"Yes, it was to have been this morning at dawn."
O'Connor choked back something suspiciously like a sob and for a few minutes neither spoke. The man was thinking with a chill at his heart how near to death she had been. Then he beckoned to Mason.
"Come here, youngster, and hear what your brave comrades have been doing. This is the young woman we set out from the Mariella to save. Your friends have done that nobly for us; now we must return the compliment with proper interest."
The Midget bowed gravely and sat down on the ground beside O'Connor.
"They are resourceful youngsters, Juanita, as I have reason to know, but how under the sun did they manage it? I see you are wearing the suit of one of them."
"Their cell was next to mine. Night before last they heard me crying at my window. They could not see me but they spoke and asked me what they could do to help me. There was nothing to be done, so we talked and they tried to cheer me up and in some way they learned who I was and they—they told me you were safe and then I didn't mind so much. Then the guard came and we had to go away from the windows. As one of them jumped down from the table on which they had been standing, he touched the spring of an old secret passage between the cells. The next day, I don't know how, they got a pass from General Serano to visit the American consul. The pass was good anywhere within the lines. That night, just after dark, they touched the secret spring and rolled back the rock between the cells and one of them insisted that I should put on his suit and take the pass and escape. As I have told you he would listen to no form of argument and in the darkness of the cell I put on his clothes and he took my dress. I felt so strangely that I was sure the deceit must be discovered at once, but no one questioned me from the time I left the prison until I passed safely through the lines."
"Hooray for Hal Hamilton," shouted Mason, enthusiastically. He had listened breathlessly to the girl's story of her escape and the part his chums had played in it.
"But your escape must have been discovered in the morning if not before. What were the boys to do then? How was Hamilton to account for the absence of his clothes?"
"They would not explain that or anything."
"And why are they suspected of being Cuban spies?"