Confused with the thrashing of the engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking unceasingly: "Cuba libre!" it yelled.

"To hell with Spain!" and he found that the voice was his own.
The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!" For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun served by one man, and that man an American.

It was the first sea-fight of the war.

Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made, warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba, and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida straits napping, smoothly toward Key West.

Carr had just finished reading aloud his account of the engagement.
"You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the proud author.