A DASH OF TABASCO.
In due course the delayed breakfast came up from the torpedo room. By
some error, Speake had mixed an overdose of tabasco sauce with the
canned beans which he had warmed up on his electric stove.
“Glory!” sputtered Jordan, reaching for water. “Speake must have mixed
a Whitehead torpedo in that mess of beans.”
“Only a dash of tabasco,” replied Coleman. “Haven’t you been in Central
America long enough to like hot stuff?”
“Not long enough, anyhow, to acquire an asbestos stomach. Talking
about a dash of tabasco, though, Bob Steele’s raid on the rebels must
have been something of that variety. Reel it off, Bob. We’re all good
listeners.”
“You do it, Dick,” said Bob. “You were with me and did as much of the
work as I did.”
“No, sir!” remonstrated Dick. “I didn’t take care of Ysabel during that
run for the river, did I. And I didn’t get that piece of lead through
my arm, either.”
Thereupon Dick waded into past events as he and Bob had experienced
them. He slighted his own deeds to give a greater luster to Bob’s, and
finally Bob, in self-defense, had to take the telling into his own
hands and finish it.
“Well,” exclaimed Jordan, “there’s enough tabasco in that run of work
to satisfy almost anybody. But, if Bob Steele hadn’t come up under that
launch as he did, all of us prisoners, my dear friends, would now be
tramping through the jungle toward Pitou’s new camp.”
“I’m glad that note of mine proved so valuable to us,” spoke up Coleman.
“How did you come to lay all that information aboard, Mr. Coleman?”
inquired Dick. “It seemed main queer that a prisoner could have got
wise to all that.”
“Pitou told me,” said Coleman, with a twinkle in his eye, “over a poker
game. He indulged in liquid refreshment, as I remember, and the more
he beat me, and the more he indulged, the more confidential he became.
I knew Pedro was a friend of Ysabel’s, and that he was helping her to
leave the camp, so I managed to write down what I had heard, hoping
that Ysabel might get to Port Livingstone and give the news to somebody
there who could and would help us.”
“You haven’t told us, Mr. Jordan,” said Bob, “what happened to your
landing party.”
“I hesitate to put it into cold words,” answered Jordan, “after
listening to a recital which shows that you are a general in that sort
of affair, Bob, while I am only a private. By rights, my lad, you are
the one who should have gone with that landing party. However, since
it appears necessary to have our experiences in order to make the
testimony complete, here goes.
“By accident we struck a path. Tirzal said he knew about the path, but
I think the good-natured rascal was talking for effect, and that he had
never seen it before. I was fairly sure in my own mind, mainly because
we had seen nothing of Fingal’s schooner after leaving Belize nor of
a small boat after leaving Port Livingstone, that Fingal and Cassidy
hadn’t reached the revolutionists and told what they knew. I suspect
that that’s what made me careless, for I was that when you consider
that we were out on a reconnoitering expedition and ought to have been
looking for traps as well as for revolutionists.
“Well, the trap was sprung at a turn in the path. I wasn’t able to
see around the turn, and a bunch of colored persons in ragged clothes
were on us before you could say Jack Robinson. This happened quite a
little while after we got away from the boat. As I recollect, we had
reconnoitered, and had been led away from the path on some wild-goose
chase or other by Tirzal half a dozen times. I was just thinking about
returning to the boat when we pushed around that turn.
“I had time to shoot, and it so happened that I wounded a colored
person who was a favorite captain of the general’s. It wasn’t a serious
wound, but the general was pretty badly worked up over it, and I
didn’t know but they would stand me against a tree and shoot me out of
hand before I could make the general understand I was in the consular
service. At the right moment, Fingal came up, and he recognized
me. The general was tickled, and felt sure he had enough consular
representatives of the United States in his hands to insure the giving
up of Jim Sixty. Nice business, eh, Coleman,” and Jordan turned aside
to his friend, “when it takes two fellows like you and me to make an
even exchange for a fellow like that filibuster?”
“Well,” answered Coleman, “Sixty is worth more to the rebels than we
are. It’s what a thing’s worth to somebody else, and not what you think
it’s worth to you, that counts.”
“The point’s too fine and gets away from me,” went on Jordan. “That’s
about all of it, Bob. Poor Tirzal was recognized as a spy, and he
would have been shot quick enough if I hadn’t threatened the general
with all sorts of things if he carried out his intentions. Out of
consideration for me, Pitou agreed to wait until we got to the new camp
before shooting Tirzal. That’s the only thing, Bob, that saved the
half-breed’s life.”
Bob was beginning to feel the effects of his long period of active duty
without sufficient sleep, and he called Cassidy from the torpedo room,
left him in charge of the _Grampus_, and then lay down on the locker
and was soon slumbering soundly.
When he was awakened it was by Jordan. It was getting along toward
evening, and the _Grampus_ was anchored in her old berth off Belize. A
sailboat was alongside to take the passengers ashore.
Jordan, Coleman, Tirzal, Cassidy, and Bob were to go, and, of course,
Ysabel. Dick was left to look after the submarine.
Ysabel left Bob and the rest at the landing.
“Shall I see you again, Bob,” she asked, “you and the rest of the boys?”
“I hope so, Ysabel,” answered the youth, “but I also hope we won’t have
such rough times when our trails cross again.”
“Have I helped you enough to offset what I did in New Orleans?”
“Don’t mention that--forget about it. The account is more than square.”
“Good-by, then,” she called, in a stifled voice, and hurried off along
the street.
Jordan and Coleman went on to the house where the captain had been
taken, accompanying Bob and Cassidy. The mate was going to present
himself frankly before the captain, acknowledge his fault, and then
abide by the full consequences. But fate decreed that the matter should
turn out otherwise.
The captain, as it chanced, was very much worse and was unable to
recognize any one. The doctor averred that the case was not serious,
and that, with good nursing, Captain Nemo, junior, would pull through
all right.
“If he wants a nurse, doctor,” said Cassidy, “then it’s up to me. I
took care of him in New Orleans, the time he was sick there, and I
guess I can do it now better than any one else.”
“Then pull off your coat,” said the doctor, “and go up to his room.”
All this was as it should be. For the present, the _Grampus_ was still
under Bob’s care, and he started back toward the wharf to secure a
sailboat and return to the submarine.
Jordan and Coleman accompanied him part way, then left him to telegraph
their report of recent events to Washington.
“We’re going to handle you and the _Grampus_ without gloves in that
report,” declared Jordan, with a wink.
“Just so you please the government and make the navy department take
the submarine off the captain’s hands,” returned Bob, “that’s all I
care.”