STORIES FOR BOYS
[Illustration: “I never saw a King,” Gordon remarked, “and I’m sure I
never expected to see one sitting on a log in the rain.”]
STORIES FOR BOYS
BY
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
[Illustration]
THIS BOOK OF BOYS’ STORIES IS DEDICATED
TO MY BROTHER
C. BELMONT DAVIS
WHO WAS A BOY ABOUT THE SAME TIME I WAS
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING 1
MIDSUMMER PIRATES 88
RICHARD CARR’S BABY 117
THE GREAT TRI-CLUB TENNIS TOURNAMENT 130
THE JUMP AT COREY’S SLIP 166
THE VAN BIBBER BASEBALL CLUB 177
THE STORY OF A JOCKEY 184
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
“I NEVER SAW A KING,” GORDON REMARKED,
“AND I’M SURE I NEVER EXPECTED TO SEE
ONE SITTING ON A LOG IN THE RAIN,” _Frontispiece_
PAGE
“ABOUT TIME TO BEGIN ON THE GOATS!” 44
TO THE NORTH TOWERED THREE MAGNIFICENT
HULLS OF THE WHITE SQUADRON, 86
“WHICH DO I THINK WILL WIN?” SAID THE
VETERAN BOAT-BUILDER OF MANASQUAN, 96
AS THE TWO PRESCOTTS SCRAMBLED UP ON THE
GUNWALE OF THEIR BOAT, THE DEFEATED
CREW SALUTED THEM WITH CHEERS, 112
HE TOOK A LARGE ROLL OF BILLS FROM HIS
POCKET AND COUNTED THEM, 198
THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING.
The Old Time Journalist will tell you the best reporter is the one
who works his way up. He will hold that the only way to start is as a
printer’s devil, or as an office boy, to learn in time to set type, to
graduate from a compositor into a stenographer, and as a stenographer
take down speeches at public meetings, and so finally grow into a real
reporter, with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking
acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even excepting
Police Captains.
That is the old time journalist’s idea of it. That is the way he was
trained, and that is why he is reporting still. If you train up a youth
in this way, he will go into reporting with too full a knowledge of
the newspaper business, with no illusions concerning it, and with no
ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen and justifiable impression that
he is not paid enough for what he does. And he will only do what he
is paid to do. Now, you cannot pay a good reporter for what he does,
because he does not work for pay. He works for his paper. He gives his
time, his health, his brains, his sleeping hours, and his eating hours,
and life sometimes, to get news for it. He thinks the sun rises only
that men may have light by which to read it. But if he has been in a
newspaper office from his youth up, he finds out before he becomes a
reporter that this is not so, and loses his real value. He should come
right out of the University where he has been doing “campus notes”
for the college weekly, and be pitchforked out into city work without
knowing whether the Battery is at Harlem or Hunter’s Point, and with
the idea that he is a Moulder of Public Opinion and that the Power of
the Press is greater than the Power of Money, and that the few lines
he writes are of more value in the Editor’s eyes than the column of
advertising on the last page, which they are not. After three years--it
is sometimes longer, sometimes not so long--he finds out that he has
given his nerves and his youth and his enthusiasm in exchange for a
general fund of miscellaneous knowledge, the opportunity of personal
encounter with all the greatest and most remarkable men and events that
have risen in those three years, and a great readiness of resource,
and patience. He will find that he has crowded the experiences of the
lifetime of the ordinary young business man, doctor, or lawyer, or man
about town, into three short years; that he has learnt to think and to
act quickly, to be patient and unmoved when every one else has lost his
head, actually or figuratively speaking; to write as fast as another
man can talk, and to be able to talk with authority on matters of which
other men do not venture even to think until they have read what he has
written with a copy-boy at his elbow on the night previous.
It is necessary for you to know this, that you may understand what
manner of young man young Albert Gordon was.
Young Gordon had been a reporter just three years. He had left Yale
when his last living relative died, and taken the morning train for
New York, where they had promised him reportorial work on one of the
innumerable Greatest New York Dailies. He arrived at the office at
noon, and was sent back over the same road on which he had just come,
to Spuyten Duyvil, where a train had been wrecked and about everybody
of consequence to suburban New York killed. One of the old reporters
hurried him to the office again with his “copy,” and after he had
delivered that, he was sent to the Tombs to talk French to a man in
Murderer’s Row, who could not talk anything else, but who had shown
some international skill in the use of a jimmy. And at eight, he
covered a flower show in Madison Square Garden; and at eleven was sent
over the Brooklyn Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at
the insurance.
He went to bed at one, and dreamt of shattered locomotives, human
beings lying still with blankets over them, rows of cells, and banks of
beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass band
in the gallery. He decided when he awoke the next morning that he had
entered upon a picturesque and exciting career, and as one day followed
another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more and more
devoted to it. He was eighteen then, and he was now twenty-one, and in
that time had become a great reporter, and had been to Presidential
conventions in Chicago, revolutions in Hayti, Indian outbreaks on the
Plains, and midnight meetings of moonlighters in Tennessee, and had
seen what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and fever could do in great
cities, and had contradicted the President, and borrowed matches from
burglars. And now he thought he would like to rest and breathe a bit,
and not to work again unless as a war correspondent or as a novelist.
