ehind a water butt. A shell
splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
in volleys.

To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived
it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click
as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against
the weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
unceasingly:

"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that the
voice was his own.

The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.

"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"

For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself
aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun
served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight
of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the
limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made,
warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.

They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the
patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba,
and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished
reading aloud his account of the engagement.

"You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the proud
author. "Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind.
You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your
wish you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board.
That was just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you
took command of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe
Bay."

Jimmy Doyl