"'I can't let her see me so bunged up,' says Hardenberg, doleful-like,
'Oh, whatever is to be done?'
"'An' _I_ look like a real genuine blown-in-the-bottle pug,' whimpers
Strokher. 'Never mind,' says he, 'we must face the music. We'll tell her
these are sure honourable scars, got because we fit for her.'
"Well, the boat comes up an' the feemale party jumps out and comes up
the let-down stairway, onto the deck. Without sayin' a word she hands
Hardenberg the half o' the card and he fishes out his half an' matches
the two by the light o' a lantern.
"By this time the rowboat has gone a little ways off, an' then at last
Hardenberg says:
"'Welkum aboard, Signorita.'
"And Strokher cuts in with----
"'We thought it was to be a man that 'ud join us here to take command,
but _you_,' he says--an' oh, butter wouldn't a-melted in his mouth--'But
_you_ he says, 'is always our mistress.
"'Very right, _bueno_. Me good fellows,' says the Signorita, 'but don't
you be afraid that they's no man is at the head o' this business.' An'
with that the party chucks off hat an' skirts, _and I'll be Mexican if
it wa'n't a man after all!_
"'I'm the Signor Barreto Palachi, gentlemen,' says he. 'The gringo
police who wanted for to arrest me made the disguise necessary.
Gentlemen, I regret to have been obliged to deceive such gallant
_compadres_; but war knows no law.'
"Hardenberg and Strokher gives one look at the Signor and another at
their own spiled faces, then:
"'Come back here with the boat!' roars Hardenberg over the side, and
with that--(upon me word you'd a-thought they two both were moved with
the same spring)--over they goes into the water and strikes out hands
over hands for the boat as hard as ever they kin lay to it.
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