He had always had enough money of his own to keep him alive, and so he
was in consequence independent of what the paper gave him. The only
obstacle to his becoming a great war correspondent lay in the fact that
there was no war, and a war correspondent without a war is about as
absurd an individual as a general without an army. He read the papers
every morning on the elevated trains for war clouds; but though there
were many war clouds, they always drifted apart, and peace smiled
again. This was very disappointing to young Gordon, and he was more and
more keenly discouraged.
And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to write his
novel. It was to be a novel of New York life, and he wanted a quiet
place in which to work on it. He was already making inquiries among
the suburban residents of his acquaintance for just such a quiet spot,
when he received an offer to go to the Island of Opeki in the South
Pacific Ocean, as secretary to the American consul to that place. The
gentleman who had been appointed by the President to act as consul
at Opeki, was Captain Leonard T. Travis, a veteran of the Civil War,
who had contracted a severe attack of rheumatism while camping out at
night in the dew, and who on account of this souvenir of his efforts
to save the Union had allowed the Union he had saved to support him in
one office or another ever since. He had met young Gordon at a dinner,
and had had the presumption to ask him to serve as his secretary, and
Gordon, much to his surprise, had accepted his offer. The idea of a
quiet life in the tropics with new and beautiful surroundings, and with
nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, and to write his
novel besides, seemed to Albert to be just what he wanted; and though
he did not know or care much for his superior officer, he agreed to go
with him promptly, and proceeded to bid good by to his friends and to
make his preparations. Captain Travis was so delighted with getting
such a clever young gentleman for his secretary, that he referred to
him to his friends as “my attaché of legation”; nor did he lessen
that gentleman’s dignity by telling any one that the attaché’s salary
was to be $500 a year. His own salary was only $1500; and though his
brother-in-law, Senator Rainsford, tried his best to get it raised,
he was unsuccessful. The consulship to Opeki was instituted early in
the ’50’s, to get rid of and reward a third or fourth cousin of the
President’s, whose services during the campaign were important, but
whose after-presence was embarrassing. He had been created consul to
Opeki as being more distant and unaccessible than any other known
spot, and had lived and died there; and so little was known of the
island, and so difficult was communication with it, that no one knew
he was dead, until Captain Travis, in his hungry haste for office,
had uprooted the sad fact. Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had a
secondary reason for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician had told him
to go to some warm climate for his rheumatism, and in accepting the
consulship his object was rather to follow out his doctor’s orders at
his country’s expense, than to serve his country at the expense of his
rheumatism.
Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that
it was situated about one hundred miles from the Island of Octavia,
which island, in turn, was simply described as a coaling-station three
hundred miles from the coast of California. Steamers from San Francisco
to Yokohama stopped every third week at Octavia, and that was all
either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of their new home.
This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to stay only as long
as he liked it, and to return to the States within a few months if he
found such a change of plan desirable.
As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he thought
it would be a good plan to furnish himself with a supply of articles
with which to trade with the native Opekians, and for this purpose he
purchased a large quantity of brass rods, because he had read that
Stanley did so, and added to these, brass curtain chains and about
two hundred leaden medals similar to those sold by street pedlers
during the Constitutional Centennial celebration in New York City,
and which were cheap. He also collected even more beautiful but less
expensive decorations for Christmas trees, at a wholesale house on Park
Row. These he hoped to exchange for furs or feathers or weapons, or
for whatever other curious and valuable trophies the Island of Opeki
boasted. He already pictured his room on his return hung fantastically
with crossed spears and boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly
idols. His friends told him he was doing a very foolish thing, and
argued that once out of the newspaper world, it would be hard to regain
his place in it. But he thought the novel he would write while lost to
the world at Opeki would serve to make up for his temporary absence
from it, and he expressly and impressively stipulated that the editor
should wire him if there was a war.
Captain Travis and his secretary crossed the continent without
adventure, and took passage from San Francisco on the first steamer
that touched Octavia. They reached that island in three days, and
learned with some concern that there was no regular communication with
Opeki, and that it would be necessary to charter a sail-boat for the
trip. Two fishermen agreed to take them and their trunks, and to get
them to their destination within sixteen hours if the wind held good.
It was a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with calm, relentless
persistence from what was apparently a clear sky; the wind tossed the
waves as high as the mast and made Captain Travis ill. There was no
deck to the big boat, and they were forced to huddle up under pieces of
canvas, and talked but little. Captain Travis complained of frequent
twinges of rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale at the
empty waste of water.
“If I’ve got to serve a term of imprisonment on a rock in the middle
of the ocean for four years,” he said, “I might just as well have done
something first, to deserve it. This is a pretty way to treat a man
who bled for his country. This is gratitude, this is.” Albert pulled
heavily on his pipe, and wiped the rain and spray from his face and
smiled.
“Oh, it won’t be so bad when we get there,” he said; “they say these
Southern people are always hospitable, and the whites will be glad to
see any one from the States.”
“There will be a round of diplomatic dinners,” said the consul, with an
attempt at cheerfulness. “I have brought two uniforms to wear at them.”
It was seven o’clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and one of
the black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a little low line
on the horizon.
