The Ivory Trail | Page 2

we'd talk if they let us out--more afraid of offending Germans than they are of cholera! Besides--any fool could know by now we're not sick!"
"There might be something in that," admitted Monty.
"I'd send for the U. S. Consul and sing the song out loud, but for you!" Yerkes added.
Monty nodded sympathetically.
"Dashed good of you, Will, and all that sort of thing."
"You English are so everlastingly afraid of seeming to start trouble, you'll swallow anything rather than talk!"
"As a government, perhaps yes," admitted Monty. "As a people, I fancy not. As a people we vary."
"You vary in that respect as much as sardines in a can! I traveled once all the way from London to Glasgow alone in one compartment with an Englishman. Talk? My, we were garrulous! I offered him a newspaper, cigarettes, matches, remarks on the weather suited to his brand of intelligence--(that's your sole national topic of talk between strangers!)--and all he ever said to me was 'Haw-ah!' I'll bet he was afraid of seeming to start trouble!"
"He didn't start any, did he?" asked Monty.
"Pretty nearly he did! I all but bashed him over the bean with the newspaper the third time he said 'haw-ah!'"
Monty laughed. Fred Oakes was busy across the room with his most amazing gift of tongues, splicing together half-a-dozen of them in order to talk with the old lazaretto attendant, so he heard nothing; otherwise there would have been argument.
"Then it would have been you, not he who started trouble,"' said I, and Yerkes threw both hands up in a gesture of despair.
"Even you're afraid of starting something!" He stared at both of us with an almost startled expression, as if he could not believe his own verdict, yet could not get away from it. "Else you'd give the Bundesrath story to the papers! That German skipper's conduct ought to be bruited round the world! You said you'd do it. You promised us! You told the man to his face you would!"
"Now," said Monty, "you've touched on another national habit."
"Which one?" Yerkes demanded.
"Dislike of telling tales out of school. The man's dead. His ship's at the bottom. The tale's ended. What's the use? Besides--?"
"Ah! You've another reason! Spill it!"
"As a privy councilor, y'know, and all that sort of thing--?"
"Same story! Afraid of starting something!"
"The Germans--'specially their navy men--drink to what they call Der Tag y'know--the day when they shall dare try to tackle England. We all know that. They're planning war, twenty years from now perhaps, that shall give them all our colonies as well as India and Egypt. They're so keen on it they can't keep from bragging. Great Britain, on the other hand, hasn't the slightest intention of fighting if war can be avoided; so why do anything meanwhile to increase the tension? Why send broadcast a story that would only arouse international hatred? That's their method. Ours--I mean our government's--is to give hatred a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story they'd make a deuce of a noise, of course."
"If your government's so sure Germany is planning war," objected Yerkes, "why on earth not force war, and feed them full of it before they're ready"
"Counsel of perfection," laughed Monty. "Government's responsible to the Common--Commons to the people--people want peace and plenty. No. Your guess was good. We are in here while the government at home squares the newspaper men."
"You don't mean to tell me your British government controls the press?"
"Hardly. Seeing 'em--putting it up to 'em straight--asking 'em politely. They're public-spirited, y'know. Hitting 'em with a club would be another thing. It's an easy-going nation, but kings have been sorry they tried force. Did you never hear of a king who used force against American colonies?"
"Good God! So they keep you--an earl--a privy councilor--a retired colonel of regulars in good standing--under lock and key in this pest-house while they bribe the press not to tell the truth about some Germans and start trouble?"
"Not exactly" said Monty.
"But here you are!"
"I preferred to remain with my party."
"You moan they'd have let you out and kept us in?"
"They'd have phrased it differently, but that's about what it would have amounted to. I have privileges."
"Well, I'm jiggered!"
"I rather suspect it's not so bad as that," said Monty. "You're with friends in quarantine, Will!"
For a quarantine station in the tropics it was after all not such a bad place. We could hear the crooning of lazy rollers on the beach, and what little sea-breeze moved at all came in to us through iron-barred windows. The walls were of coral, three feet thick. So was the roof. The wet red-tiled floor made at least an impression of coolness, and the fresh green foliage of an enormous mango tree, while it obstructed most of the view, suggested anything but durance vile. From