Lieutenant Hobson was uninjured, and only two of the party had been wounded slightly.
It seemed too good to be true, but when the men realised that this information must be correct, that it had been sent by a generous enemy, they spent a good five minutes cheering alternately for those who had escaped after having gone down into the very jaws of death, and for that gallant Spaniard who, recognising bravery even in his foe, had taken the trouble to announce the safety of those who were battling against him.
"It's what I call a mighty fine thing for the old admiral to do," Bill Jones said, as he held forth to a gun's crew with whom he and Teddy messed. "It ain't every officer as would go out of his way to send such news as that, an' if Admiral Cervera should ever fall into my hands as a prisoner of war, he can count on bein' treated like a white man."
There was a roar from Bill's auditors at the intimation that the commander of the Spanish fleet might ever be captured by that sailor, for by this time all had come to know him as a "plain, every-day sailor, with not a fightin' timber in him;" but not a man within sound of his voice cared to contradict him.
On that night, after the subject of the venture and its sequel had been discussed until worn threadbare, the little sailor said to Teddy, as if telling him some important truth:
"You'll see great doin's now, lad, an' it wouldn't give me such a terrible surprise to know that the war was ended within the next twenty-four hours, for them bloomin' Spaniards in Santiago must understand by this time that the sooner they give in whipped, the less of a lickin' they're like to get."
And Teddy, thinking more of his own condition than the glory of the country, asked, with no slight distress of mind:
"If it should come to a stop as soon as that, how could I ever get word to father? Of course the Brooklyn would go right home, an' I'd be left here."