled now as he turned again to his officers.

“Who was the fool who told me that they number but three hundred men in all?  They have put at least twice that number ashore already.”

Amazed as he was, his amazement would have been deeper had he been told the truth:  that there was not a single buccaneer or a single gun ashore on Palomas.  The deception had been complete.  Don Miguel could not guess that the men he had beheld in those piraguas were always the same; that on the journeys to the shore they sat and stood upright in full view; and that on the journeys back to the ships, they lay invisible at the bottom of the boats, which were thus made to appear empty.