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“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 morning.”

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. “He wants to know when I am going to stop running away from the wire. He has a stack of messages to send, he says, but I guess he’d better wait and take your copy first; don’t you think so?”

“Yes, I do,” said Gordon. “I don’t want any more messages than I’ve had. That’s the best I can do,” he said, as he threw his manuscript down beside Stedman. “And they can keep on cabling until the wire burns red hot, and they won’t get any more.”

There was silence in the office for some time, while Stedman looked over Gordon’s copy, and Gordon stared dejectedly out at the ocean.

“This is pretty poor stuff, Gordon,” said Stedman. “It’s like giving people milk when they want brandy.”

“Don’t you suppose I know that?” growled Gordon. “It’s the best I can do, isn’t it? It’s not my fault that we are not all dead now. I can’t massacre foreign residents if there are no foreign residents, but I can commit suicide though, and I’ll do it if something don’t happen.”

There was a long pause, in which the silence of the office was only broken by the sound of the waves beating on the coral reefs outside. Stedman raised his head wearily.

“He’s swearing again,” he said; “he says this stuff of yours is all nonsense. He says stock in the Y.C.C. has gone up to one hundred and two, and that owners are unloading and making their fortunes, and that this sort of descriptive writing is not what the company want.”

“What’s he think I’m here for?” cried Gordon. “Does he think I pulled down the German flag and risked my neck half a dozen times and had myself made King just to boom his Yokohama cable stock? Confound him! You might at least swear back. Tell him just what the situation is in a few words. Here, stop that rigmarole to the paper, and explain to your home office that we are awaiting developments, and that, in the meanwhile, they must put up with the best we can send them. Wait; send this to Octavia.”

Gordon wrote rapidly, and read what he wrote as rapidly as it was written.

“Operator, Octavia. You seem to have misunderstood my first message. The facts in the case are these. A German man-of-war raised a flag on this island. It was pulled down and the American flag raised in its place and saluted by a brass cannon. The German man-of-war fired once at the flag and knocked it down, and then steamed away and has not been seen since. Two huts were upset, that is all the damage done; the battery consisted of the one brass cannon before mentioned. No one, either native or foreign, has been massacred. The English residents are two sailors. The American residents are the young man who is sending you this cable and myself. Our first message was quite true in substance, but perhaps misleading in detail. I made it so because I fully expected much more to happen immediately. Nothing has happened, or seems likely to happen, and that is the exact situation up to date. Albert Gordon.”

“Now,” he asked after a pause, “what does he say to that?”

“He doesn’t say anything,” said Stedman.

“I guess he has fainted. Here it comes,” he added in the same breath. He bent toward his instrument, and Gordon raised himself from his chair and stood beside him as he read it off. The two young men hardly breathed in the intensity of their interest.