The midshipmen read the message, their eyes opening wide with wonder as the busy little instrument proceeded.
“Well, of all the nerve!” Phil exclaimed as the signature was reached. “I attacked, I placed the gunboat, I sent guard. But where was he?—he doesn’t say, does he!”
At noontime the midshipmen found themselves unwilling guests at Lieutenant Tillotson’s table for the midday meal. Phil had asked permission to withdraw his men on board ship but the lieutenant had curtly refused.
Napkins were a luxury not supplied, and after finishing his dinner, consisting of wholesome army rations, Phil drew out of his pocket his handkerchief to use in place of the missing square of linen. The letter taken from the dead native fell at his feet. The excitement and worry of the last few hours had driven the knowledge of its presence from his mind.
Tillotson’s keen eye was upon the letter and he stretched out his hand for it in stony silence. Phil gave it up instantly. The lieutenant broke the seal and ran his eyes quickly over its contents. His face showed keen interest as he read; then he put the letter carefully into his own pocket. The midshipmen regarded him with interest, half expecting to hear the purport of its contents; but were disappointed, for in a few minutes he arose and left them without a word.
“The rest of the garrison are returning, captain,” O’Neil announced, joining the midshipmen after his dinner with the soldiers. “You can see their dust down the beach.”
The lads watched with ill-concealed delight, much to Tillotson’s discomfiture, the arrival of Captain Baker and his eighty dust-covered soldiers. As they swung into the Plaza, apparently for the first time, they realized that something extraordinary had happened, for they quickened their pace and Captain Baker, unable to control his anxiety further, shouted eagerly to ask what had happened.
Tillotson, assurance in his every motion, walked out to meet him.
Phil could not refrain from comparing these two figures—one that of Captain Baker, alert, muscular, tanned by the sun, his uniform dirty and stained by travel, with grime on his soldierly countenance, while the other, slender, his clothes neat and of a dandified cut, seemed more in place in a drawing-room than in the jungles of the Philippines.
“I saw the gunboat when we struck the beach below there,” Captain Baker exclaimed, his anxiety relieved after Tillotson had assured him all was safe, and he advanced hand outstretched, a hearty smile of greeting on his strong face. “Is this the new captain of the ‘Mindinao’? I am glad to meet you both,” he said as he shook the hands of the midshipmen in turn. “I suppose we are once more indebted to the navy.”