Captain Greene came in; the boys did not notice that a shorthand clerk sat just outside the open door.
"Well, in the first place, Colonel, here are your papers. We went back to get them, and we took them with us all in their oil-silk wrapper, but those fellows over there in the submarine tore the oil-silk up. They took the papers, of course, but I got 'em back when we put the bunch to sleep."
"Begin at the beginning, please," said Captain Greene.
"And tell me why you didn't jump when I said, 'Jump,'" demanded the Captain of the Firefly.
"Why, we had to get those papers!" said Porky simply. "I don't think that was insubordination. I knew the Colonel wanted them. He was so careful of them."
"All right," said the Colonel. "What happened then?"
"Why, the Firefly rolled around for a minute and then she went down. Say, Colonel, were you ever on a sinking ship? We got sucked right in with her. I thought we never would come up. I got out first, and I didn't see Beany, and Gee! I was never so seared in my life. I was just thinking about diving for him when he popped up all out of breath, same as I was. We had to float awhile, we were so used up. Then we happened to look up. We hadn't said a word yet, and there was that submarine. It had come up on the other side of us, between us and where the ship had been. So we couldn't get around to where you must have been in the boats. There was a man on the little top deck place, and he had a boat hook, and first I knew he was sticking for me with that boat hook, just as though I was, somebody's hat lost overboard. He didn't care whether he stuck his old hook into a meat boy or not. I saw he wanted us anyhow; so I said, 'Come on!' to Beany, and swum up the side of the submarine, and clambered onto the little deck, and Beany followed. Mr. Boy-sticker grunted something at us, and shoved us down the little steep ladder, and there we were in the inside of that submarine!
"The boy-sticker shoved us over to a table, and there was an officer sitting with a bottle and glass, and a small chunk of a sort of black bread."
"That stuff is made of sawdust and oatmeal, I'll bet," said
Beany. "It was worse than we would give the pigs!"
"Well," said Porky, "we stood where we had been shoved, and pretty soon the officer looked up, and the boy-sticker commenced to talk to him in German.