and magnificent. But in his turn the president did not agree.

He rose. He was a large man. Billy wondered he had not previously
noticed how very large he was.

"To-night at nine o'clock," he said, "the German boat departs for New
York." As though aiming a pistol, he raised his arm and at Billy pointed
a finger. "If, after she departs, you are found in Port-au-Prince, you
will be shot!"

The audience-chamber was hung with great mirrors in frames of tarnished
gilt. In these Billy saw himself reproduced in a wavering line of
Billies that, like the ghost of Banquo, stretched to the disappearing
point. Of such images there was an army, but of the real Billy, as he
was acutely conscious, there was but one. Among the black faces scowling
from the doorways he felt the odds were against him. Without making a
reply he passed out between the racks of rusty muskets in the anteroom,
between the two Gatling guns guarding the entrance, and on the palace
steps, in indecision, halted.

As Billy hesitated an officer followed him from the palace and beckoned
to the guard that sat in the bare dust of the Champ de Mars playing
cards for cartridges. Two abandoned the game, and, having received their
orders, picked their muskets from the dust and stood looking expectantly
at Billy.

They were his escort, and it was evident that until nine o'clock, when
he sailed, his movements would be spied upon; his acts reported to the
president.

Such being the situation, Billy determined that his first act to be
reported should be of a nature to cause the president active mental
anguish. With his guard at his heels he went directly to the cable
station, and to the Secretary of State of the United States addressed
this message: "President refuses my pay; threatens shoot; wireless
nearest war-ship proceed here full speed. William Barlow."

Billy and the director of telegraphs, who out of office hours was a
field-marshal, and when not in his shirt-sleeves always appeared in
uniform, went over each word of the cablegram together. When Billy was
assured that the field-marshal had grasped the full significance of it
he took it back and added, "Love to Aunt Maria." The extra words cost
four dollars and eighty cents gold, but, as they suggested ties of blood
between himself and the Secretary of State, they seemed advisable.
In the account-book in which he recorded his daily expenditures Billy
credited the item to "life-insurance."

The revised cable