Sam and Jack had seen the fire occur; with a common impulse they had leaped into the _Senorita’s_ cabin to get the patent fire extinguishers always kept in an engine room. With these they leaped back to the deck and alongside the flaming cabin as Nicky crossed it.
Turning the extinguishers upside down to break their containers and allow the chemicals to fuse and mix and create pressure and a spouting flow of watery gas, they turned the short nozzles onto the cockpit and cabin. There was the roar and hiss of chemicals meeting their flaring enemy.
There came a great puff of smoke and flame, but Nicky, just in time, on the edge of the cockpit, with Cliff in his arms, leaped!
He struck the water, and began to swim, holding Cliff’s head up!
Tom, freeing himself at the same time, sprang into the water and paddled to his chums.
The cutter came alongside and they were drawn from the water.
And then, with a violent roar as the fire found the gas line and fresh fuel, the fire blazed up again.
“The tank—the aft tank!” cried Jim, leaping from the cabin floor where he had, with his hurt arm, been trying to get the _Libertad’s_ extinguisher into play. “The tank! Get away!”
He leaped into the water and swam off, and at the same time, with a glorious feeling that some High Power had held back the end until all were safely away, Nicky, in the cutter, saw _El Libertad’s_ stern burst into a mass of fire, sparks and rending wooden splinters.
Her stern, literally blown to bits, sank, blazing and hissing, into the channel, leaving her still blazing with her nose on the coral.
“But the treasure—” gasped Cliff, who had come to himself somewhat, with a good sized bruise on his temple. “It will all be melted.”
“Let it melt!” cried Nicky. “As long as you and Tom are safe!”
And, with no further word than a tight grip of Cliff’s hand, Nicky watched wordlessly the blazing pyre of all their seeking.
“The gold won’t burn,” Lieutenant Sommerlee consoled the boys.
“And there is more in the coral ‘safe,’” said Mr. Neale.
They laid off all that day, watched the embers sink down to the water’s edge, saw the last spark die, and then plumbed the wreckage for the treasure, hoping that in a state of molten yellow blocks it would be brought up. But no golden bars were there, nor could a single glint of melted metal be discovered, though Sam, Jim and Brownie dived with a will and almost tore the charred insides out of the _Libertad_.