“Opeki,” he said. The line grew in length until it proved to be an
island with great mountains rising to the clouds, and as they drew
nearer and nearer, showed a level coast running back to the foot of
the mountains and covered with a forest of palms. They next made out a
village of thatched huts around a grassy square, and at some distance
from the village a wooden structure with a tin roof.
“I wonder where the town is,” asked the consul, with a nervous glance
at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he saw was the town.
“That?” gasped the consul; “is that where all the people on the island
live?” The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were other
natives up in the mountains, but that they were bad men who fought
and ate each other. The consul and his attaché of legation gazed at
the mountains with unspoken misgivings. They were quite near now, and
could see an immense crowd of men and women, all of them black, and
clad but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them. They seemed
greatly excited and ran in and out of the huts, and up and down the
beach, as wildly as so many black ants. But in the front of the group
they distinguished three men who they could see were white, though
they were clothed like the others, simply in a shirt and a short pair
of trousers. Two of these three suddenly sprang away on a run and
disappeared among the palm trees; but the third one, who had recognized
the American flag in the halyards, threw his straw hat in the water and
began turning handsprings over the sand.
“That young gentleman, at least,” said Albert, gravely, “seems pleased
to see us.”
A dozen of the natives sprang into the water and came wading and
swimming towards them, and grinning and shouting and swinging their
arms.
“I don’t think it’s quite safe, do you?” said the consul, looking out
wildly to the open sea. “You see, they don’t know who I am.”
A great black giant threw one arm over the gunwale and shouted
something that sounded as if it were spelt Owah, Owah, as the boat
carried him through the surf.
“How do you do?” said Gordon, doubtfully. The boat shook the giant
off under the wave and beached itself so suddenly that the American
consul was thrown forward to his knees. Gordon did not wait to pick him
up, but jumped out and shook hands with the young man who had turned
handsprings, while the natives gathered about them in a circle and
chatted and laughed in delighted excitement.
“I’m awful glad to see you,” said the young man, eagerly. “My name’s
Stedman. I’m from New Haven, Connecticut. Where are you from?”
“New York,” said Albert. “This,” he added, pointing solemnly to Captain
Travis, who was still on his knees in the boat, “is the American consul
to Opeki.” The American consul to Opeki gave a wild look at Mr. Stedman
of New Haven and at the natives.
“See here, young man,” he gasped, “is this all there is of Opeki?”
“The American consul?” said young Stedman, with a gasp of amazement,
and looking from Albert to Captain Travis. “Why, I never supposed they
would send another here; the last one died about fifteen years ago, and
there hasn’t been one since. I’ve been living in the consul’s office
with the Bradleys, but I’ll move out, of course. I’m sure I’m awfully
glad to see you. It’ll make it more pleasant for me.”
“Yes,” said Captain Travis, bitterly, as he lifted his rheumatic leg
over the boat; “that’s why we came.”
Mr. Stedman did not notice this. He was too much pleased to be anything
but hospitable. “You are soaking wet, aren’t you?” he said; “and
hungry, I guess. You come right over to the consul’s office and get on
some other things.”
He turned to the natives and gave some rapid orders in their language,
and some of them jumped into the boat at this, and began lifting out
the trunks, and others ran off towards a large, stout old native, who
was sitting gravely on a log, smoking, with the rain beating unnoticed
on his gray hair.
“They’ve gone to tell the King,” said Stedman; “but you both better get
something to eat first, and then I’ll be happy to present you properly.”
“The King,” said Captain Travis, with some awe; “is there a king?”
“I never saw a king,” Gordon remarked, “and I’m sure I never expected
to see one sitting on a log in the rain.”
“He’s a very good King,” said Stedman, confidentially; “and though
you mightn’t think it to look at him, he’s a terrible stickler for
etiquette and form. After supper he’ll give you an audience; and if you
have any tobacco, you had better give him some as a present, and you’d
better say it’s from the President: he doesn’t like to take presents
from common people, he’s so proud. The only reason he borrows mine is
because he thinks I’m the President’s son.”
“What makes him think that?” demanded the consul, with some shortness.
Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at the consul and at Albert, and
said that he guessed some one must have told him. The consul’s office
was divided into four rooms with an open court in the middle, filled
with palms, and watered somewhat unnecessarily by a fountain.
“I made that,” said Stedman, in a modest off-hand way. “I made it out
of hollow bamboo reeds connected with a spring. And now I’m making one
for the King. He saw this and had a lot of bamboo sticks put up all
over the town, without any underground connections, and couldn’t make
out why the water wouldn’t spurt out of them. And because mine spurts,
he thinks I’m a magician.”
“I suppose,” grumbled the consul, “some one told him that, too.”
“I suppose so,” said Mr. Stedman, uneasily.
There was a veranda around the consul’s office, and inside, the walls
were hung with skins, and pictures from illustrated papers, and there
was a good deal of bamboo furniture, and four broad, cool-looking beds.
The place was as clean as a kitchen. “I made the furniture,” said
Stedman, “and the Bradleys keep the place in order.”
“Who are the Bradleys?” asked Albert.
“The Bradleys are those two men you saw with me,” said Stedman; “they
deserted from a British man-of-war that stopped here for coal, and
they act as my servants. One is Bradley, Sr., and the other, Bradley,
Jr.”
