"
Albert took a cold bath and dressed leisurely; then he made
Bradley, Jr., who had slept through it all, get up breakfast,
and the two young men ate it and drank their coffee
comfortably and with an air of confidence that deceived their
servants, if it did not deceive themselves. But when they
came down the path, smoking and swinging their sticks, and
turned into the plaza, their composure left them like a mask,
and they stopped where they stood. The plaza was enclosed by
the natives gathered in whispering groups, and depressed by
fear and wonder. On one side were crowded all the Messenwah
warriors, unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the
Opekians. In the middle of the plaza some twenty sailors were
busy rearing and bracing a tall flag-staff that they had
shaped from a royal palm, and they did this as unconcernedly
and as contemptuously, and with as much indifference to the
strange groups on either side of them, as though they were
working on a barren coast, with nothing but the startled
sea-gulls about them. As Albert and Stedman came upon the
scene, the flag-pole was in place, and the halyards hung from
it with a little bundle of bunting at the end of one of them.
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