"It looks as if we were getting ahead just a little too fast,
doesn't it? Well," he added, as they reached the house, "let's try to
keep in step with the procession, even if we can't be drum-majors and
walk in front of it." And with this cheering tone of confidence in
their ears, the two diplomats went soundly asleep again.
The light of the rising sun filled the room, and the parrots were
chattering outside, when Bradley woke him again.
"They are sending a boat ashore, sir," he said, excitedly, and filled
with the importance of the occasion. "She's a German man-of-war, and
one of the new model. A beautiful boat, sir; for her lines were laid
in Glasgow, and I can tell that, no matter what flag she flies. You
had best be moving to meet them: the village isn't awake yet."
Albert took a cold bath and dressed leisurely; then he made Bradley,
Jr., who had slept through it all, get up breakfast, and the two young
men ate it and drank their coffee comfortably and with an air of
confidence that deceived their servants, if it did not deceive
themselves. But when they came down the path, smoking and swinging
their sticks, and turned into the plaza, their composure left them
like a mask, and they stopped where they stood. The plaza was enclosed
by the natives gathered in whispering groups, and depressed by fear
and wonder. On one side were crowded all the Messenwah warriors,
unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the Opekians. In the middle of
the plaza some twenty sailors were busy rearing and bracing a tall
flag-staff that they had shaped from a royal palm, and they did this
as unconcernedly and as contemptuously, and with as much indifference
to the strange groups on either side of them, as though they were
working on a barren coast, with nothing but the startled sea-gulls
about them.
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