nce to the cable station to cable _Collier's_ I was returning,
and asked the Chinaman in charge if my name was on his list of those
correspondents who could send copy collect. He said it was; and as I
started to write, he added with grave politeness, "I congratulate you."

For a moment I did not lift my eyes. I felt a chill creeping down my
spine. I knew what sort of a blow was coming, and I was afraid of it.

"Why?" I asked.

The Chinaman bowed and smiled.

"Because you are the first," he said. "You are the only correspondent to
arrive who has seen the battle of Liao-Yang."

The chill turned to a sort of nausea. I knew then what disaster had
fallen, but I cheated myself by pretending the man was misinformed.
"There was no battle," I protested. "The Japanese told me themselves
they had entered Liao-Yang without firing a shot." The cable operator
was a gentleman. He saw my distress, saw what it meant and delivered the
blow with the distaste of a physician who must tell a patient he cannot
recover. Gently, reluctantly, with real sympathy he said, "They have
been fighting for six days."

I went over to a bench, and sat down; and when Lynch and Fox came in and
took one look at me, they guessed what had happened. When the Chinaman
told them of what we had been cheated, they, in their turn, came to the
bench, and collapsed. No one said anything. No one even swore. Six
months we had waited only to miss by three days the greatest battle since
Gettysburg and Sedan. And by a lie.

For six months we had tasted all the indignities of the suspected spy, we
had been prisoners of war, we had been ticket-of-leave men, and it is not
difficult to imagine our glad surprise that same day when we saw in the
harbor the white hull of the cruiser _Cincinnati_ with our flag lifting
at her stern. We did not know a soul on board, but that did not halt us.
As refugees, as fleeing political prisoners, as American slaves escaping
from their Japanese jailers, we climbed over the side and demanded
protection and dinner. We got both. Perhaps it was not good to rest on
that bit of drift-wood, that atom of our country that had floated far
from the mainland and now formed an island of American territory in the
harbor of Chefoo. Perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany
table in the glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by
those eager, sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the
accents of Maine