Skye smiled at that and she knew that the whole crew was agog with excitement at the thought of going back to Mariposa. There was no sign in Montevideo of the two that they had left behind and Captain Maclean had wirelessed the Harbour Master at Jācara to tell him if possible to get in touch with the men and inform them of the yacht’s return.

There would be a lot of people, Skye guessed, waiting to greet them when they arrived back.

*

That was her last thought before she went to sleep and she awoke to find it very much of an understatement.

There were not lots of people on the quay as Captain Maclean brought the yacht into the harbour, but thousands.

The whole population of Jācara seemed to be there and, standing to the forefront, was Juan and hundreds of the other gauchos, all cheering and waving in a way that gave Skye a lump in her throat.

She had risen early so as to be on deck as they came into Port and now she ran down below to El Diablo’s cabin.

He was awake and Evans had just finished shaving him as she burst in.

“There are crowds, enormous crowds, on the quay,” she said excitedly, “and Juan is there with your men.”

“I shall have to try to get up,” El Diablo exclaimed.

“No, no, sir! It is impossible,” Evans insisted. “If your shoulder starts bleeding again, you will undo all the good we’ve done. Let them come down to you.”

“Why does this have to happen to me now?” El Diablo said angrily.

“It is perhaps because they realise that they might have lost you that the people have awakened to the fact that they cannot do without you,” Skye replied.

She spoke more truly than she knew.

And when Juan and El Diablo’s other head men came aboard, they confirmed exactly what she had said.

It was the thought that El Diablo might have been killed that made the people of Jācara decide that they had had enough of Alejo and his injustices.

They had rallied behind El Diablo’s men, marched on the Palace and overpowered the guards.

The Dictator was taken entirely by surprise. He had planned his treachery very carefully and he was sitting complacently in the courtyard of the Palace.

He had thought that El Diablo’s death would scatter the whole opposition to his plans and that he would then have everything his own way.

He had not reckoned on the sound common sense of the Mariposans themselves. Those who had sat on the fence, undecided whether to throw in their lot with the lawful Government or with El Diablo, had made up their minds in the flash of a second.

No one knew who had killed Alejo. When the fighting was over, he was found dead in the courtyard.