my message read like
that. Some one has altered it, and now I have got to make these people
here live up to that message, whether they like being massacred and
blown up or not. Don't answer any of those messages except the one
from Dodge; tell him things have quieted down a bit, and that I'll
send four thousand words on the flight of the natives from the
village, and their encampment at the foot of the mountains, and of the
exploring party we have sent out to look for the German vessel; and
now I am going out to make something happen."

Gordon said that he would be gone for two hours at least, and as
Stedman did not feel capable of receiving any more nerve-stirring
messages, he cut off all connection with Octavia by saying, "Good-by
for two hours," and running away from the office. 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
prophecies 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.
It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many
more such shocks as those they gave us this afternoon."

Gordon threw himself down dejectedly in a chair in the office, and
Stedman approached his instrument gingerly, as though it might
explode.

"He's swearing again," he explained, sadly, in answer to Gordon's look
of inquiry. "He wants to know when I am going to stop running away
from the wire. He has a stack of messages to send, he says, but I
guess he'd better wait and take your copy first; don't