Chapter XVI

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, Motor Matt's raid on the rebels must have been something of that variety. Reel it off, Matt. We're all good listeners."

"You do it, Dick," said Matt. "You were with me and did as much of the work as I did."

"Belay, on that!" 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."

"You'd hardly know my arm had stopped a bullet, would you?" and Matt showed his ability to use his left hand with the same ease that he did his right.

"Don't sidetrack the relish," chirped Jordan. "Let Matt's hot work come on with the beans. Go on, Matt—or you tell us, Dick, if Matt's too bashful."

Thereupon Dick waded into past events as he and Matt had experienced them. He slighted his own deeds to give a greater lustre to Matt's, and finally Matt, in self-defense, had to take the telling into his own hands and finish it.

"Well, Jupiter!" exclaimed Jordan, "there's enough tabasco in that run of work to satisfy almost anybody. But, if Motor Matt hadn't come up under that launch like 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 game of seven-up. 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 Matt, "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, Matt, 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 reconnoitring 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 reconnoitred, 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, Matt. 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, Matt, that saved the half breed's life."

Matt 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 sailing ship was alongside to take the passengers ashore.

Jordan, Coleman, Tirzal, Cassidy and Matt were to go, and, of course, Ysabel. Dick was left to look after the submarine.

Ysabel left Matt and the rest at the landing.

"Will I see you again, Matt," she asked, "you and the rest of the motor boys?"

"I hope so, Ysabel," answered the young motorist, "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 Matt 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, Jr., 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 Matt'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 Matt, "that's all I care."

THE END.

THE NEXT NUMBER (17) WILL CONTAIN

Motor Matt's Close Call

OR,

THE SNARE OF DON CARLOS.

Carl's Serenade—Don Ramon Ortega—The Shadow of Treachery—Don Carlos Lays His Snare—A Mutiny—A Lesson in Who's Who—The Snare Tightens—The Don's Proposal—Ysabel Sixty's Loyalty—An Opportunity—Exciting Work—Capturing the General—Off for the Gulf—Running the Battery—The "Seminole"—Conclusion.

MOTOR STORIES

THRILLING ADVENTUREMOTOR FICTION

NEW YORK, June 12, 1909.

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