“You mean—the Yucatan,” asked Dick.
General Fullaway nodded.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” he replied quietly. “I shall communicate with Washington at once, repeating the story you have told me.”
He left the room, and returned in a few moments with a slip of paper which he gave to the officer who had brought the message.
“I should have a reply in a couple of hours,” he told the others. “Would you care to wait and hear the result?”
“Indeed we would,” declared Shirley.
It was almost three hours later before the reply came. General Fullaway read the message in silence, then turned to the others.
“Your story must be true, Miss Ashton,” he said. “Washington seems to have had some rumor of it. The cruiser Tennessee, now stationed here, has been ordered to take the Yucatan in charge.”
“Will there be a battle?” demanded Mabel anxiously.
“I do not think so. The Yucatan, armed though she probably is by this time, would hardly be a match for the Tennessee.”