'We told them all about knocking over the rotten Hercules mids., and about you being so like Cousin Gerald.'
'What!' I sang out, sitting up in my bunk. 'You blessed idiots, what rot have you been up to? You know you had orders not to speak of it.'
'We didn't say a word about politics, not a word,' Bob said rather nervously. 'It's quite all right; we never mentioned politics.' The Angel added, 'We didn't tell them the real way you escaped.'
'Out with it! What did you tell them, you fools?'
They were backing out of the cabin—rather sulky—but I yelled for them to come back. 'Now, none of your tomfoolery. What did you tell them?'
'Well, we gave ourselves a bit of a leg up too,' the Angel began, looking down his nose as good as gold.
'It really was all a joke,' Bob interrupted, 'it was their fault if they believed it. We told them that we waited till night under the walls of San Sebastian, wriggled over the parapet, and found your dungeon.'
'We told them that we'd whistled "Rule, Britannia!"—very softly—till—we—heard—you—whistle back,' the Angel stuttered out, choking with laughter, 'and that the sentry was asleep, and we only had to knock him down—and gag him—steal the key—open the door—all of us crawling away again over the walls and tramping it on our flat feet down to Los Angelos.'
'You don't mean to tell me that they believed all that rot?'
'We think they did—wasn't it a joke?' Bob said—he was beginning to see that I didn't think it a joke. 'We gave them the key of the dungeon—an old brass key we'd found on the armourer's bench before we went ashore.'