The Africa is lost. Ask Corkey over and over. He will bring up out of the sea of his memory that same short, matter-of-fact recital.
The rural interviewers, unused to the needs of the city service--faithful to the sources of their news--finish the concise tale. It covers a quarter of a column.
That will never do for Corkey's paper. He knows it well.
He reaches Wiarton. He hurries to the telegraph office. He buys a half-dozen tales of the sea. He finds a shipwreck to suit his needs. He describes in a column the happy scenes in the cabin before the calamity is feared. He depicts the stern face of the commander as he stands, pistols in hand, to keep the passengers from the boats. The full moon rises. The wind abates. A raft is constructed at a cost of one column and a half of out and out plagiarism. Corkey, Lockwin and forty wood-choppers are saved on the raft. The captain goes down on his ship, refusing to live longer.
"You bet!" comments the laboring, perspiring Corkey. Corkey is a short man, short in speech. This "full account" is a grievous responsibility, for marine reporters are taught to "boil it down."
The raft goes to pieces in mid-sea, and the survivors take to the yawl.
Then Corkey returns and interpolates a column death scene on the raft.
"Too bad there wasn't no starving," he laments. "I was hungry enough to starve."
The boat comes ashore in the breakers, and as the result of an all-night's struggle with the muse of conventionality Corkey has seven columns of double-leaded copy.
Meantime the telegraph operator at Wiarton at Corkey's order has been sending the Covode Investigation from an antique copy of the "Congressional Globe." There is an office rule that dispatches must take their turn on the file. The four interviewers have filed their accounts and their accounts will be sent after the Covode Investigation. When Corkey's dispatch is ready he joins it to a sheet of the Covode Investigation, and therefore the operator has been busy on one dispatch all the time.