ne man shouted; but the rest kept a silence. They
knew that many dangers were before them.

Then the launch became a speck against a gray coast.

"Where now, father?" asked Rupert timidly.

For the first time since the conception of his infamous deed, the man
looked his son straight between the eyes. Both faces were furrowed, and
worn, and prematurely aged; the eyes of both were sunken and rigid.

"Home, my son--home," said the Colonel gently.

"Oh, father!" cried the lad.

"Kiss me, my son, if you care to, and now leave me."

* * * * *

The United States had been plunged into a war with Patagonia. The How of
it was a disgrace to the Great Republic. Jingoism had done the deed,
and the mischief of the matter was that the Patagonian cruisers
outnumbered our own.

There was scurry in the navy yards, especially within that upon the
Potomac. Old, disabled monitors were galvanized into the delusion of
life: guns were hurried to bombard an inhospitable coast thousands of
miles away.

Officials at their desks were telegraphing cipher dispatches to England
to furnish vessels of war on hire, which she politely refused to do.
Congress was passing an unrestricted maritime bill.

During this hubbub a very unusual thing happened to increase the
confusion of the Navy Department at Washington.

About nine o'clock in the morning, while several ships of war were
making ready for sea, a foreign torpedo boat was seen to _ricochet_ up
the river, passing by hidden torpedoes as if she were inspired, and then
suddenly, with a swirl, coming to a dead halt before one of the largest
of the formidable vessels.

In alarm, the crew of the American flagship was drummed to arms, and the
gunners were called to their ports. Evidently the virulent torpedo-boat
was a foe, bent to suicide after she had destroyed. The fact that she
carried no flag, no masts, nothing but a bare hull, made her alarming in
the extreme. It was an apparition of death. The American fleet
trembled. At what invincible vessel would the bolt be launched? Officers
paled and swore. At this terrible display of audacity, a paralysis had
overtaken them.

Only a boy was visible on the stern of the ominous stranger. He pulled
out a handkerchief and waved it. He seemed to touch a button, and the
anchor rattled to its length. Captain and gunners breathed relief. By
this time the murmur of the arrival had spread, and thousands of quaking
men lin