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“Next year!” roared Skiddy. “I want to know what I’m to do NOW!”

The two high officials gazed at him sadly. It was a great peety, they observed (with an air of gentle complaint), that Mr. Skiddy should have embarrassed the government at a time when its whole position was so precarious. Had he not better refer the matter to Washington? Doubtless Washington, recognizing the fact that—-

Skiddy flung himself out, lest his anger should get the best of him. He went and had another look at the jail, and liked it even less than before. Faugh! it was disgusting! It would kill a white man in a week. It would be nothing less than murder to put Satterlee into it. He returned to the consulate to talk over the matter with the trusty Scanlons.

Would they consider a monthly arrangement on a reduced charge, giving Satterlee the best room in their cottage, and pledging themselves that he should never quit the confines of their three-acre cocoanut patch? The half-caste brothers fell in joyfully with the suggestion, and their first wild proposals were beaten down to forty dollars a month for custodianship and fifteen dollars for the room and the transport of Satterlee’s food from the International Hotel–fifty-five dollars in all. Thirty dollars a month for the hotel raised the grand total to eighty-five dollars. Skiddy wondered ruefully whether Washington would ever indorse this arrangement, but in his desperation he couldn’t see that he had any other choice. He would simply make Washington indorse it. It was with great relief that he saw the captain’s departure from a corner of his bedroom window, and felt that, for the moment, at least, he had a welcome respite from all his perplexities.

He put a captain and crew on board the James H. Peabody, and packed her back to San Francisco, at the same time apprising the State Department by mail, and begging that a telegraphic answer might be sent him in respect to Satterlee’s imprisonment, and the expense it had necessarily entailed. He calculated that the telegram would catch an outgoing man-of-war that was shortly due. The consular salary was two hundred dollars a month, and if the eighty-five dollars for Satterlee was disallowed, the sum was indubitably bound to sink to one hundred and fifteen dollars. Deducting a further fifty, which little Skiddy was in the habit of remitting to his mother, a widow in narrow circumstances, and behold his income reduced to sixty-five a month! It was hardly surprising, therefore, that Skiddy waited on pins and needles for the Department’s reply.

In the course of weeks it came.

Skiddy U S consul apia samoa satterlee case the department authorizes charge for food, but none for custody or lodging, bronson assistant secretary.

This was a staggering blow. It definitely placed his salary at ninety-five dollars. He sat down and wrote a stinging letter to the Department, inclosing snapshot pictures of the jail, the prisoners, the huts, and other things that cannot be described here. It evolved an acrimonious reply, in which he was bidden to be more respectful. He was at liberty (the dispatch continued), if he thought it advisable as an act of private charity, to maintain the convict Satterlee in a comfortable cottage, but the Department insisted that it should be at his (Skiddy’s) expense. The Department itself advocated the jail. If the situation were as disgraceful as he described it, ought not the onus be put on the Samoan Government, and thus place the Department in a position “to make strong representations through the usual diplomatic channels”?

“But in the meantime what would happen to Satterlee?” returned the consul in official language, across six thousand miles of sea and land.

“You are referred to the previous dispatch,” retorted the Department.

“But it will kill him,” said Skiddy, again crossing an ocean and a continent.