“I don’t know,” I said. “Which Embassies?”
“The—the—the—well, practically all except the Chinese.”
“Wonderful people the Chinese,” I said. “So calm. We ought to imitate them more than we do.”
Bland-Potterton did not think so. He went on fussing. He rushed about London, creating small whirlpools behind him as if he had been a motor-boat. I had the greatest difficulty at times in not being sucked into his wake.
All this Gorman would have enjoyed hugely. I felt sorry that he was missing it. However, in the end he had his compensation.
One day during the last week in July—Gorman is no more to be relied on for an exact date than Donovan or the Queen—a steamer arrived in Salissa. She was a remarkable looking steamer and flew a flag which neither Gorman nor Donovan had ever seen before. She had two small guns, mounted one on the fore-deck and one right aft. She had a smart, well-cared-for look, as if she were a yacht, or belonged to some navy. But she was very old. Gorman says that she reminded him of the pictures of the royal yacht in which Queen Victoria came to Ireland to open Kingstown harbour at the very beginning of her reign. She was a paddle steamer. She had an exaggerated form of fiddle bow, a long bowsprit and two tall masts on which sails might easily have been set.
Gorman is nothing of a sailor and is almost totally uninterested in ships. This steamer must have been very old-fashioned indeed to have struck him as being odd. She arrived in the harbour at midday and splashed about a good deal with her paddles as if she were rather pleased with herself and thought she had a right to the admiration of the islanders. There was only one modern thing about her. The splayed-out wires of a Marconi installation stretched between her masts.
Gorman was sitting with Donovan when the steamer arrived. They had spent a pleasant hour discussing, in a desultory manner, whether a nation gains or loses by having a titled aristocracy. Donovan preferred the British to the American system. Statesmen, he pointed out, must make some return to the rich for the money which they provide to keep politics going. It is on the whole better to give titles than to alter tariffs in return for subscriptions to party funds. The subject was not a very interesting one and both men were pleased when the arrival of the steamer gave them a new topic.
“Seems to me,” said Donovan, “that Daisy might gather in some revenue by charging harbour dues. This is the second ship, not reckoning the Ida, which has put in here since I arrived.”