The Reporter Who Made Himself King | Page 2

followed another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more
and more devoted to it. He was twenty then, and he was now
twenty-three, and in that time had become a great reporter, and had
been to Presidential conventions in Chicago, revolutions in Hayti,
Indian outbreaks on the Plains, and midnight meetings of moonlighters
in Tennessee, and had seen what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and
fever could do in great cities, and had contradicted the President, and
borrowed matches from burglars. And now he thought he would like to
rest and breathe a bit, and not to work again unless as a war
correspondent. The only obstacle to his becoming a great war
correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war, and a war
correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual as a
general without an army. He read the papers every morning on the
elevated trains for war clouds; but though there were many war clouds,
they always drifted apart, and peace smiled again. This was very
disappointing to young Gordon, and he became more and more keenly
discouraged.
And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to write his
novel. It was to be a novel of New York life, and he wanted a quiet
place in which to work on it. He was already making inquiries among
the suburban residents of his acquaintance for just such a quiet spot,
when he received an offer to go to the Island of Opeki in the North
Pacific Ocean, as secretary to the American consul at that place. The
gentleman who had been appointed by the President to act as consul at
Opeki was Captain Leonard T. Travis, a veteran of the Civil War, who
had contracted a severe attack of rheumatism while camping out at
night in the dew, and who on account of this souvenir of his efforts to
save the Union had allowed the Union he had saved to support him in
one office or another ever since. He had met young Gordon at a dinner,
and had had the presumption to ask him to serve as his secretary, and
Gordon, much to his surprise, had accepted his offer. The idea of a
quiet life in the tropics with new and beautiful surroundings, and with
nothing to do and plenty of time in which to do it, and to write his
novel besides, seemed to Albert to be just what he wanted; and though
he did not know nor care much for his superior officer, he agreed to go

with him promptly, and proceeded to say good-by to his friends and to
make his preparations. Captain Travis was so delighted with getting
such a clever young gentleman for his secretary, that he referred to him
to his friends as "my attache of legation;" nor did he lessen that
gentleman's dignity by telling anyone that the attache's salary was to be
five hundred dollars a year. His own salary was only fifteen hundred
dollars; and though his brother-in-law, Senator Rainsford, tried his best
to get the amount raised, he was unsuccessful. The consulship to Opeki
was instituted early in the '50's, to get rid of and reward a third or fourth
cousin of the President's, whose services during the campaign were
important, but whose after-presence was embarrassing. He had been
created consul to Opeki as being more distant and unaccessible than
any other known spot, and had lived and died there; and so little was
known of the island, and so difficult was communication with it, that
no one knew he was dead, until Captain Travis, in his hungry haste for
office, had uprooted the sad fact. Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had
a secondary reason for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician had told
him to go to some warm climate for his rheumatism, and in accepting
the consulship his object was rather to follow out his doctor's orders at
his country's expense, than to serve his country at the expense of his
rheumatism.
Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that it
was situated about one hundred miles from the Island of Octavia, which
island, in turn, was simply described as a coaling-station three hundred
miles distant from the coast of California. Steamers from San Francisco
to Yokohama stopped every third week at Octavia, and that was all that
either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of their new home.
This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to stay only as long as he
liked it, and to return to the States within a few months if he found such
a change of plan desirable.
As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he
thought it