“Well, stay where you are and we’ll send a boat.”
“You mustn’t let Pedro go, Bob!” exclaimed Ysabel.
“That’s so,” said Bob. “Suppose you go down, little girl, and set Pedro free. Send him to the torpedo room and tell him to wait there until the cruiser is gone.”
Ysabel vanished into the tower.
Meanwhile the cruiser had been clearing away a boat. When she hove alongside the submarine, Carl Pretzel, wearing a grin that could have been tied behind his ears, was sitting in the bow.
“I vill go mit you part oof dis groose, anyvay,” he whooped. “Drow some lines so dot I may come apoard.”
A line was thrown and Carl was heaved from the rocking rowboat to the submarine’s deck. He threw his arms around Bob and almost hugged him over the side of the Grampus.
“I vas so habby as I don’d know!” he bubbled. “I t’ought you vas gone for goot, und I vasn’t going to see you again! Dere iss a lod to dell, I bed you, und I——”
“We haven’t time to tell anything just now, Carl,” said Bob. “As soon as we get rid of our prisoners we’ll have a little leisure.”
Carl restrained himself, assisted in the work of getting the prisoners up and transferred, and then watched while the launch pulled back to the cruiser with its melancholy load.