Jean Fevre proved to be a queer character. He was something of a French dude, and before the war had shone in social circles both in Paris and in Washington.
Oscar soon learned that the Frenchman knew Martha Adams fairly well, and the Frenchman raved over her beauty. When told that she was a prisoner on the Green Dragon, he was thunderstruck.
"Zat ees not right!" he cried with a shudder. "Poor la belle a prisoner of ze bad yellow men! Too bad! It must not be! She ees no soldier! It ees—ees, yes, it ees devilish!" And he stamped his boot on the deck.
Then he told Oscar that the Green Dragon was hiding in a bay on the Cuban coast not ten miles distant. He hated the Chinese, and was perfectly willing to see them defeated, so long as Martha Adams was rescued, and so long as it did not give final victory to the Americans.
The new Holland ran at once for the bay Fevre mentioned and reached it at noon of that day.
Sure enough the Green Dragon was there, at anchor, and the people on her deck could be seen plainly.
Bringing the Holland XI. to the surface behind a point of land out of sight of the Chinese warship, Oscar scrutinized those on the deck with his spy-glass.
"By thunder!" he cried, and dropped the spy-glass.
He had seen Martha Adams on the deck.
The girl was trying to escape from the clutches of a Chinese officer, who acted as if he had been trying to embrace her.