The boat, with its murderous-looking quick-firers, ranged up alongside, and a sailor flung a rope to them.
"Hang on there, and make her fast," shouted an officer standing on a diminutive bridge. "We'll tow you home. You're a prize to the navy of the United States of America."
"Prize indeed!" Hal exclaimed. Then he laughed loudly. "We'll let it rest like that till we get alongside the flagship," he said to Gerald. "Then I fancy there will be some fun, and we shall score off our friend aboard the torpedo boat."
By this time the fleet of warships was only a mile distant, and it took very little time for the powerful destroyer to reach them with the launch in tow. Then, once more, the semaphore wagged confusingly.
"Cast off that rope, and smartly with it," shouted the officer who had hailed Hal before. "Now then, we'll take every one of you aboard to see the admiral. Prize party, make ready to hop on to her, and just knock the fight out of any that are playin' games."
He backed his vessel alongside again, and the launch was rapidly lashed in position, a few fenders being placed between to protect the brittle plates of the torpedo craft.
"Now, who are you anyway?" asked the officer brusquely, boarding the launch with a party of sailors. "One of you looks so black that he might pass for a nigger; and the other,—why,—what's this? It's a boy, a perfect child, and astoundingly like the lads who are to be found right over in the States. Say, who, in the name of all that's curious, are you, youngster?"
"Not your prisoner, at any rate," answered Gerald, with a laugh. "We're Americans. At least, I am; and my friend is a Britisher."
"Britisher! American! That is hard to believe. And what is all this about?" He looked at the decks of the launch, and then at the empty engine-room. "Two lads of our own blood aboard a Spanish craft, and not another soul with them! It is particularly queer!"
"It is, we admit," Hal answered, with a smile; "but you must understand that we had no choice, for we were captured in the town of Santiago in suspicious circumstances, and were thus placed in a cell in Morro Castle, with the cheerful prospect of being shot as spies early this morning. We bolted, and as this launch was lying idle beside one of the wharfs, we just borrowed her, and steamed out to sea. So I fancy that she really belongs to us."