"De mad folly!" shouted the Captain. "Dey wan' to raise de dead, let alone all de cruisers on de coas'!"
Bascom danced at the tiller. He was quivering with his first thrill of war—not only war between the Cubans and the smugglers, but soon with the United States. Over their shoulders he could see the faint line of a cruiser's smoke against the west. The Captain was looking very grave. "Dis'll be de darkes' day de Mystery seen yet," he said. "I 'ain't nevah liked dis job, me, bud it look like we couldn' refuse."
"One thing for the firing," said Bascom, "it's Christmas mornin'."
"Christmas gift," said the Captain, grimly. "Reckon de smugglers is sayin' it! Dey los' a mas' by dat las' shot."
"Christmas—" ejaculated Bascom, and stopped short as the whistle of the wind in the rigging was drowned again by a terrific explosion that shook the sea. As they peered out under the smoke, something dropped like a spent ball on the deck. The Captain picked it up, and after a moment's scrutiny passed it over to Bascom. It was an unmistakable fragment from the muzzle of one of Bascom's guns. The peculiar alloy that was neither brass nor bronze, and that had puzzled every one when the guns were raised, left no opening for doubt.
"Golly," said Bascom, "rather bust than shoot agin its frien's!" He stroked the powder-smelling piece against his cheek and almost kissed it for delight.
The Captain noted the growing trail of smoke in the west and spoke to the two Cubans. One of them pointed at the smugglers' schooner. She was settling fast, and the men on board of her were raising a white flag. The Mystery and the Cuban boat answered the signal, and the three Captains met on board the Mystery to make terms.
The smuggler Captain was a tall, pleasant-faced American of Scotch descent, with a wounded cheek and big fierce-looking mustaches. "I've got the best of myself so bad," he declared, "that you can say what you want, but it'll not be to your advantage to leave my schooner standing on the edge of the bar to tell tales; so what I propose is this: I'll give you back your scads without any more fuss if you'll tow what's left of her into Davis Bayou out of sight and give us permission to skip."
The Cuban Captain declined to do this, and it was finally decided that while the Mystery beat back and forth in the sound, the Cuban should tow the smugglers out of danger and then make good her own escape.
Bascom went across in the tender with the other skiffs to get his guns. "Your boss is grit, ain't he?" said the smuggler Captain as they pulled through the white foam on the bar. "I reckoned on an ordinary skeery creole, but the way things has turned out, it's good I reckoned wrong."