“Then vessels do stop here, occasionally?” the consul said, with a
pleased smile.
“Well, not often,” said Stedman. “Not so very often; about once a year.
The _Nelson_ thought this was Octavia, and put off again as soon as
she found out her mistake, and the Bradleys took to the bush, and the
boat’s crew couldn’t find them. When they saw your flag, they thought
you might mean to send them back, so they ran off to hide again:
they’ll be back, though, when they get hungry.”
The supper young Stedman spread for his guests, as he still treated
them, was very refreshing and very good. There was cold fish and pigeon
pie, and a hot omelet filled with mushrooms and olives and tomatoes
and onions all sliced up together, and strong black coffee. After
supper, Stedman went off to see the King and came back in a little
while to say that his Majesty would give them an audience the next day
after breakfast. “It is too dark now,” Stedman explained; “and it’s
raining so that they can’t make the street lamps burn. Did you happen
to notice our lamps? I invented them; but they don’t work very well,
yet. I’ve got the right idea, though, and I’ll soon have the town
illuminated all over, whether it rains or not.”
The consul had been very silent and indifferent, during supper, to all
around him. Now he looked up with some show of interest.
“How much longer is it going to rain, do you think?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Stedman, critically. “Not more than two
months, I should say.” The consul rubbed his rheumatic leg and sighed,
but said nothing.
The Bradleys turned up about ten o’clock, and came in very sheepishly,
pulling at their forelocks and scraping with their left foot. The
consul had gone off to pay the boatmen who had brought them, and
Albert in his absence assured the sailors that there was not the
least danger of their being sent away. Then he turned into one of the
beds, and Stedman took one in another room, leaving the room he had
occupied heretofore, for the consul. As he was saying good night,
Albert suggested that he had not yet told them how he came to be on
a deserted island; but Stedman only laughed and said that that was a
long story, and that he would tell him all about it in the morning. So
Albert went off to bed without waiting for the consul to return, and
fell asleep, wondering at the strangeness of his new life, and assuring
himself that if the rain only kept up, he would have his novel finished
in a month.
The sun was shining brightly when he awoke, and the palm trees outside
were nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. From the court came the
odor of strange flowers, and from the window he could see the ocean
brilliantly blue, and with the sun coloring the spray that beat against
the coral reefs on the shore.
“Well, the consul can’t complain of this,” he said, with a laugh of
satisfaction; and pulling on a bath-robe, he stepped into the next room
to awaken Captain Travis. But the room was quite empty, and the bed
undisturbed. The consul’s trunk remained just where it had been placed
near the door, and on it lay a large sheet of foolscap, with writing on
it, and addressed at the top to Albert Gordon. The handwriting was the
consul’s. Albert picked it up and read it with much anxiety. It began
abruptly:--
“The fishermen who brought us to this forsaken spot tell me that it
rains here six months in the year, and that this is the first month.
I came here to serve my country, for which I fought and bled, but I
did not come here to die of rheumatism and pneumonia. I can serve my
country better by staying alive; and whether it rains or not, I don’t
like it. I have been grossly deceived, and I am going back. Indeed,
by the time you get this, I will be on my return trip, as I intend
leaving with the men who brought us here as soon as they can get the
sail up. My cousin, Senator Rainsford, can fix it all right with the
President, and can have me recalled in proper form after I get back.
But of course it would not do for me to leave my post with no one to
take my place, and no one could be more ably fitted to do so than
yourself; so I feel no compunctions at leaving you behind. I hereby,
therefore, accordingly appoint you my substitute with full power to
act, to collect all fees, sign all papers, and attend to all matters
pertaining to your office as American consul, and I trust you will
worthily uphold the name of that country and government which it has
always been my pleasure and duty to serve.
“Your sincere friend and superior officer,
“LEONARD T. TRAVIS.
“P.S. I did not care to disturb you by moving my trunk, so I left it,
and you can make what use you please of whatever it contains, as I
shall not want tropical garments where I am going. What you will need
most, I think, is a waterproof and umbrella.
“P.S. Look out for that young man Stedman. He is too inventive. I
hope you will like your high office; but as for me, I am satisfied
with little old New York. Opeki is just a bit too far from
civilization to suit me.”
Albert held the letter before him and read it over again before he
moved. Then he jumped to the window. The boat was gone, and there was
not a sign of it on the horizon.
“The miserable old hypocrite!” he cried, half angry and half laughing.
“If he thinks I am going to stay here alone he is very greatly
mistaken. And yet, why not?” he asked. He stopped soliloquizing and
looked around him, thinking rapidly. As he stood there, Stedman came in
from the other room, fresh and smiling from his morning’s bath.
“Good morning,” he said, “where’s the consul?”
“The consul,” said Albert, gravely, “is before you. In me you see the
American consul to Opeki.
“Captain Travis,” Albert explained, “has returned to the United States.
I suppose he feels that he can best serve his country by remaining on
the spot. In case of another war, now, for instance, he would be there
to save it again.”
“And what are you going to do?” asked Stedman, anxiously. “You will not
run away too, will you?”
