"Certainly, if the Captain says so."
But, to the young trooper's disappointment, Captain Boldwood refused permission. "Your business is of too important a nature for you to assume any needless risks outside of it," he said.
So Ridge could only watch enviously the departure of the boat with its crew of armed men. It had not been gone two minutes when a bright flame shot from the steamer's deck.
"They have set her on fire and abandoned her!" exclaimed the Captain. "I pray to God, Comly may be cautious. Quartermaster, show the recall."
The words were hardly spoken when there came a great blinding flash, an awful roar, and the Speedy listed to her beam ends. A vast pillar of flame leaped a hundred feet into the air, a huge foam-crested wave rolled out to sea, and then all space seemed full of flying fragments. The wreck had been destroyed by an explosion of her own cargo.
"Lower away the yawl! Quick, men! There may be some left to pick up. Yes, Mr. Norris, you may go now."
They rescued Comly, bleeding from a wound in the head, and three of his crew, all more or less injured, but the others had gone down with their boat, crushed beneath a hurtling deck beam.
The Speedy stood off and on until daylight enabled her commander to locate the scene of catastrophe and examine what was left of the shattered steamer. He found that she had been run ashore on one of the small outlying cays that are numerous off Cardenas Bay, and with other floating wreckage he picked up a life-preserver on which was painted, "Manuel Ros, Barcelona."
"How strangely and unexpectedly things turn out," he said to Ridge as he turned from examining this telltale relic. "Our Government learned some time ago that the Manuel Ros was taking on board at Cadiz a cargo of improved mines, submarine torpedoes, and high explosives for use in Puerto-Rican harbors. It was positively stated that she would not attempt to run the Cuban blockade. Nevertheless, we were all notified to keep a sharp lookout for her, especially around Santiago and Cienfuegos. She was reported to be very fast, and I can well credit it, for there are few ships in these waters can show their heels as she did to the Speedy. As it is, I am afraid she would have gained Cardenas Harbor in safety if it had not been for Mr. Comly's last lucky shot, which must have crippled her steering-gear. And to think that a ship which would have been considered a handsome prize by any cruiser should be destroyed by the little Speedy. I wonder, though, where the Wilmington that generally patrols this vicinity could have been?"
This mystery was explained a little later when the cruiser in question hove in sight, having been lured from her station by a small Spanish gunboat the evening before.