"Here are my credentials," said Matt, and handed over the letter which he had recently read aloud in the periscope room of the Grampus.
The consul glanced over the letter.
"I'll take you on that showing, Motor Matt," said he heartily, as he handed the letter back. "If anything is done for my friend Coleman, it's got to be done with a rush. The dinky little states all around us are able to have a revolution whenever some one happens to think of it. There's one on now, and Captain James Sixty was to help on the fighting by landing a cargo of guns and ammunition. Sixty's work, as I reckon you may know, was nipped in the bud, and the revolutionists are having a hard time of it. But they're still active, and about two weeks ago, when Sixty failed to arrive with the war material and they were afraid he had been captured by the United States authorities, the hot-headed greasers planned reprisal. That reprisal was about the most foolish thing you ever heard of. They spirited away my friend Coleman; then they sent me a letter saying that Coleman would be released whenever the United States Government gave up Sixty—and, at that time, Sixty wasn't in the hands of the authorities, at all. He had just simply failed to show up with the contraband of war, and the revolutionists imagined he had been bagged. I communicated with Washington at once, and it was that, I reckon, that gave the State Department a line on Sixty."
"Is Mr. Coleman in any danger?" asked Matt.
"You never can tell what a lot of firebrands will do. They're bound to hear of Sixty's capture, and of the confiscation of his lawless cargo. The news will get to them soon, and when that happens Coleman is likely to have trouble. If possible, he must be rescued from the revolutionists ahead of the receipt of this information about Sixty and the lost guns. It's a tremendously hard piece of work, and only a submarine boat with an intrepid crew, to my notion, will stand any show of success. If a small boat from a United States warship was to try to go to the rescue, the revolutionists would learn she was coming and would immediately take to the jungles of the interior with their captive. See what I mean?"
"Mr. Coleman's captors are somewhere on the sea coast?"
"Not exactly. They have a rendezvous on the river Izaral, which runs into the gulf of Amatique, to the south of here. The revolutionists have tried to make people think that they have Coleman somewhere on the Rio Dolce, but that would put the whole unlawful game in British territory, and wherever the British flag flies you'll find lawbreakers mighty careful."
The consul looked around cautiously and then hitched his chair closer to Matt's.
"I haven't been idle, Motor Matt," he went on, lowering his voice. "I have had spies at work, and one of them has reported the exact location of the revolutionists' camp. Acting as a log-cutter, he came close to the place. This man will lead you to the exact spot—and, as good luck has it, he's a pilot and knows the coast."
"I should think," hazarded Matt, "that the United States government could make a demand on the president of the republic where all this lawless work is going on, and force him to rescue Mr. Coleman."