Albert said that he intended to remain where he was and perform his
consular duties, to appoint him his secretary of legation, and to
elevate the United States in the opinion of the Opekians above all
other nations.
“They may not think much of the United States in Russia,” he said; “but
we are going to teach Opeki that America is first on the map, and there
is no second.”
“I’m sure it’s very good of you to make me your secretary,” said
Stedman, with some pride. “I hope I won’t make any mistakes. What are
the duties of a consul’s secretary?”
“That,” said Albert, “I do not know. But you are rather good at
inventing, so you can invent a few. That should be your first duty, and
you should attend to it at once. I will have trouble enough finding
work for myself. Your salary is $500 a year; and now,” he continued,
briskly, “we want to prepare for this reception. We can tell the King
that Travis was just a guard of honor for the trip, and that I have
sent him back to tell the President of my safe arrival. That will
keep the President from getting anxious. There is nothing,” continued
Albert, “like a uniform to impress people who live in the tropics, and
Travis, it so happens, has two in his trunk. He intended to wear them
on State occasions, and as I inherit the trunk and all that is in it, I
intend to wear one of the uniforms, and you can have the other. But I
have first choice, because I am consul.”
Captain Travis’s diplomatic outfit consisted of one full dress and
one undress United States uniform. Albert put on the dress coat over
a pair of white flannel trousers, and looked remarkably brave and
handsome. Stedman, who was only eighteen and quite thin, did not appear
so well, until Albert suggested his padding out his chest and shoulders
with towels. This made him rather warm, but helped his general
appearance.
“The two Bradleys must dress up too,” said Albert. “I think they ought
to act as a guard of honor, don’t you? The only things I have are
blazers and jerseys; but it doesn’t much matter what they wear, as long
as they dress alike.”
He accordingly called in the two Bradleys, and gave them each a pair of
the captain’s rejected white duck trousers, and a blue jersey apiece,
with a big white Y on it.
“The students of Yale gave me that,” he said to the younger Bradley,
“in which to play foot-ball, and a great man gave me the other. His
name is Walter Camp; and if you rip or soil that jersey, I’ll send you
back to England in irons; so be careful.”
Stedman gazed at his companions in their different costumes,
doubtfully. “It reminds me,” he said, “of private theatricals. Of the
time our church choir played ‘Pinafore.’”
“Yes,” assented Albert; “but I don’t think we look quite gay enough. I
tell you what we need,--medals. You never saw a diplomat without a lot
of decorations and medals.”
“Well, I can fix that,” Stedman said. “I’ve got a bag full. I used to
be the fastest bicycle-rider in Connecticut, and I’ve got all my prizes
with me.”
Albert said doubtfully that that wasn’t exactly the sort of medal he
meant.
“Perhaps not,” returned Stedman, as he began fumbling in his trunk;
“but the King won’t know the difference. He couldn’t tell a cross of
the Legion of Honor from a medal for the tug of war.”
So the bicycle medals, of which Stedman seemed to have an innumerable
quantity, were strung in profusion over Albert’s uniform, and in a
lesser quantity over Stedman’s; while a handful of leaden ones, those
sold on the streets for the Constitutional Centennial, with which
Albert had provided himself, were wrapped up in a red silk handkerchief
for presentation to the King: with them Albert placed a number of brass
rods and brass chains, much to Stedman’s delighted approval.
“That is a very good idea,” he said. “Democratic simplicity is the
right thing at home, of course; but when you go abroad and mix with
crowned heads, you want to show them that you know what’s what.”
“Well,” said Albert, gravely, “I sincerely hope this crowned head don’t
know what’s what. If he reads ‘Connecticut Agricultural State Fair.
One-mile bicycle race. First Prize,’ on this badge, when we are trying
to make him believe it’s a war medal, it may hurt his feelings.”
Bradley, Jr., went ahead to announce the approach of the American
embassy, which he did with so much manner that the King deferred the
audience a half-hour, in order that he might better prepare to receive
his visitors. When the audience did take place, it attracted the entire
population to the green spot in front of the King’s palace, and their
delight and excitement over the appearance of the visitors was sincere
and hearty. The King was too polite to appear much surprised, but he
showed his delight over his presents as simply and openly as a child.
Thrice he insisted on embracing Albert, and kissing him three times
on the forehead, which, Stedman assured him in a side whisper, was a
great honor; an honor which was not extended to the secretary, although
he was given a necklace of animals’ claws instead, with which he was
better satisfied.
After this reception, the embassy marched back to the consul’s office,
surrounded by an immense number of the natives, some of whom ran ahead
and looked back at them, and crowded so close on them that the two
Bradleys had to poke at the nearest ones with their guns. The crowd
remained outside the office even after the procession of four had
disappeared, and cheered. This suggested to Gordon that this would
be a good time to make a speech, which he accordingly did, Stedman
translating it, sentence by sentence. At the conclusion of this
effort, Albert distributed a number of brass rings among the married
men present, which they placed on whichever finger fitted best, and
departed delighted.
Albert had wished to give the rings to the married women, but Stedman
pointed out to him that it would be much cheaper to give them to the
married men; for while one woman could only have one husband, one man
could have at least six wives.
“And now, Stedman,” said Albert, after the mob had gone, “tell me what
you are doing on this island.”
