heat of midday, the officers lolled in their chairs, waiting for the
moment when they could turn in with some show of decency.

"It's awful!" groaned Colonel McCabe. "This damned hole is enough to
make one childish. I shall go crazy soon." And then he cracked his
standing joke of the evening: "My daily morning prayer is: 'Let it soon
be evening, O God; the morrow will come of itself.'" The jest was
greeted with a dutiful grunt of approval from the occupants of the
various chairs.

Lieutenant Parrington, officer in command of the little gunboat
_Mindoro_, which had been captured from the Spaniards some years ago and
since the departure of the cruiser squadron for Mindanao been put in
commission as substitute guardship in the harbor of Manila, entered the
room and dropped into a chair near Harryman; whereupon the Chinese boy,
almost inaudible in his broad felt shoes, suddenly appeared beside him
and set down the bottle with the pain expeller of the tropics before
him.

"Any cable news, Parrington?" asked Colonel McCabe from the other table.

"Not a word," yawned Parrington; "everything is still smashed. We might
just as well be sitting under the receiver of an air pump."

Harryman noticed that the boy stared at Parrington for a moment as if
startled; but he instantly resumed his Mongolian expression of absolute
innocence, and with his customary grin slipped sinuously through the
door.

Harryman experienced an unpleasant feeling of momentary discomfort, but,
not being able to locate his ideas clearly, he irritably gave up the
attempt to arrive at a solution of this instinctive sensation, mumbling
to himself: "This tropical hell is enough to set one crazy."

"No news of the fleet, either?" began Colonel McCabe again.

"Positively nothing, either by wire or wireless. It seems as though the
rest of the world had sunk into a bottomless pit. Not a single word has
reached us from the outer world for six days."

"Do you believe in the seaquake?" struck in Harryman mockingly.

"Why not?" returned the colonel.

Harryman jumped up, walked over to the window with long strides, threw
out the end of his cigarette and lighted a new one. In the bright light
of the flaming match one could see the commander's features twitching
ironically; he was on the warpath again.

"All the same, it's a queer state of affairs. Our home cable snaps
between Guam and here, the Hong-Kong cable won't work, and even our
island wire has been put