’What!’ I sang out, sitting up in my bunk. ’You blessed idiots, what rot have you been up to? You know you had orders not to speak of it.’ ’We didn’t say a word about politics, not a word,’ Bob said rather nervously. ’It’s quite all right; we never mentioned politics.’ The Angel added, ’We didn’t tell them the real way you escaped.’ ’Out with it! What did you tell them, you fools?’ They were backing out of the cabin—rather sulky—but I yelled for them to come back. ’Now, none of your tomfoolery. What did you tell them?’ ’Well, we gave ourselves a bit of a leg up too,’ the Angel began, looking down his nose as good as gold. ’It really was all a joke,’ Bob interrupted, ’it was their fault if they believed it. We told them that we waited till night under the walls of San Sebastian, wriggled over the parapet, and found your dungeon.’ ’We told them that we’d whistled "Rule, Britannia!"—very softly—till—we—heard—you—whistle back,’ the Angel stuttered out, choking with laughter, ’and that the sentry was asleep, and we only had to knock him down—and gag him—steal the key—open the door—all of us crawling away again over the walls and tramping it on our flat feet down to Los Angelos.’ ’You don’t mean to tell me that they believed all that rot?’ ’We think they did—wasn’t it a joke?’ Bob said—he was beginning to see that I didn’t think it a joke. ’We gave them the key of the dungeon—an old brass key we’d found on the armourer’s bench before we went ashore.’ ’It was the key of the bread-room that was broken yesterday,’ the Angel gurgled, when he could stop laughing. ’And we said we’d all swum off to the ship in the dark.’ I wasn’t in the humour to see how it was funny, and sent them out of it. ’If anything does come out in the papers, I’ll beat you both,’ I told them. ’Well, the feed was worth a hiding, and the joke too,’ Bob mumbled, as they went away—thank goodness the Angel was no relation of mine and had no mother or sister who could write snorters to me, so he didn’t dare to be rude. You can guess how angry I was next morning, when the wretched local papers did come aboard, and saw in big letters: ’Romantic Escape of British Naval Officer—Plucky Middies effect Rescue,’ and underneath it was the silliest nonsense you could possibly read. Honestly, even now I don’t know whether it was put in as a joke, and whether, instead of Bob and the Angel pulling the reporters’ legs, they were pulling ours. Angry! I was too angry to speak!