"Whenever did you know all about this, sir?" I asked. I was a little nettled that I hadn't been told before.
"Only this morning," the Skipper replied; he was lighting his third cigar since coming back. "Only this mornin'—couldn't keep it to himself any longer—came and told me. Umph!" (I suppose that he saw I looked as if I might have been told too) "I'd have told you then, Truscott, but I wasn't certain of him till to-night, and wasn't going to let you think 'Old Lest' had had his leg pulled again, if he turned out a wrong 'un."
"What happened to-night, then, sir?" I asked.
"Directly they saw us coming along, the yacht began to push inland—close up to the town, up a bit of a creek—and just as it was getting dark, we saw the tramp steamer trying to do the same. I wanted to shove along after them, but he wouldn't let me, said we should have to pass within twenty yards of a battery, and they had had plenty of time to man the guns. He said it didn't matter either, as the tramp couldn't get up there, and would be aground before she'd gone fifty yards. He promised to find her, too, later on, and I took him at his word. They blazed off a few rounds at us, I kept 'em busy for a few minutes, and then lay off, out of sight, as if I'd gone back again."
"I didn't know what had happened, sir, when I could neither hear nor see anything of you. I was in a bit of a 'stew' when you didn't come back.
"I wanted to go and torpedo her, but he wouldn't let me. Said she'd be half out of water in another two hours, and he'd do the job then, without getting into danger."
"He did, too; guided us in—how he did it, beats me—somehow or other got her in between us and the battery, and we let rip a torpedo right into her bottom, just amidship. We weren't fifty yards away, and not a soul saw us till we'd fired. I tell you, Truscott, that man's straight. 'Old Lest' don't often make a mistake when he's sized a man up and seen him under fire. He's as straight as a die. It was his own steamer he blew up."
"Well, he's the first man's advice you've ever listened to, sir," I said, smiling.
"Umph!" he growled, "but 'mum's' the word;" and he patted old Blucher, who was squatting between his knees and yawning.
"If he can't get back to that cutter—and I don't know how the dickens he means to do so—he'll go across to the back of the island."