care. Presently the "Foundling" swung her course to the southeast, and the waves pounded her broadside. The patriots were all ordered below decks, and there they howled and measured their misery one against another. All day the "Foundling" plopped and foundered over a blazing bright meadow of an ocean whereon the white foam was like flowers.
The captain on the bridge mused and studied the bare horizon. He said a strong word to himself, and the word was more in amazement than in indignation or sorrow. "Thirty-nine seasick passengers, the mate with a broken arm, a stoker with a broken jaw, the cook with a pair of scalded legs, and an engine likely to be taken with all these diseases, if not more. If I get back to a home port with a spoke of the wheel gripped in my hands, it'll be fair luck."
There is a kind of corn whisky bred in Florida which the natives declare is potent in the proportion of seven fights to a drink. Some of the Cuban volunteers had had the forethought to bring a small quantity of this whisky aboard with them, and being now in the fire-room and seasick, and feeling that they would not care to drink liquor for two or three years to come, they gracefully tendered their portions to the stokers. The stokers accepted these gifts without avidity, but with a certain earnestness of manner.
As they were stokers and toiling, the whirl of emotion was delayed, but it arrived ultimately and with emphasis. One stoker called another stoker a weird name, and the latter, righteously inflamed at it, smote his mate with an iron shovel, and the man fell headlong over a heap of coal which crashed gently, while piece after piece rattled down upon the deck.
A third stoker was providentially enraged at the scene, and assailed the second stoker. They fought for some moments, while the seasick Cubans sprawled on the deck watched with languid, rolling glances the ferocity of this scuffle. One was so indifferent to the strategic importance of the space he occupied that he was kicked in the shins.
When the second engineer came to separate the combatants, he was sincere in his efforts, and he came near to disabling them for life.
The captain said, "I'll go down there and—" But the leader of the Cubans restrained him. "No, no," he cried, "you must not. We must treat them like children, very gently, all the time, you see, or else when we get back to a United States port they will—what you call—spring? Yes—spring the whole business. We must—jolly them. You see?"
"You mean," said the captain, thoughtfully, "they are likely to get mad and give the expedition dead away when we reach port again unless we blarney them now?"
"Yes, yes," cried the Cuban leader, "unless we are so very gentle with them they will make many troubles afterwards for us in the newspapers and then in court."
"Well, but I won't have my crew—" began the captain.
"But you must," interrupted the Cuban. "You must. It is the only thing. You are like the captain of a pirate ship. You see? Only you can't throw them overboard like him. You see?"
"Hum," said the captain, "this here filibustering business has got a lot to it when you come to look it over."
He called the fighting stokers to the bridge, and the three came meek and considerably battered. He was lecturing them soundly, but sensibly, when he suddenly tripped a sentence and cried: "Here! Where's that other fellow? How does it come he wasn't in the fight?"
The row of stokers cried at once eagerly: "He's hurt, sir. He's got a broken jaw, sir."
"So he has. So he has," murmured the captain, much embarrassed.
And because of all these affairs the "Foundling" steamed toward Cuba with its crew in a sling, if one may be allowed to speak in that way.
III
At night the "Foundling" approached the coast like a thief. Her lights were muffled so that from the deck the sea shone with its own radiance, like the faint shimmer of some kinds of silk. The men on deck spoke in whispers, and even down in the fire-room the hidden stokers, working before the blood-red furnace doors, used no words and walked tip-toe. The stars were out in the blue-velvet sky, and their light with the soft shine of the sea caused the coast to appear black as the side of a coffin. The surf boomed in low thunder on the distant beach.
The "Foundling's" engines ceased their thumping for a time. She glided quietly forward until a bell chimed faintly
