"Yes, something of that sort, I fancy," said Stedman.
They walked down to the little shed on the sh.o.r.e, where the Y.C.C.
office was placed, at three that day, and Albert watched Stedman send off his message with much interest. The "chap at Octavia," on being informed that the American consul had arrived at Opeki, inquired, somewhat disrespectfully, "Is it a life sentence?"
"What does he mean by that?" asked Albert.
"I suppose," said his secretary, doubtfully, "that he thinks it a sort of a punishment to be sent to Opeki. I hope you won"t grow to think so."
"Opeki is all very well," said Gordon, "or it will be when we get things going our way."
As they walked back to the office, Albert noticed a bra.s.s cannon, perched on a rock at the entrance to the harbor. This had been put there by the last consul, but it had not been fired for many years.
Albert immediately ordered the two Bradleys to get it in order, and to rig up a flag-pole beside it, for one of his American flags, which they were to salute every night when they lowered it at sundown.
"And when we are not using it," he said, "the King can borrow it to celebrate with, if he doesn"t impose on us too often. The royal salute ought to be twenty-one guns, I think; but that would use up too much powder, so he will have to content himself with two."
"Did you notice," asked Stedman, that night, as they sat on the veranda of the consul"s house, in the moonlight, "how the people bowed to us as we pa.s.sed?"
"Yes," Albert said he had noticed it. "Why?"
"Well, they never saluted me," replied Stedman. "That sign of respect is due to the show we made at the reception."
"It is due to us, in any event," said the consul, severely. "I tell you, my secretary, that we, as the representatives of the United States Government, must be properly honored on this island. We must become a power. And we must do so without getting into trouble with the King.
We must make them honor him, too, and then as we push him up, we will push ourselves up at the same time."
"They don"t think much of consuls in Opeki," said Stedman, doubtfully.
"You see the last one was a pretty poor sort. He brought the office into disrepute, and it wasn"t really until I came and told them what a fine country the United States was, that they had any opinion of it at all. Now we must change all that."
"That is just what we will do," said Albert. "We will transform Opeki into a powerful and beautiful city. We will make these people work.
They must put up a palace for the King, and lay out streets, and build wharves, and drain the town properly, and light it. I haven"t seen this patent lighting apparatus of yours, but you had better get to work at it at once, and I"ll persuade the King to appoint you commissioner of highways and gas, with authority to make his people toil. And I,"
he cried, in free enthusiasm, "will organize a navy and a standing army. Only," he added, with a relapse of interest, "there isn"t anybody to fight."
"There isn"t?" said Stedman, grimly, with a scornful smile. "You just go hunt up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with your standing army once and you"ll get all the fighting you want."
"The Hillmen?" said Albert.
"The Hillmen are the natives that live up there in the hills," Stedman said, nodding his head toward the three high mountains at the other end of the island, that stood out blackly against the purple, moonlit sky.
"There are nearly as many of them as there are Opekians, and they hunt and fight for a living and for the pleasure of it. They have an old rascal named Messenwah for a king, and they come down here about once every three months, and tear things up."
Albert sprang to his feet.
"Oh, they do, do they?" he said, staring up at the mountain-tops.
"They come down here and tear up things, do they? Well, I think we"ll stop that, I think we"ll stop that! I don"t care how many there are.
I"ll get the two Bradleys to tell me all they know about drilling, to-morrow morning, and we"ll drill these Opekians, and have sham battles, and attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot of wild, howling Zulus out of them. And when the Hillmen come down to pay their quarterly visit, they"ll go back again on a run. At least some of them will," he added, ferociously. "Some of them will stay right here."
"Dear me, dear me!" said Stedman, with awe; "you are a born fighter, aren"t you?"
"Well, you wait and see," said Gordon; "maybe I am. I haven"t studied tactics of war and the history of battles, so that I might be a great war-correspondent, without learning something. And there is only one king on this island, and that is old Ollypybus himself. And I"ll go over and have a talk with him about it to-morrow."
Young Stedman walked up and down the length of the veranda, in and out of the moonlight, with his hands in his pockets, and his head on his chest. "You have me all stirred up, Gordon," he said; "you seem so confident and bold, and you"re not so much older than I am, either."
"My training has been different; that"s all," said the reporter.
"Yes," Stedman said, bitterly. "I have been sitting in an office ever since I left school, sending news over a wire or a cable, and you have been out in the world, gathering it."
"And now," said Gordon, smiling, and putting his arm around the other boy"s shoulders, "we are going to make news ourselves."
"There is one thing I want to say to you before you turn in," said Stedman. "Before you suggest all these improvements on Ollypybus, you must remember that he has ruled absolutely here for twenty years, and that he does not think much of consuls. He has only seen your predecessor and yourself. He likes you because you appeared with such dignity, and because of the presents; but if I were you, I wouldn"t suggest these improvements as coming from yourself."
"I don"t understand," said Gordon; "who could they come from?"
"Well," said Stedman, "if you will allow me to advise--and you see I know these people pretty well--I would have all these suggestions come from the President direct."
"The President!" exclaimed Gordon; "but how? What does the President know or care about Opeki? and it would take so long--oh, I see, the cable. Is that what you have been doing?" he asked.
