'Yes,' said he. 'You don't seem to appreciate the beauty of our scoop. It's pyramidal—the death of the sea-serpent! Good heavens alive, man, it's the biggest thing ever vouchsafed to a paper!'
'Curious to think that it will never appear in any paper, isn't it?
'I said.
Zuyland was near me, and he nodded quickly.
'What do you mean?' said Keller. 'If you're enough of a Britisher to throw this thing away, I shan't. I thought you were a newspaper-man.'
'I am. That's why I know. Don't be an ass, Keller. Remember, I'm seven hundred years your senior, and what your grandchildren may learn five hundred years hence, I learned from my grandfathers about five hundred years ago. You won't do it, because you can't.'
This conversation was held in open sea, where everything seems possible, some hundred miles from Southampton. We passed the Needles Light at dawn, and the lifting day showed the stucco villas on the green and the awful orderliness of England—line upon line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier. We waited an hour in the Customs shed, and there was ample time for the effect to soak in.
'Now, Keller, you face the music. The Havel goes out to-day. Mail by her, and I'll take you to the telegraph-office,' I said.
I heard Keller gasp as the influence of the land closed about him, cowing him as they say Newmarket Heath cows a young horse unused to open courses.
'I want to retouch my stuff. Suppose we wait till we get to London?' he said.
Zuyland, by the way, had torn up his account and thrown it overboard that morning early. His reasons were my reasons.