"Zat is reasonable talk," admitted Captain Pons gravely. "I vill spik wiz my good friend, Captain Arco."
Matt and Glennie drew apart while the two captains held a whispered conversation, although a very animated one.
"A couple of jumping jacks!" muttered Glennie; "and blockheads, to boot. I wonder what those French shipbuilders were thinking of to send a man like Captain Pons with their submarine."
"Well, he may know all about the submarine, and be perfectly trustworthy," answered Matt.
"I wouldn't trust him to drive a pair of mules on a canal."
"Ah!" he said, a moment later. "The two great minds have at last come to a decision in this momentous matter."
Captains Pons and Arco approached the two lads importantly.
"Ze good captain has agreed to go back wiz you and me to ze submarine," announced Captain Pons. "If, w'en we get zere, you will hand ovair ze torpedo, zen we not make ze trouble for you any more. _Allons!_ let us be gone."
The negroes, following an order from the captain of the port, dropped in on either side of Matt and Glennie, their antiquated pistols prominently displayed. Then, with the two captains leading the way, the American lads left the Casa de la Administracion.
"How those Japs managed to get hold of that torpedo without showing themselves," remarked Glennie, on the way to the landing, "is a conundrum."
"They must have come up under the torpedo," answered Matt, "just close enough to the surface to grapple a coil of the rope that was around the steel shell."
"Even on that theory the move is hard to understand. While the _Pom_ was under water it would not be possible for any one aboard of her to work at the ropes around the torpedo."
"Perhaps the grappling was done by manoeuvring the boat."
Glennie was interrupted. By that time the party had nearly reached the landing. Before any of them stepped foot on the wharf, however, there came a loud detonation, and a geyser-like column of water arose high in the air. So lofty was the column that some of the spray from it was hurled across the intervening stretch of the bay and into the faces of Matt, Glennie, and the rest.
When the column had sunk downward, those on the shore could see that the _Grampus_ had disappeared!