ble and patriotic task.
You are now before the footlights at the center of the world's stage.
Remember that the eyes of all mankind are upon you and that you are my
children. Field-marshal, carry out my orders!"

Count von Balderdash gave some orders in an undertone; the troops
opened on the left, and disclosed a row of prisoners, including several
women, standing bound and blindfolded against a wall, each one at a
distance of several yards from his neighbor. The captain ordered the
detail into position, gave the necessary orders to load, aim, and fire,
and the condemned men and women fell to the ground, each one pierced by
the bullet of his or her near relation.

The great concourse, composed largely of soldiers of the various
foreign armies (for most of them had now been withdrawn from the
Capital and Gin-Sin), looked on with wonder at this spectacle. Sam, who
was standing with the inventor Cope, scanned the faces of the
executioners with care, and was unable to detect the slightest sign of
emotion in them. They had not been prepared in the least for the
ordeal; they did not even know that their relations had been brought
from home, and yet they did their duty as soldiers without changing the
stolid expression of their faces.

"Wonderful, wonderful!" he said to Cope. "These are indeed perfect
soldiers. Why, they move like clockwork, like marvelous machines. And
what a remarkable man the Emperor is--without question the first
soldier of his time and of all time. Was there ever anything like it?"

"Never," answered the inventor.

Sam walked back to his lodgings alone. He wished to think, and
purposely avoided company. He did not notice the soldiers in the
streets, nor the natives in their round, pointed straw hats. He ran
into a man carrying water in two buckets hung from the ends of a pole
balanced on his shoulders, and nearly upset his load. He started back
and collided with a native woman with a baby tied to her back. When he
reached his house, he sat down in an easy-chair in his bedroom and
thought and thought and thought. For some hours his mind was filled
with unmixed admiration for the Emperor and his army. He felt like an
artist who had just seen a new masterpiece that surpassed all the
achievements of the ages, or a musician who had listened to a new
symphony that summed up and transcended all that had ever gone before.
Again and again he pictured to himself the great w