“First comes the merchant, pushing his way in by brute strength and awkwardness, shoving out all other merchants by staying close to his job. Then a row between the merchants and the natives, followed closely by the arrival of a war-ship. Then a punitive expedition against the natives who have dared to resent the oppression of the merchants. Then diplomatic correspondence assuring other nations there is no thought of acquisition of territory and then all of a sudden up goes the Herzovinian flag, and the thing has been accomplished. As I said before,” Phil ended his impromptu speech, “I can’t see why the count hesitates about hoisting his flag. We can’t stop him. We haven’t men enough.”
CHAPTER XVII
BEN STUMP LISTENS
Carl Klinger paced the porch of the count’s home in visible annoyance. Count Rosen surveyed the angry overseer complacently from his easy chair under the shade of the thatched roof porch.
“Don’t be an idiot, Klinger,” he said. “You can’t afford to indulge in personal vengeance. The American officer has gotten ahead of you and put you to shame before the natives, and I think you deserved it. Your work was childish. Putting that cartoon on your wall was bad enough, but to attempt to thrash a native relative of Tuamana under the eyes of his own friends and supporters was infantile. If you don’t stop swearing vengeance upon that young midshipman I’ll be forced to lock you up in your own house and put a guard over you. To attempt such barefaced outlawry as an attack upon the person of an American naval officer by hired thugs would only lead to intervention by the war-ships.”
Klinger sulked in silence, and the count continued:
“The last mail steamer carried Kataafa’s appeal for annexation. It was to be cabled from San Francisco to our government. An answer should reach here now in a few days. The news of the war of course is now known everywhere, but I am sure our own war-ship with instructions for us will arrive first. The United States may beat us, but upon the appearance of a Yankee ship I’m going to hoist the flag. Even sooner if I hear from our man on the Yankee ship anything alarming.”
“Why do you take such chances?” Klinger asked surlily. “We’re in power. The English and Americans are afraid to act without orders from home. Hoist the flag and be done with it!”
“Klinger,” the count replied haughtily, “as long as you keep within your limitations as a manager of a commercial firm, grabbing land from defenseless natives and using it to increase the income of your company, then I am willing to listen to your advice, but when you make bold to advise me upon matters of state, you make yourself ridiculous. This savage kingdom is isolated from the great world,” he continued in a more kindly tone of explanation as he saw the look of apology in the rough overseer’s face. “The nearest cable stations are San Francisco and Auckland; news of what has happened reached our capital before or as soon as it was received in Washington or London. A Herzovinian war-ship has been waiting in Auckland to bring us instructions. I do not know the present diplomatic situation. If I hoist the flag before the arrival of the war-ship, I may find the instructions are not to hoist the flag. We may be on the verge of a war with our commercial rival England over some other diplomatic difficulty, and our action here might greatly embarrass our foreign office.”
“But you said,” Klinger persisted, “you would hoist the flag upon the appearance of a Yankee war-ship.”
“The arrival of another Yankee war-ship must mean but one thing,” the count replied patiently, “and that would be that the United States government had decided to back the decision of the chief justice and put Panu-Mafili on the throne by force. In that case I would have to resign. Kataafa would either have to submit or else fight the white sailors. If the new arrival sees our flag flying and our sailors in possession, then the Americans and British must stop and think a long time before they use force to drive us out of the government.”