“It’s a very simple story,” Stedman said. “I am the representative,
or agent, or operator, for the Yokohama Cable Company. The Yokohama
Cable Company is a company started in San Francisco, for the purpose
of laying a cable to Yokohama. It is a stock company; and though
it started out very well, the stock has fallen very low. Between
ourselves, it is not worth over three or four cents. When the officers
of the company found out that no one would buy their stock, and that no
one believed in them or their scheme, they laid a cable to Octavia, and
extended it on to this island. Then they said they had run out of ready
money, and would wait until they got more before laying their cable
any further. I do not think they ever will lay it any further, but
that is none of my business. My business is to answer cable messages
from San Francisco, so that the people who visit the home office can
see at least a part of the cable is working. That sometimes impresses
them, and they buy stock. There is another chap over in Octavia, who
relays all my messages and all my replies to those messages that come
to me through him from San Francisco. They never send a message unless
they have brought some one to the office whom they want to impress,
and who, they think, has money to invest in the Y. C. C. stock, and so
we never go near the wire, except at three o’clock every afternoon.
And then generally only to say ‘How are you?’ or ‘It’s raining,’ or
something like that. I’ve been saying ‘It’s raining’ now for the last
three months, but to-day I will say that the new consul has arrived.
That will be a pleasant surprise for the chap in Octavia, for he must
be tired hearing about the weather. He generally answers ‘Here too,’
or ‘So you said,’ or something like that. I don’t know what he says to
the home office. He’s brighter than I am, and that’s why they put him
between the two ends. He can see that the messages are transmitted more
fully and more correctly, in a way to please possible subscribers.”
“Sort of copy editor,” suggested Albert.
“Yes, something of that sort, I fancy,” said Stedman.
They walked down to the little shed on the shore, where the Y. C. C.
office was placed, at three that day, and Albert watched Stedman send
off his message with much interest. The “chap at Octavia,” on being
informed that the American consul had arrived at Opeki, inquired
somewhat disrespectfully, “Is it a life sentence?”
“What does he mean by that?” asked Albert.
“I suppose,” said his secretary, doubtfully, “that he thinks it a sort
of a punishment to be sent to Opeki. I hope you don’t grow to think so.”
“Opeki is all very well,” said Gordon, “or it will be when we get
things going our way.”
As they walked back to the office, Albert noticed a brass cannon,
perched on a rock at the entrance to the harbor. This had been put
there by the last consul, but had not been fired for many years. Albert
immediately ordered the two Bradleys to get it in order, and to rig up
a flag-pole beside it, for one of his American flags, which they were
to salute every night when they lowered it at sundown.
“And when we are not using it,” he said, “the King can borrow it to
celebrate with, if he doesn’t impose on us too often. The royal salute
ought to be twenty-one guns, I think; but that would use up too much
powder, so he will have to content himself with two.”
“Did you notice,” asked Stedman that night, as they sat on the veranda
of the consul’s house, in the moonlight, “how the people bowed to us as
we passed?”
“Yes,” Albert said he had noticed it. “Why?”
“Well, they never saluted me,” replied Stedman. “That sign of respect
is due to the show we made at the reception.”
“It is due to us, in any event,” said the consul, severely. “I tell
you, my secretary, that we, as the representatives of the United States
government, must be properly honored on this island. We must become a
power. And we must do so without getting into trouble with the King. We
must make them honor him, too, and then as we push him up, we will push
ourselves up at the same time.”
“They don’t think much of consuls in Opeki,” said Stedman, doubtfully.
“You see the last one was a pretty poor sort. He brought the office
into disrepute, and it wasn’t really until I came and told them what a
fine country the United States was, that they had any opinion of it at
all. Now we must change all that.”
“That is just what we will do,” said Albert. “We will transform Opeki
into a powerful and beautiful city. We will make these people work.
They must put up a palace for the King, and lay out streets, and build
wharves, and drain the town properly, and light it. I haven’t seen this
patent lighting apparatus of yours, but you had better get to work at
it at once, and I’ll persuade the King to appoint you commissioner of
highways and gas, with authority to make his people toil. And I,” he
cried, in free enthusiasm, “will organize a navy and a standing army.
Only,” he added, with a relapse of interest, “there isn’t anybody to
fight.”
“There isn’t?” said Stedman, grimly, with a scornful smile. “You just
go hunt up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with your standing army once,
and you’ll get all the fighting you want.”
“The Hillmen?” said Albert.
“The Hillmen are the natives that live up there in the hills,” Stedman
said, nodding his head towards the three high mountains at the other
end of the island, that stood out blackly against the purple, moonlit
sky. “There are nearly as many of them as there are Opekians, and they
hunt and fight for a living and for the pleasure of it. They have an
old rascal named Messenwah for a king, and they come down here about
once every three months, and tear things up.” Albert sprang to his feet.
“Oh, they do, do they?” he said, staring up at the mountain tops.
“They come down here and tear up things, do they? Well, I think we’ll
stop that, I think we’ll stop that! I don’t care how many there
are. I’ll get the two Bradleys to tell me all they know about the
drilling, to-morrow morning, and we’ll drill these Opekians, and have
sham battles, and attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot of wild,
howling Zulus out of them. And when the Hillmen come down to pay their
quarterly visit, they’ll go back again on a run. At least some of them
will,” he added ferociously. “Some of them will stay right here.”
