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 that carry conviction: "Easy, my friend, or I'll throw you through the side of the house."

The idlers in the cafe crowd about the combatants and the proprietor rushes up and protests against the disorder.

The Spanish captain and Ashley's friend glare at each other, and the latter, after pronouncing the words "Hotel Royal" with a significance appreciated by his antagonist, slips his arm through Ashley's and draws him from the cafe.

"Whither?" queries Jack, as they proceed down the street.

"To the Hotel Royal. I am stopping there for the night. And you?"

"Same cheerful hostelry. Is it the worst in Cuba?"

"The worst and the best. They are all off the same piece."

"Will you come up to my room?" asks he of the black eyes, when the hotel is reached. "We shall doubtless be waited upon presently."

"By our Spanish friend?"

"By his representative, more likely."

"But how is he to locate you?" questions Ashley. "No pasteboards were exchanged."

His companion smiles sardonically. "Capt. Raymon Huerta and I are not strangers," he says.

Even as he speaks there is a rap at the door and as it is thrown open in strides one of the Spanish quartet.

"Well, Senor Cardena," says the young man with the black eyes, glancing at the bit of pasteboard in his hand, "what is your pleasure?"

"What, Senor Navarro, you may expect," replies Cardena, declining stiffly the proffered chair. "Capt. Huerta demands satisfaction for the insult offered to him."

"Not only offered, but delivered," mutters Ashley, and he returns in kind Cardena's impertinent glance. "So my unknown friend's name is Navarro," he thinks.

"You may convey to Capt. Huerta my willingness to afford him the desired redress," says Navarro. "How will sunrise, on the beach below the city, answer?"

"I am authorized to make the necessary arrangements.