He sat down on a rock on the beach, and
mopped his face with his handkerchief.
"After a man has taken nothing more exciting than weather
reports from Octavia for a year," he soliloquized, "it's a bit
disturbing to have all the crowned heads of Europe and their
secretaries calling upon you for details of a massacre that
never came off."
At the end of two hours Gordon returned from the consulate
with a mass of manuscript in his hand.
"Here's three thousand words," he said, desperately. "I never
wrote more and said less in my life. It will make them weep
at the office. I had to pretend that they knew all that had
happened so far; they apparently do know more than we do, and
I have filled it full of prophesies of more trouble ahead, and
with interviews with myself and the two ex-Kings. The only
news element in it is, that the messengers have returned to
report that the German vessel is not in sight, and that there
is no news. They think she has gone for good. Suppose she
has, Stedman," he groaned, looking at him helplessly, "what
AM I going to do?"
"Well, as for me," said Stedman, "I'm afraid to go near that
cable.
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