Page:The Secret of the Caves.djvu/127

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The Old Sailor
121

had a narrow escape during that war. I took my ship out one night off the Philippines to see if I could catch a Spanish warship that I'd heard was in the neighborhood, and we sighted her just about midnight, not half a mile away. So we pumped a couple of shots over her keel and she turned and went steaming away to the north. Well, I gave chase, but the Spaniard was fast and it was three hours before we came alongside. We were just going to board the ship when the steward came up to me and said some other boats were coming up. There was. Five of 'em. All Spanish."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? I couldn't run away. I told my men to get on board the Spaniard and I took all the sailors from that boat and made 'em surrender and put 'em on my ship. So the other boats didn't dare fire at my ship for fear of killing their own men and they didn't dare fire at the boat I was on for fear of sinking their own ship. So we opened fire on them and they didn't dare fire a shot back."

"That was mighty clever."

"Wasn't it? I sunk two of the Spaniards and the others surrendered and I brought 'em back to Manila Bay. I was given a medal for that."

Captain Royal looked very pleased with himself, and he dug into a capacious pocket and

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