“Dear me, dear me!” said Stedman, with awe; “you are a born fighter,
aren’t you?”
“Well, you wait and see,” said Gordon; “may be I am. I haven’t studied
tactics of war and the history of battles, so that I might be a great
war correspondent, without learning something. And there is only one
king on this island, and that is old Ollypybus himself. And I’ll go
over and have a talk with him about it to-morrow.”
Young Stedman walked up and down the length of the veranda, in and out
of the moonlight, with his hands in his pockets, and his head on his
chest. “You have me all stirred up, Gordon,” he said; “you seem so
confident and bold, and you’re not so much older than I am, either.”
“My training has been different; that’s all,” said the reporter.
“Yes,” Stedman said bitterly; “I have been sitting in an office ever
since I left school, sending news over a wire or a cable, and you have
been out in the world, gathering it.”
“And now,” said Gordon, smiling, and putting his arm around the other
boy’s shoulders, “we are going to make news ourselves.”
“There is one thing I want to say to you before you turn in,” said
Stedman. “Before you suggest all these improvements on Ollypybus, you
must remember that he has ruled absolutely here for twenty years,
and that he does not think much of consuls. He has only seen your
predecessor and yourself. He likes you because you appeared with such
dignity, and because of the presents; but if I were you, I wouldn’t
suggest these improvements as coming from yourself.”
“I don’t understand,” said Gordon; “who could they come from?”
“Well,” said Stedman, “if you will allow me to advise,--and you see I
know these people pretty well,--I would have all these suggestions come
from the President direct.”
“The President!” exclaimed Gordon; “but how? what does the President
know or care about Opeki? and it would take so long--oh, I see, the
cable. Is that what you have been doing?” he asked.
“Well, only once,” said Stedman, guiltily; “that was when he wanted
to turn me out of the consul’s office, and I had a cable that very
afternoon, from the President, ordering me to stay where I was.
Ollypybus doesn’t understand the cable, of course, but he knows that
it sends messages; and sometimes I pretend to send messages for him to
the President; but he began asking me to tell the President to come and
pay him a visit, and I had to stop it.”
“I’m glad you told me,” said Gordon. “The President shall begin to
cable to-morrow. He will need an extra appropriation from Congress to
pay for his private cablegrams alone.”
“And there’s another thing,” said Stedman. “In all your plans, you’ve
arranged for the people’s improvement, but not for their amusement; and
they are a peaceful, jolly, simple sort of people, and we must please
them.”
“Have they no games or amusements of their own?” asked Gordon.
“Well, not what we would call games.”
“Very well, then, I’ll teach them base-ball. Foot-ball would be too
warm. But that plaza in front of the King’s bungalow, where his palace
is going to be, is just the place for a diamond. On the whole, though,”
added the consul, after a moment’s reflection, “you’d better attend to
that yourself. I don’t think it becomes my dignity as American consul,
to take off my coat and give lessons to young Opekians in sliding to
bases; do you? No; I think you’d better do that. The Bradleys will help
you, and you had better begin to-morrow. You have been wanting to know
what a secretary of legation’s duties are, and now you know. It’s to
organize base-ball nines. And after you get yours ready,” he added, as
he turned into his room for the night, “I’ll train one that will sweep
yours off the face of the island. For _this_ American consul can pitch
three curves.”
The best-laid plans of men go far astray, sometimes, and the great and
beautiful city that was to rise on the coast of Opeki was not built in
a day. Nor was it ever built. For before the Bradleys could mark out
the foul-lines for the base-ball field on the plaza, or teach their
standing army the goose step, or lay bamboo pipes for the water-mains,
or clear away the cactus for the extension of the King’s palace, the
Hillmen paid Opeki their quarterly visit.
Albert had called on the King the next morning, with Stedman as his
interpreter, as he had said he would, and with maps and sketches, had
shown his Majesty what he proposed to do towards improving Opeki and
ennobling her king, and when the King saw Albert’s free-hand sketches
of wharves with tall ships lying at anchor, and rows of Opekian
warriors with the Bradleys at their head, and the design for his new
palace, and a royal sedan chair, he believed that these things were
already his, and not still only on paper, and he appointed Albert
his Prime Minister of War, Stedman his Minister of Home Affairs, and
selected two of his wisest and oldest subjects to serve them as joint
advisers. His enthusiasm was even greater than Gordon’s, because he did
not appreciate the difficulties. He thought Gordon a semi-god, a worker
of miracles, and urged the putting up of a monument to him at once
in the public plaza, to which Albert objected, on the ground that it
would be too suggestive of an idol; and to which Stedman also objected,
but for the less unselfish reason that it would “be in the way of the
pitcher’s box.”
They were feverishly discussing all these great changes, and Stedman
was translating as rapidly as he could translate, the speeches of four
different men,--for the two counsellors had been called in, all of whom
wanted to speak at once,--when there came from outside, a great shout,
and the screams of women, and the clashing of iron, and the pattering
footsteps of men running.
