AT PARA.
Ensign Glennie was a happy man. In that blissful moment, when he was
hugging his dispatches, he wanted to be friends with everybody, and
would have shaken hands as rapturously with Dick and Carl as he did
with Bob.
“Before you do too much rejoicing, Glennie,” said Bob, “you’d better
first examine the envelope, and see if it has been tampered with.”
An examination showed the seal to be intact.
“I don’t believe Tolo had any right to tamper with it,” said Glennie.
“What I mean is, that those other Sons of the Rising Sun who are
leading the expedition against the _Grampus_, would probably demand
that they be allowed to open the dispatches with their own hands. Tolo
didn’t have time to see the others of the Young Samurai between the
time he left La Guayra and the time he presented himself to me, in the
rôle of Ah Sin, on board the _Grampus_.”
“Ah Sin!” commented Carl. “I nefer t’ought vat a goot name dot vas for
der feller. Ven he dook dot name he dook der vone vat fitted.”
“We can begin to understand, too,” Dick observed, “why he never took
off that old hat. He kept it on so the letter wouldn’t get away from
him.”
“And so that we wouldn’t see him without the queue,” added Bob. “If he
had removed the hat, Dick, he would have been recognized.”
“By Jove, fellows!” said Glennie, “I’d like to do something to
celebrate.”
“Ain’t you fellows getting hungry?” called Speake through the
torpedo-room tube. “I’ll jump in and scrape together a meal, if you say
so. I reckon we can all get a square feed in Para, in the mornin’.”
“Get us something, Speake,” answered Bob. “That’s the way we’ll
celebrate, Glennie.”
“It’s the biggest streak of luck I ever had in my life!” declared
Glennie. “And you brought it to me, Bob!”
“Dot’s vat I say,” cried Carl. “Anypody vat travels mit Bob Steele is
bound to haf some of der luck vat comes py him. I know, because I have
hat it meinseluf. Ain’d dot so, Dick?”
“Luck hands around her favors to everybody who ships with Bob,” agreed
Dick. “It doesn’t make any difference whether they’re entitled to the
favors or not, they get ’em.”
This last remark may have been a bit of a slap at Glennie, but the
ensign was too happy to notice it.
“What gave you the notion of looking into that hat, Bob?” inquired
Glennie. “I’d have thrown it overboard to get it out of the way.”
“Why, Glennie,” answered Bob, “you and Carl both saw what I did, and
spoke about it.”
Carl and the ensign exchanged astonished glances.
“Didn’t the prisoner seem to make up and brighten perceptibly a little
while ago?”
“Yah, I rememper dot.”
“So do I.”
“Well, he did it when I threw the hat out of the locker. His eyes
followed it as it flew across the room, and they rested on it as it
lay on the floor. I read a good deal of concern in that glance--more
concern, in fact, than the old headgear and the attached queue called
for. There could be but one thing to make Tolo act like that, and I
figured that he had put the envelope in there. It’s not a new place for
hiding things, boys. Lots of people, out in the Western part of the
United States, stow valuable things away in their sombreros.”
“Nod me any more,” wailed Carl. “Subbose I hat peen foolish enough to
pud my money in dot cap of mine? Den vat? Id vould now be in der bottom
of der ocean. Talk aboudt your glose shafes! Vy, dot Chap feller vat
looked like a safage, sent dot shpear so near my headt dot he took
a lock of hair along mit der cap. I don’d like dot! Shpears is pad
bizness. Vy did der Chaps use shpears, ven refolfers is handtier?”
“They were playing a part, Carl,” said Bob, “and whenever a Jap plays a
part he does it well. If Tolo and those with him had had firearms, they
would have been playing out of their character.”
“Dey don’d got mooch character to be oudt of, anyvay. Dey had bombs,
und safages don’t haf dose.”
“The bombs weren’t in sight.”
A few minutes later Speake came up with the supper. After the meal was
out of the way, Speake took Dick’s place at the wheel in order to give
him a chance to rest, and later assume Gaines’ place at the motor. Carl
went down to give Clackett a rest, and Bob stretched out on the locker.
It was midnight when the _Grampus_ rounded Cape Magoari and turned into
the Para arm of the Amazon. The port of Para was seventy-five miles up
the river, and Bob decided to submerge the _Grampus_, pass the rest
of the night on the river bottom, and then ascend to the town with
daylight to help.
This arrangement enabled all hands to sleep, and morning found the
submarine’s complement fresh and ready for whatever fate held in store.
