tter what flag she flies. You had
best be moving to meet them: the village isn't awake yet."

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 halliards hung
from it with a little bundle of bunting at the end of one of them.

"We must find the King at once," said Gordon. He was terribly excited
and angry. "It is easy enough to see what this means. They are going
through the form of annexing this island to the other lands of the
German government. They are robbing old Ollypybus of what is his. They
have not even given him a silver watch for it."

The King was in his bungalow, facing the plaza. Messenwah was with him,
and an equal number of each of their councils. The common danger had
made them lie down together in peace; but they gave a murmur of relief
as Gordon strode into the room with no ceremony, and greeted them with a
curt wave of the hand.

"Now then, Stedman, be quick," he said. "Explain to them what this
means; tell them that I will protect them; that I am anxious to see
that Ollypybus is not cheated; that we will do all we can for them."

Outside, on the shore, a second boat's crew had landed a group of
officers and a file of marines. They walked in all the dignity of full
dress across the plaza to the flag-pole, and formed in line on the three
sides of it, with the marines facing the sea. The officers, from the
captain with a prayer book in his hand, to the youngest