“We’ll go aboard, thanks,” replied Shirley. “I want to get out of this city and this country. We can leave word with the clerk here, and Mabel’s father and mine will come aboard as soon as they return.”
“Right you are,” agreed Captain Anderson. He addressed the clerk. “When Mr. Willing and Colonel Ashton return with the consul,” he said, “you tell them to come aboard the Yucatan immediately. I have important news for them.”
“Very well, sir,” said the clerk.
“Why didn’t you tell him to tell Dad we had been rescued?” asked Mabel.
“Why,” replied the captain with a smile, “I was saving that for a little surprise.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.—ALL ABOARD AGAIN.
Mr. Willing and Colonel Ashton, to go back to the time that Dick left them after the departure of Consul Harrington, were greatly alarmed when the boy failed to return immediately. Half an hour after his departure Consul Harrington returned with General Seauterey and half a dozen troopers.
The general announced that he was not only willing but eager to round up Hernandez, who, he said, was the real head of the revolution in Western Mexico. Mr. Willing expressed his alarm over Dick’s safety, and they waited ten minutes.
“I’ll have my clerk tell him to wait when he comes in,” said the consul. “There is no use delaying longer.”
To this Mr. Willing and Colonel Ashton agreed.