"Ay, lad, an' her launch is alongside makin' ready to transfer some of the prisoners. Now's our chance, when such as we don't amount to a straw in view of the great things that have been done this day, to slip over on a little visit to your daddy!"
Probably at no other time could such a thing have been done by two members of the crew; but just now, when every man and officer was overwhelmed by the fever of victory, little heed was given to the movements of any particular person.
Therefore it was that Teddy Dunlap and the little sailor had no difficulty in gaining the Brooklyn's deck without question or check, and the first person they saw on clambering aboard was a coal-passer, stripped to the waist and grimy with dust and perspiration, who stared with bulging eyes at the boy who followed close behind Bill Jones.
"Teddy!"
"Daddy!"
"I reckon this is no place for me," Bill Jones muttered as he made his way forward, and if the "plain, every-day sailor with no fightin' timber about him" had sufficient delicacy to leave father and son alone at such a time, surely we should show ourselves equally considerate.
It is enough to say that Teddy's troubles were at an end after a short visit with his father, and that he did not leave the Texas immediately.
Captain Philip came to hear the boy's story, and an opportunity was given him to enlist for so long a term as his father was bound to the Brooklyn.
Since the purpose of this little story was only to tell how the stowaway found his father, there is no excuse for continuing an account of Teddy's experience off Santiago with Sampson; but at some future time, if the reader so chooses, all that befell him before returning home shall be set down with careful fidelity to every detail.
THE END.