The ascent of the river was made on the surface of the stream, with
all who could be spared on deck, searching the shipping with careful
eyes. Bob and his friends were looking for the mysterious steamer that
carried the fighting contingent of the Sons of the Rising Sun, and were
vastly relieved when they failed to sight the vessel.
It was nearly noon when the red roofs of Para came into view. The
river, opposite the town, was about twenty miles wide, but so cut up
with islands that the steamer with the black funnel and the red band
might have lain among them and so escaped observation. However, Bob and
his companions chose to think that the Young Samurai were too discreet
to make them any trouble in a peaceable port.
The _Grampus_ was moored alongside a wharf, and a gayly uniformed
harbor official came aboard to learn the submarine’s business, and to
find whether there was any need of a customs inspector. The sight of
Glennie, and his declaration that the boat had merely put in at the
port to give some of her crew a chance to pay their respects to Mr.
Brigham, the United States consul, was enough.
Bob, although he fancied the boat secure, did not intend taking any
chances. Dick, Carl, and Speake were to be left aboard as an anchor
watch, while Bob and Glennie called on the consul, and Gaines and
Clackett whiled away a few hours in the river metropolis. The prisoner
was to be left in the steel room until the consul should advise what
had better be done with him.
Consul Brigham, Bob and Glennie quickly learned, lived on the finest
avenue in Para--the Estrada de Sao José. Through this thoroughfare,
bordered with a colonnade of royal palms, Bob and Glennie were driven
on their way to the consulate.
In the office of the consulate was a gentleman in shirt sleeves and
white duck trousers. His feet were elevated on the top of a table, and
he was trying to keep himself cool with an immense palm-leaf fan.
The sight of a United States naval uniform brought the consul to his
feet immediately.
“Mr. Brigham?” asked Glennie.
“What’s left of him, my dear sir,” was the answer. “I’ve melted
considerably during this spell of hot weather. You’d naturally think
the trade winds, which blow continually in this section, would temper
the air. But trade winds, my dear sir, are not what they’re cracked up
to be.”
Glennie introduced himself, and then presented Bob. Mr. Brigham smiled
expansively, and drew a bandanna handkerchief over his perspiring brow.
“I’ve been expecting the pair of you,” he announced, shaking each by
the hand.
“Expecting us?” queried Glennie, astonished.
“Sure. Read that.”
The consul tucked a cablegram into Glennie’s fingers. It had come from
Belize, and was signed by the captain of the _Seminole_. Glennie read
it aloud:
“Bob Steele and Ensign John Henry Glennie, U. S. N., will reach
Para in submarine _Grampus_. Glennie carries dispatches for you.
Read them, and see that both Steele and Glennie understand them
thoroughly.”
“Nice, long message, eh?” queried Brigham, slapping Glennie on the
back. “Plenty of useless words, but what does the captain of the
_Seminole_ care? Uncle Sam stands the cable toll, and, besides, on
grave matters it is well to be explicit. Hang a few extra dollars,
anyway. Where’s the dispatches?”
Glennie imagined how he would have felt if he had been obliged to
report, in view of that cablegram, that his dispatches had been lost
and not recovered.
“I want to tell you something about those dispatches before you read
them, Mr. Brigham,” said the ensign.
“Well, sit down, my lads. What’s the good word, ensign?”
Thereupon Glennie told the whole story connected with the loss of the
dispatches and their final recovery. Everything went in, and a half
hour was consumed in the telling. More than once Brigham whistled and
puckered his brows ominously. But he was absorbed in the narrative.
When it was done, he reached his hand toward Bob.
“Pardon me, youngster,” said he, “but I never miss a chance to shake
hands with a live one. Possibly it’s because I’ve lived so long in this
dead place, where you can’t turn around without having some sluggard
tell you ‘mañana.’ You’re the clear quill, and I’ll gamble you’ll get
along. If I was younger, blamed if I wouldn’t like to trot a heat with
you myself.”
Bob, flushing under the compliment given him by the consul, allowed his
hand to be wrung cordially.
“Now,” said Brigham, “look out of the windows at the beautiful palms
while I go through these papers.”
The consul was all of half an hour getting the gist of his dispatches.
“I’m ready for you two lads,” he presently called.
Bob and Glennie returned to the chairs they had previously occupied.
They were surprised at the change that had come over Mr. Brigham’s
face. On their arrival, it had been bright and smiling, while now it
was dark and foreboding.
“I guess you lads know how it feels to be in the jaws of death, and
just slip out before they close,” said he, “but you don’t know the
whole of it, not by a jugful. Of all the high-handed proceedings I ever
heard of, this certainly grabs the banner. Now, listen.”