"There was something else that Captain Sandoval told me," went on Matt, "which had to do with the Jap steamer."
"What was that?" came the questioning chorus.
"Why, at the time we were doing our wireless work from Gallegos Bay, the war ship Salvadore's wireless apparatus was not working. Sandoval discovered, from the station at Punta Arenas, that, at that very time, the station was communicating with a ship which claimed to be the Salvadore."
"It was the Jap steamer, eh?" put in Dick.
"Yes. You see, our second-hand machine wasn't powerful enough to communicate with Punta Arenas nor to receive messages from there; but the Jap steamer was closer, and so we exchanged messages with her. But the Japs were able to communicate with the Punta Arenas station, and the Chilians thought it was us. At least, that is what Captain Sandoval said. I couldn't explain without getting us into more trouble with the Sons of the Rising Sun, so I kept quiet."
Matt cut short the general comment by declaring that he was tired, that they were perfectly safe from pursuit, and that he was going to sleep.
All the rest were of the same mind, and presently the echoes of the excited voices had died out, and only sounds of deep and peaceful breathing disturbed the silence that reigned within the Grampus.
Matt was astir at five o'clock the next morning, and went around waking his friends.
"We must get an early start," he explained, "so all take your stations quietly. We are still off the town, remember, and we shall have to come close enough to the surface so that our periscope ball will be free of the water and show us the course. If the red ball should be seen as it glides over the water, we might have trouble, so we must proceed as warily as we can."
With Matt at the wheel and the periscope table, Gaines and Dick in the motor room, Carl and Clackett in the tank room, and Speake working at his electric stove in the torpedo room, the ballast tanks were slowly freed of a part of their watery load. Matt, watching the periscope, signaled to Clackett to stop unloading the tanks just as the reflected image of the surface appeared in the mirror.