“What are your orders?” asked Captain Jonas, resignedly.
“Stop your speed and reverse. Then lie to and wait for us to board.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” growled French, in the tone of a man who had played and lost. The tug soon lay motionless on the water, while the “Meteor” ranged in alongside. Lawrence and his two comrades stepped over the tug’s rail first. Then Deputy Warren and his three brother officers followed. They represented only the county authorities, but had come along to make the force stronger.
As the two craft fell away again Tom waved his hand banteringly to Alvarez, now out on deck and being searched for weapons.
“Sorry, Don Emilio, that I couldn’t spare the time to go to Honduras with you,” called the young skipper. “But stay with us here in America for a while.”
Saluting with their whistles the two craft parted company, the “Meteor” returning to the Dunstan place with only her regular crew aboard.
Few words are needed to complete this present narrative of the doings of the Motor Boat Club boys.
Master Ted Dunstan, of course, entered in upon the first portion of his great inheritance, and is now earnestly proceeding to fit himself, in every way possible, for a cadetship at West Point, preparatory to becoming an officer in the Army. In time he will unquestionably qualify to inherit the great fortune that was bequeathed him under such unusual conditions. It was afterwards proven, and most satisfactorily, that Ted’s Uncle Gregory had no part in the plot against the boy. That conspiracy was hatched in the fertile brain of Don Emilio Alvarez. Further, it may be stated that Gregory Dunstan has sold his plantation in Honduras, and that he is never likely to become again mixed up in a revolution in Honduras, for he has become again a resident of Massachusetts. Alvarez, probably, was all along the cause of Gregory Dunstan’s mixing in the politics of Honduras, and Don Emilio had hoped, by throwing the great Dunstan fortune to Uncle Gregory, to put it where the Honduran politicians could draw upon it.
Farmer Sanderson did not leave on the tug, but was arrested at his own home. He was afterwards sentenced, in a United States court, to serve one year in prison for aiding the filibusters. Captain Jonas French and Alvarez were each sentenced to serve two years, while the other Hondurans received a year apiece. The mate and crew of the tug were discharged from custody, as it was considered they had not been plotters, but had merely signed for a cruise, as they might have done aboard any other vessel. Gambon escaped, but was lately injured in a railway wreck, and is now crippled for life.
Horace Dunstan, as he promised, did not prosecute through the State courts. He was well pleased at the happy ending of the whole affair, and considered that Alvarez and the others had been sufficiently punished. Pedro, a Jamaica negro who had afterwards gone to Honduras to live, and thus spoke both English, and Spanish, was one of the Hondurans to receive a year’s sentence, as his connection with the Alvarez crowd was fully established.