"Well, only once," said Stedman, guiltily; "that was when he wanted to turn me out of the consul"s office, and I had a cable that very afternoon, from the President, ordering me to stay where I was.
Ollypybus doesn"t understand the cable, of course, but he knows that it sends messages; and sometimes I pretend to send messages for him to the President; but he began asking me to tell the President to come and pay him a visit, and I had to stop it."
"I"m glad you told me," said Gordon. "The President shall begin to cable to-morrow. He will need an extra appropriation from Congress to pay for his private cablegrams alone."
"And there"s another thing," said Stedman. "In all your plans, you"ve arranged for the people"s improvement, but not for their amus.e.m.e.nt; and they are a peaceful, jolly, simple sort of people, and we must please them."
"Have they no games or amus.e.m.e.nts of their own?" asked Gordon.
"Well, not what we would call games."
"Very well, then, I"ll teach them base-ball. Foot-ball would be too warm. But that plaza in front of the King"s bungalow, where his palace is going to be, is just the place for a diamond. On the whole, though," added the consul, after a moment"s reflection, "you"d better attend to that yourself. I don"t think it becomes my dignity as American consul to take off my coat and give lessons to young Opekians in sliding to bases; do you? No; I think you"d better do that. The Bradleys will help you, and you had better begin to-morrow. You have been wanting to know what a secretary of legation"s duties are, and now you know. It"s to organize base-ball nines. And after you get yours ready," he added, as he turned into his room for the night, "I"ll train one that will sweep yours off the face of the island. For THIS American consul can pitch three curves."
The best laid plans of men go far astray, sometimes, and the great and beautiful city that was to rise on the coast of Opeki was not built in a day. Nor was it ever built. For before the Bradleys could mark out the foul-lines for the base-ball field on the plaza, or teach their standing army the goose step, or lay bamboo pipes for the water-mains, or clear away the cactus for the extension of the King"s palace, the Hillmen paid Opeki their quarterly visit.
Albert had called on the King the next morning, with Stedman as his interpreter, as he had said he would, and, with maps and sketches, had shown his Majesty what he proposed to do toward improving Opeki and enn.o.bling her king, and when the King saw Albert"s free-hand sketches of wharves with tall ships lying at anchor, and rows of Opekian warriors with the Bradleys at their head, and the design for his new palace, and a royal sedan chair, he believed that these things were already his, and not still only on paper, and he appointed Albert his Minister of War, Stedman his Minister of Home Affairs, and selected two of his wisest and oldest subjects to serve them as joint advisers. His enthusiasm was even greater than Gordon"s, because he did not appreciate the difficulties. He thought Gordon a semi-G.o.d, a worker of miracles, and urged the putting up of a monument to him at once in the public plaza, to which Albert objected, on the ground that it would be too suggestive of an idol; and to which Stedman also objected, but for the less unselfish reason that it would "be in the way of the pitcher"s box."
They were feverishly discussing all these great changes, and Stedman was translating as rapidly as he could translate, the speeches of four different men--for the two counsellors had been called in--all of whom wanted to speak at once when there came from outside a great shout, and the screams of women, and the clashing of iron, and the pattering footsteps of men running.
As they looked at one another in startled surprise, a native ran into the room, followed by Bradley, Jr., and threw himself down before the King. While he talked, beating his hands and bowing before Ollypybus, Bradley, Jr., pulled his forelock to the consul, and told how this man lived on the far outskirts of the village; how he had been captured while out hunting, by a number of the Hillmen; and how he had escaped to tell the people that their old enemies were on the war-path again, and rapidly approaching the village.
Outside, the women were gathering in the plaza, with the children about them, and the men were running from hut to hut, warning their fellows, and arming themselves with spears and swords, and the native bows and arrows.
"They might have waited until we had that army trained," said Gordon, in a tone of the keenest displeasure. "Tell me, quick, what do they generally do when they come?"
"Steal all the cattle and goats, and a woman or two, and set fire to the huts in the outskirts," replied Stedman.
"Well, we must stop them," said Gordon, jumping up. "We must take out a flag of truce and treat with them. They must be kept off until I have my army in working order. It is most inconvenient. If they had only waited two months, now, or six weeks even, we could have done something; but now we must make peace. Tell the King we are going out to fix things with them, and tell him to keep off his warriors until he learns whether we succeed or fail."
"But, Gordon!" gasped Stedman. "Albert! You don"t understand. Why, man, this isn"t a street-fight or a cane-rush. They"ll stick you full of spears, dance on your body, and eat you, maybe. A flag of truce!--you"re talking nonsense. What do they know of a flag of truce?"
"You"re talking nonsense, too," said Albert, "and you"re talking to your superior officer. If you are not with me in this, go back to your cable, and tell the man in Octavia that it"s a warm day, and that the sun is shining; but if you"ve any spirit in you--and I think you have--run to the office and get my Winchester rifles, and the two shotguns, and my revolvers, and my uniform, and a lot of bra.s.s things for presents, and run all the way there and back. And make time. Play you"re riding a bicycle at the Agricultural Fair."
Stedman did not hear this last, for he was already off and away, pushing through the crowd, and calling on Bradley, Sr., to follow him.
Bradley, Jr., looked at Gordon with eyes that snapped, like a dog that is waiting for his master to throw a stone.