k a length of stout chain, already prepared for the
purpose, and, having first carefully wound it round the three blades of
the boat's propeller, passed the loose ends round the keel bar and
rudder where, having drawn them as tight as he and Milsom could draw
them, he shackled them together, thus rendering it impossible to move
the boat until the chain had been found and taken off. The whole job
occupied them a bare quarter of an hour, and could have been done in
less had it not been for the hindrance which they experienced from the
fish, which--sharks luckily excepted--attracted by their lamps, swarmed
round them so persistently that it was almost impossible to do any work
for the obstruction of them.

The cruiser was the next craft to be dealt with, and, after her, the
gunboat; the whole operation of disabling the three vessels being
accomplished with almost ludicrous ease in about an hour and a quarter:
after which the adventurers returned to the yacht and hoisted in the
submarine, stowing her away and concealing her in the quarter boat,
without, so far as they were aware, having attracted the attention of a
single soul.

CHAPTER TEN.

THE ACT OF "CERTAIN VERY CLEVER CONSPIRATORS."

When, on the following morning, the saloon party on board the _Thetis_
mustered for breakfast beneath the awning which sheltered the top of the
deck-house from the too-ardent rays of the sun, they found that their
alfresco breakfast-room commanded an uninterrupted and most charming
view of the whole of Havana harbour, with the picturesque old town
stretching along the waterside on their port hand. It was at that
moment a dead calm, for the sea breeze had not yet set in, and the
mirrorlike surface of the water reflected a perfect picture of the
various craft dotted about the harbour, and of the buildings ashore,
already blazing in the dazzling light of the unclouded sun. The
business of the day had hardly begun; the ferryboats to Regla were
loaded with passengers; boats conveying meat, vegetables, fruit, and
fish to the shipping were lazily rippling through the scum that coated
the surface of the water; belated fishermen were sweeping their crazy-
looking craft out to sea; and a thin column of brown smoke was rising
vertically into the motionless air from the funnel of torpedo boat
Number 19, which was evidently getting up steam in good time to go in
search of the _James B. Potter_. But for the awning over their heads
the par