“Why?” demanded President Bambos.
“Neither he nor you have any ordnance big enough to allow a man to serve as a charge for it.”
“A quibble!” commented the Captain; “it does not lessen the deadly nature of the insult.”
“What is the amount of the claim?”
General Bambos nodded to the Captain to answer.
“Forty-two pesos.”
“Ah-um!” mused the American, who picked up a pencil from the table and made a few figures on a blotting pad; “the present value of a peso is twenty-eight cents. That would make the total damage eleven dollars and seventy-six cents in the currency of my country. Does President Yozarro refuse to pay this claim?”
“He not only refuses to pay the just demand,” thundered the President, “but accompanies his refusal with an unpardonable insult.”
“No one can deny that you have cause for indignation, but knowing how deeply you have the good of your people and country at heart, General, I would ask whether there is not some way of settling the dispute without going to war.”
“Explain yourself,” said the President severely, for, having set his heart on having war, he did not mean to be bluffed out of it.