As they looked at one another in startled surprise, a native ran into
the room, followed by Bradley, Jr., and threw himself down before the
King. While he talked, beating his hands and bowing before Ollypybus,
Bradley, Jr., pulled his forelock to the consul, and told how this man
lived on the far outskirts of the village; how he had been captured
while out hunting, by a number of the Hillmen; and how he had escaped
to tell the people that their old enemies were on the war path again,
and rapidly approaching the village.
Outside, the women were gathering in the plaza, with the children about
them, and the men were running from hut to hut, warning their fellows,
and arming themselves with spears and swords, and the native bows and
arrows.
“They might have waited until we had that army trained,” said Gordon,
in a tone of the keenest displeasure. “Tell me, quick, what do they
generally do when they come?”
“Steal all the cattle and goats, and a woman or two, and set fire to
the huts in the outskirts,” replied Stedman.
“Well, we must stop them,” said Gordon, jumping up. “We must take out
a flag of truce and treat with them. They must be kept off until I
have my army in working order. It is most inconvenient. If they had
only waited two months, now, or six weeks even, we could have done
something; but now we must make peace. Tell the King we are going out
to fix things with them, and tell him to keep off his warriors until he
learns whether we succeed or fail.”
“But, Gordon!” gasped Stedman. “Albert! You don’t understand. Why,
man, this isn’t a street fight or a cane rush. They’ll stick you
full of spears, dance on your body, and eat you, maybe. A flag of
truce!--you’re talking nonsense. What do they know of a flag of truce?”
“You’re talking nonsense, too,” said Albert, “and you’re talking to
your superior officer. If you are not with me in this, go back to your
cable, and tell the man in Octavia that it’s a warm day, and that the
sun is shining; but if you’ve any spirit in you,--and I think you
have,--run to the office and get my Winchester rifles, and the two
shot-guns, and my revolvers, and my uniform, and a lot of brass things
for presents, and run all the way there and back. And make time. Play
you’re riding a bicycle at the Agricultural Fair.”
Stedman did not hear this last; for he was already off and away,
pushing through the crowd, and calling on Bradley, Sr., to follow him.
Bradley, Jr., looked at Gordon with eyes that snapped like a dog that
is waiting for his master to throw a stone.
“I can fire a Winchester, sir,” he said. “Old Tom can’t. He’s no good
at long range ’cept with a big gun, sir. Don’t give him the Winchester.
Give it to me, please, sir.”
Albert met Stedman in the plaza, and pulled off his blazer, and put on
Captain Travis’s--now his--uniform coat, and his white pith helmet.
“Now, Jack,” he said, “get up there and tell these people that we
are going out to make peace with these Hillmen, or bring them back
prisoners-of-war. Tell them we are the preservers of their homes and
wives and children; and you, Bradley, take these presents, and young
Bradley, keep close to me, and carry this rifle.”
Stedman’s speech was hot and wild enough to suit a critical and
feverish audience before a barricade in Paris. And when he was through,
Gordon and Bradley punctuated his oration by firing off the two
Winchester rifles in the air, at which the people jumped and fell on
their knees, and prayed to their several gods. The fighting men of the
village followed the four white men to the outskirts, and took up their
stand there as Stedman told them to, and the four walked on over the
roughly hewn road, to meet the enemy.
Gordon walked with Bradley, Jr., in advance. Stedman and old Tom
Bradley followed close behind, with the two shot-guns, and the presents
in a basket.
“Are these Hillmen used to guns?” asked Gordon. Stedman said no, they
were not.
“This shot-gun of mine is the only one on the island,” he explained,
“and we never came near enough them, before, to do anything with it.
It only carries a hundred yards. The Opekians never make any show of
resistance. They are quite content if the Hillmen satisfy themselves
with the outlying huts, as long as they leave them and the town alone;
so they seldom come to close quarters.”
The four men walked on for a quarter of an hour or so, in silence,
peering eagerly on every side; but it was not until they had left the
woods and marched out into the level stretch of grassy country, that
they came upon the enemy. The Hillmen were about forty in number, and
were as savage and ugly-looking giants as any in a picture book. They
had captured a dozen cows and goats, and were driving them on before
them, as they advanced further upon the village. When they saw the four
men, they gave a mixed chorus of cries and yells, and some of them
stopped, and others ran forward, shaking their spears, and shooting
their broad arrows into the ground before them. A tall, gray-bearded,
muscular old man, with a skirt of feathers about him, and necklaces of
bones and animals’ claws around his bare chest, ran in front of them,
and seemed to be trying to make them approach more slowly.
“Is that Messenwah?” asked Gordon.
“Yes,” said Stedman; “he is trying to keep them back. I don’t believe
he ever saw a white man before.”
“Stedman,” said Albert, speaking quickly, “give your gun to Bradley,
and go forward with your arms in the air, and waving your handkerchief,
and tell them in their language that the King is coming. If they go at
you, Bradley and I will kill a goat or two, to show them what we can do
with the rifles; and if that don’t stop them, we will shoot at their
legs; and if that don’t stop them--I guess you’d better come back, and
we’ll all run.”
Stedman looked at Albert, and Albert looked at Stedman, and neither of
them winced or flinched.
“Is this another of my secretary’s duties?” asked the younger boy.