"Very good, sir," replied Matt.
A bluish tinge had crept into the pallor of the captain's face. Matt had been covertly watching, and his anxiety on the captain's account had increased. The captain must be taken ashore as quickly as possible and placed in a doctor's hands.
"Come on, Dick," called Matt, starting up the conning tower ladder.
With his chum at his heels, Matt crawled over the rim of the conning tower hatch and lowered himself to the rounded steel deck.
The port of Belize, nestling in a tropical bower of cocoanut trees, was about a mile distant. Owing to her light draught, the Grampus had been able to come closer to the town than other ships in the harbor. The submarine lay between a number of sailing vessels and steamboats and the line of white buildings peeping out of the greenery beyond the beach.
Two small sailboats, manned by negroes, were approaching the Grampus. Matt motioned to one of them, and her skipper hove-to alongside, caught a rope thrown by Dick, and pulled his craft as near the deck of the submarine as the rounded bulwarks would permit. A plank was pushed over the side of the sailboat, and Matt and Dick climbed over the lifting and shaking board.
"Golly, boss," grinned the negro, "dat's de funniest boat dat I ever seen in dis port. Looks like er bar'l on er raft."
"Never mind that," said Matt, "but lay us alongside the wharf as soon as you can."
The two negroes comprising the sailboat's crew were Caribs. They talked together in their native tongue, every word seeming to end in "boo" or "boo-hoo."
"A whoop, two grunts and a little blubbering," said Dick, "will give a fellow a pretty fair Carib vocabulary. What ails Cassidy?"