“We all are, for that matter,” said Jordan.
CHAPTER XVI.
A DASH OF TABASCO.
In due course the delayed breakfast came up from the torpedo room. By some error, Speake had mixed an overdose of tabasco sauce with the canned beans which he had warmed up on his electric stove.
“Glory!” sputtered Jordan, reaching for water. “Speake must have mixed a Whitehead torpedo in that mess of beans.”
“Only a dash of tabasco,” replied Coleman. “Haven’t you been in Central America long enough to like hot stuff?”
“Not long enough, anyhow, to acquire an asbestos stomach. Talking about a dash of tabasco, though, Bob Steele’s raid on the rebels must have been something of that variety. Reel it off, Bob. We’re all good listeners.”
“You do it, Dick,” said Bob. “You were with me and did as much of the work as I did.”
“No, sir!” remonstrated Dick. “I didn’t take care of Ysabel during that run for the river, did I. And I didn’t get that piece of lead through my arm, either.”
Thereupon Dick waded into past events as he and Bob had experienced them. He slighted his own deeds to give a greater luster to Bob’s, and finally Bob, in self-defense, had to take the telling into his own hands and finish it.