He sat down on a
rock on the beach, and mopped his face with his handkerchief.
"After a man has taken nothing more exciting than weather reports from
Octavia for a year," he soliloquized, "it's a bit disturbing to have
all the crowned heads of Europe and their secretaries calling upon you
for details of a massacre that never came off."
At the end of two hours Gordon returned from the consulate with a mass
of manuscript in his hand.
"Here's three thousand words," he said, desperately. "I never wrote
more and said less in my life. It will make them weep at the office. I
had to pretend that they knew all that had happened so far; they
apparently do know more than we do, and I have filled it full of
prophecies of more trouble ahead, and with interviews with myself and
the two ex-Kings. The only news element in it is, that the messengers
have returned to report that the German vessel is not in sight, and
that there is no news. They think she has gone for good. Suppose she
has, Stedman," he groaned, looking at him helplessly, "what _am_
I going to do?"
"Well, as for me," said Stedman, "I'm afraid to go near that cable.
It's like playing with a live wire. My nervous system won't stand many
more such shocks as those they gave us this afternoon."
Gordon threw himself down dejectedly in a chair in the office, and
Stedman approached his instrument gingerly, as though it might
explode.
"He's swearing again," he explained, sadly, in answer to Gordon's look
of inquiry.
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