“That settles it,” roared Gordon, pulling at his hair and burying his face in his hands. “I have got to kill some of them now.”
“Albert Gordon, Correspondent,” read Stedman, impressively, like the voice of Fate. “Is Colonel Thomas Bradley commanding native forces at Opeki, Colonel Sir Thomas Kent-Bradley of Crimean war fame? Correspondent London Times, San Francisco Press Club.”
“Go on, go on!” said Gordon, desperately. “I’m getting used to it now. Go on!”
“American consul, Opeki,” read Stedman. “Home Secretary desires you to furnish list of names English residents killed during shelling of Opeki by ship of war Kaiser, and estimate of amount property destroyed. Stoughton, Office of English consul, San Francisco.”
“Stedman!” cried Gordon, jumping to his feet, “there’s a mistake here somewhere. These people cannot all have made 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 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 came back 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 prophesies 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 morning.”