A WARNING REPEATED. 95 
dently affirmed the project attributed to his 
officers, to be a mere “ coinage of the brain” of 
my informant, that I trusted to his opinion, 
and thought no more of it, especially as our 
own ball had furnished a proof how easily the 
silliest and most groundless reports could gain 
credit. 
After leaving the President, I passed the re- 
mainder of the day, and slept, at the house of 
my friend Mendiburu. As I was preparing to 
go to bed, I heard a gentle knock at my room 
door; I opened it, and a servant of the house 
came timidly in. He told me that he was a Spa- 
niard, and had been a sailor on board a frigate 
captured by the Chilians, and that his present 
master had taken him into his service, when a 
prisoner of war. He then gave me, under the 
most earnest injunctions not to betray him, the 
same caution which I had before received, add- 
ing some curses on the Chilian Government and 
| people, whom he declared to be altogether a 
set of vagabonds and thieves. This repeated 
warning was too striking not to excite some ap- 
prehension. I took all the circumstances into 
consideration ; and though the motive for sucha 
