Thereupon I lighted a cigar, having trouble by reason of the breeze. Then getting up, I took my handkerchief and wig-wagged the Harriet Lane to send the gig ashore. As I prepared to go down to the water-front, I turned to my humanitarian who so loved liberty.
“Give your reasons to Betelnut Jack,” I said; “he delights in abstract deductions touching the rights of man as against the rights of states as deeply as did that Thetford Corset maker, Thomas Paine.”
“Betelnut Jack!” said my humanitarian. “He shall have every reason within an hour.”
“Should you convince him,” I retorted, “tell him as marking a fact in which I shall take the utmost interest to come to this spot at five o’clock and show me his handkerchief.”
Then I joined the Harriet Lane.
At the hour suggested, Betelnut Jack stood on the water’s edge and flew the signal. I put the captain’s glass on him to make sure. He had been given the reasons, and was convinced. There abode no doubt of it; the humanitarian was right and Cuba should be free. Besides, I remembered Madrid and hated Spain.
“Captain,” I observed, as I handed that dignitary the glasses, “we will, if you please, lie in the Narrows to-night. If this fellow leave—which he won’t—he’ll leave that way. And we’ll pinch him.”
The Captain bowed. We dropped down to the Narrows as the night fell black as pitch. The Captain and I cracked a bottle. As we toasted each other, our suspect crept out through the Sound, and by sunrise had long cleared Montauk and far and away was southward bound and safe on the open ocean.
“I believe,” observed the Jolly Doctor to the Sour Gentleman when the latter paused, “I believe you said that the Filibusterer was in the end taken and shot.”