“Not quite all of them,” laughed Bob. “Cassidy was here, taking care of you, and we left Dick and Carl aboard for an anchor watch.”
“You fellows act as though you had something on your minds,” observed the captain, giving the three members of the crew a curious look.
“That’s what we have, sir,” answered Gaines. “We have a confession to make.”
“Confession!” muttered the captain. “This seems to be my morning for hearing confessions. Well, go ahead.”
Thereupon Speake, Gaines, and Clackett, on their part, told the captain exactly what had taken place during this second trip to the River Izaral. Captain Nemo, junior, was dumfounded. Pursing his thin lips, he leaned back in his chair and watched and listened with the utmost attention.
“So,” said he cuttingly, when the recital was done, “Bob Steele refused to take my boat south, in response to the request of this scoundrelly don, and you locked Bob and Dick in the storage room of the submarine and went off whether they would or no! And you called Bob out of the room to fix the motor and keep the boat from going on the reefs; and you picked up a supposedly shipwrecked crew out of a boat, and the crew turned on you and captured the Grampus; and, with the aid of Miss Sixty, Bob Steele and his friends recovered the boat, captured Fingal, Pitou, and some others, and turned them over to the cruiser Seminole—all of which would not have happened had not you, Speake, Gaines, and Clackett acted in an insubordinate and mutinous manner. What had I ought to do with them, Bob?”
“They behaved finely during the fighting and while we were running down the river, past the fort,” replied Bob, “so I don’t think they should be dealt with very severely, captain.”
“You’re too easy with them, Bob! Look at the trouble they caused you!”
“But see what good luck came out of it, captain. We captured Pitou and Fingal.”
“That isn’t the best thing that has come out of it, Bob,” remarked the captain. “The best thing for me is the fact that this mutinous conduct of Speake, Clackett, and Gaines proves, more than ever, that you are always to be depended on. You refused to sail away on a wild-goose chase after listening to a plausible story told by this rascally don, and——”