It was early the next morning when the two boys and Julius Caesar were again on the point of hill overlooking Honolulu. It was so early that the flags had not yet been hoisted over the public buildings. Each boy carried a package, and these they unrolled and laid out together. The display was something worth looking at. Any boy who could see that layout of firecrackers and not feel a kind of a tingling run over him resembling that which comes when he takes hold of the two handles of an electrical machine wouldn't be a boy worth speaking of. He wouldn't be the sort of a boy who had it in him to ever become President of the United States, or captain of a baseball nine, or anything of that sort. But these two boys quivered. Cocoanut quivered more than Billy did.
Silently the two boys and Julius Caesar awaited the raising of the flags over Honolulu. Could they or could they not let off their firecrackers? They might as well, said Cocoanut, be getting ready, anyhow, and so he began tying strings of firecrackers together, adjusting cannon crackers at intervals between the smaller ones, and adding Billy's string of crackers to his own. When completed there were just thirty-seven and one-half feet of firecrackers of variegated quality. Billy looked on listlessly, and Cocoanut himself hardly knew why he was making this arrangement. The sun bounced up out of the ocean, a great red ball behind the thin fog, and bunting climbed the flagstaffs of Honolulu. With eager eyes the boys gazed cityward until the moment when the breeze had straightened out the flags and the device upon them could be seen. Then they looked upon each other blankly. It was not the Stars and Stripes, but the Hawaiian flag which floated there below them!
They didn't know what to do, these poor boys who wanted to be patriots that morning and couldn't. They sat down disconsolately near to the heels of Julius Caesar, who was whisking his stubby tail about occasionally in vengeful search of an occasional fly. It chanced that in the midst of this he slapped Cocoanut across the face, and that Cocoanut incontinently grabbed the tail, to keep it from further demonstration of the sort. Julius Caesar did not kick at this, because it was too trifling a matter. Far better would it have been for Julius Caesar had he kicked then and there, but the relation of why comes later on. Lost in their sorrows, Cocoanut and Billy communed together, and Cocoanut, in the forgetfulness of deep reflection began plaiting together the end of the string of firecrackers and the hairs in the tail of Julius Caesar. He was a good plaiter, was Cocoanut—they do such work with grasses and things in and about Honolulu, and lots of little Hawaiians are good plaiters—and it may be said of the job that when completed, although done almost unconsciously, it was a good one. That string of thirty-seven and one-half feet of firecrackers was not going to leave the tail of that little jackass except under most extraordinary circumstances.
A fly of exceptional vigor assaulted Julius Caesar upon the flank, and his tail not whisking as well as usual, because of the incumbrance, he missed the enemy at the first swish and moved uneasily forward for several feet. As it chanced, this movement left the other string of firecrackers fairly in the lap of Cocoanut. The boys were still discussing the situation.
"It's too bad; it's too bad," said Billy. "What'll we do?"
"I don't know," said Cocoanut.
"Do you think we dare let 'em off even if the flag didn't fly?" said Billy.
"I don't know," said Cocoanut.
"I believe I'll get on Julius Caesar and ride a little," said Billy, "and you throw stones at him and hit him if you can. It's pretty hard to make him run, you know."
"All right," said Cocoanut.