"What has happened?" he asked.
"It has just been discovered that there is no white paint in the king's storehouse," replied the high chief.
"What is the white paint to be used for?" came curiously from the professor.
"The executioner-general is obliged by law to give himself a fresh coat of white paint at every execution. It would be impossible for him to perform his function without first complying with the statute."
"Could not some one else, who has been freshly decorated, do the work in his stead?" I inquired, somewhat flippantly.
"No," answered the high chief. "He is the only one in the kingdom who is duly empowered to execute criminals. Our executioner is a proud person, and jealous of the prerogatives of his office. He receives no less than two kanos for every happy dispatch that he performs. In this case he will be the richer by six kanos, so you will understand how anxious he is to have everything done as it should be."
A kano was the equivalent of a half cent of our own money; so that our one-time millionaire, Mr. J. Archibald Meigs, was to yield up his valuable life and help swell the executioner-general's income to the extent of a single copper. Had he been awake, I should have explained the matter to him so that he might have still further expatiated upon the irony of fate.
This kingdom of Baigadd differed from the other kingdom with which we had already made acquaintance in one material respect: The surface of the country had shrunk much farther from the outer crust of the planet.
In Baigol, for instance, we were always able to see the vault that covered us; but in Baigadd the sight reached into nothing but empty space.
Shortly after the high chief had finished speaking there came a flourish of word-boxes from the direction of the palace. Turning our eyes toward that point we beheld two resplendent soldiers in turrets to right and left of the richly hung balcony.