"Does your uncle, Abner Fingal, know that?"
"Of course not! Why, he doesn't even know I am Ysabel Sixty!" She gave a low, sibilant laugh. "I have fooled him as well as the others."
It hardly seemed possible that the girl could hide her identity from her uncle simply by donning male attire. And yet she looked vastly different in boy's clothes.
"I'll not be able to stay here long," proceeded Ysabel, "so you had better let me do most of the talking. The North Star, Abner Fingal's schooner, lay off Belize part of the day, yesterday. She had been repainted, renamed, and was flying the Cuban flag. No one recognized her as a filibuster's boat. Fingal came ashore and had a talk with Don Carlos, and together they plotted to capture the submarine. And I also plotted," said the girl. "That's how I happen to be here now."
"But how did you learn about the plot?" queried Matt breathlessly, "and how did you manage it?"
"You remember my old friend, Pedro? The man who used to sail on my father's ship, the Dolphin?"
Matt nodded.
"Well, as it chanced, Pedro came north on the schooner with Abner Fingal. My uncle values Pedro highly because he was with my father on the brig, and it was from him that Pedro learned that the object of the schooner in going to Belize was to capture the submarine. Pedro was sent ashore at Belize to find four or five white men to help out the plot. He picked up three, and those were all he could get who, according to his ideas, were trustworthy. He called at the house in the evening, just before the schooner was to sail, and talked with me.
"When I learned that Fingal was trying to capture the submarine, and that Don Carlos was planning to help, I was wild to get word to you, and warn you. But this was impossible. You were not at the hotel, Pedro said, and the doctor would not admit any one to talk with Captain Nemo, Jr. I would have gone to the American consul, but Pedro would not let me. He said that if I did such a thing I would get everybody into trouble, himself as well as my uncle. I cared little about Fingal, but I did care a good deal about Pedro. He has always been a true friend, and a great help, to me. If I couldn't warn you, Matt, I made up my mind that I would sail with the schooner and do what I could to aid you in case Don Carlos' snare proved successful.
"Pedro tried to argue me out of that, but I insisted. At last he went to a junk shop in town and bought a suit of boy's clothes for me, and this stocking cap; then he cut off my hair"—the girl shook her head and set the short locks flying—"and I was soon changed into Manuel Ybarra, a small brother of Pedro's. We went out to the schooner in the evening. Fingal was already aboard and waiting for us. After that we sailed south, and, in the first gray of morning, we hove to, and Fingal himself climbed to the masthead with a glass. He watched carefully along our back track, and when he came sliding down to the deck he said loudly, so all could hear, that Don Carlos had succeeded in luring the submarine away from Belize, and that now we must carry out our part of the programme.