Banzai! | Page 4

from another table.
"--All the more violent considering the fact that we noticed nothing of
it on land," said Harryman, thoughtfully blowing out a cloud of smoke
and swinging himself up backward on the window-sill.
"Exactly," rang out a voice; "but how do you account for that?"
"Account for it!" cried Colonel Webster, in a thundering voice. "Our
comrade of the illustrious navy of the United States of America has
only one explanation for everything: his Japanese logarithms, by means
of which he figures out everything. Now we shall hear that this
seaquake can be traced to Japanese villainy, probably brought about by
Japanese divers, or even submarine boats." And the colonel began to
laugh heartily.
Harryman ignored this attempt to resume their recent dispute, and with
head thrown back continued to blow clouds of smoke nervously into
the air.

"But seriously, Harryman," began the colonel again, "can you give any
explanation?"
"No," answered Harryman curtly; "but perhaps you will remember who
was the first to furnish an explanation of the breakdown of the cable. It
was the captain of the Japanese Kanga Maru, which has been anchored
since Tuesday beside the Monadnock, which I have the honor to
command."
"But, my good Harryman, you have hallucinations," interrupted the
colonel. "The Japanese captain gave the latest Hong-Kong papers to the
Harbor Bureau, and was quite astonished to hear that our cable did not
work----"
"When he was going to send a cablegram to Hong-Kong," added
Harryman sharply.
"To announce his arrival at Manila," remarked Colonel Webster dryly.
"And the Hong-Kong papers had already published descriptions of the
destruction caused by the seaquake, of the tidal waves, and the
accidents to ships," came from another quarter.
"The news being of especial interest to this archipelago, where we have
the misfortune to be and where we noticed nothing of the whole affair,"
returned Harryman.
"You don't mean to imply," broke in the colonel, "that the news of this
catastrophe is a pure invention--an invention of the English papers in
Hong-Kong?"
"Don't know, I'm sure," said Harryman. "Hong-Kong papers are no
criterion for me." And then he added quietly: "Yes, man is great, and
the newspaper is his prophet."
"But you can't dispute the fact that a seaquake may have taken place,
when you consider the striking results as shown by the cable
interruptions which we have been experiencing for the last six days,"

began Webster again.
"Have we really?" said Harryman. "Are you quite sure of it? So far the
only authority we have for this supposed seaquake is a Japanese
captain--whom, by the way, I am having sharply watched--and a bundle
of worthless Hong-Kong newspapers. And as for the rest of my
hallucinations"--he jumped down from the window-sill and, going up to
Webster, held out a sheet of paper toward him--"I'm in the habit of
using other sources of information than the English-Japanese
fingerposts."
Webster glanced at the paper and then looked at Harryman
questioningly.
"What is it? Do you understand it?"
"Yes," snapped Harryman. "These little pictures portray our war of
extermination against the red man. They are terribly exaggerated and
distorted, which was not at all necessary, by the way, for the events of
that war do not add to the fame of our nation. Up here," explained
Harryman, while several officers, among them the colonel, stepped up
to the table, "you see the story of the infected blankets from the fever
hospitals which were sent to the Indians; here the butchery of an Indian
tribe; here, for comparison, the fight on the summit of the volcano of
Ilo-Ilo, where the Tagala were finally driven into the open crater; and
here, at the end, the practical application for the Tagala: 'As the
Americans have destroyed the red man, so will you slowly perish under
the American rule. They have hurled your countrymen into the chasm
of the volcano. This crater will devour you all if you do not turn those
weapons which were once broken by Spanish bondage against your
deliverers of 1898, who have since become your oppressors.'"
"Where did you get the scrawl?" asked the colonel excitedly.
"Do you want me to procure hundreds, thousands like it for you?"
returned Harryman coolly.
The colonel pressed down the ashes in his pipe with his thumb, and

asked indifferently: "You understand Japanese?"
"Tagala also," supplemented Harryman simply.
"And you mean to say that thousands----?"
"Millions of these pictures, with Japanese and Malayan text, are being
circulated in the Philippines," said Harryman positively.
"Under our eyes?" asked a lieutenant naïvely.
"Under our eyes," replied Harryman, smiling, "our eyes which
carelessly overlook such things."
Colonel Webster rose and offered Harryman his hand. "I have
misjudged you," he said heartily. "I belong to your party from now on."
"It isn't a question of party," answered