The Reporter Who Made Himself King | Page 3

would be advisable to furnish himself with a supply of
articles with which he might trade with the native Opekians, and for
this purpose he purchased a large quantity of brass rods, because he had
read that Stanley did so, and added to these, brass curtain-chains, and

about two hundred leaden medals similar to those sold by street pedlers
during the Constitutional Centennial celebration in New York City.
He also collected even more beautiful but less exensive decorations for
Christmas-trees, at a wholsesale house on Park Row. These he hoped to
exchange for furs or feathers or weapons, or for whatever other curious
and valuable trophies the Island of Opeki boasted. He already pictured
his rooms on his return hung fantastically with crossed spears and
boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly idols.
His friends told him that he was doing a very foolish thing, and argued
that once out of the newspaper world, it would be hard to regain his
place in it. But he thought the novel that he would write while lost to
the world at Opeki would serve to make up for his temporary absence
from it, and he expressly and impressively stipulated that the editor
should wire him if there was a war.
Captain Travis and his secretary crossed the continent without
adventure, and took passage from San Francisco on the first steamer
that touched at Octavia. They reached that island in three days, and
learned with some concern that there was no regular communication
with Opeki, and that it would be necessary to charter a sailboat for the
trip. Two fishermen agreed to take them and their trunks, and to get
them to their destination within sixteen hours if the wind held good. It
was a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with calm, unrelentless
persistence from what was apparently a clear sky; the wind tossed the
waves as high as the mast and made Captain Travis ill; and as there was
no deck to the big boat, they were forced to huddle up under pieces of
canvas, and talked but little. Captain Travis complained of frequent
twinges of rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale at the
empty waste of water.
"If I've got to serve a term of imprisonment on a rock in the middle of
the ocean for four years," he said, "I might just as well have done
something first to deserve it. This is a pretty way to treat a man who
bled for his country. This is gratitude, this is." Albert pulled heavily on
his pipe, and wiped the rain and spray from his face and smiled.

"Oh, it won't be so bad when we get there," he said; "they say these
Southern people are always hospitable, and the whites will be glad to
see anyone from the States."
"There will be a round of diplomatic dinners," said the consul, with an
attempt at cheerfulness. "I have brought two uniforms to wear at them."
It was seven o'clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and one of the
black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a little low line on
the horizon.
"Opeki," he said. The line grew in length until it proved to be an island
with great mountains rising to the clouds, and, as they drew nearer and
nearer, showed a level coast running back to the foot of the mountains
and covered with a forest of palms. They next made out a village of
thatched huts around a grassy square, and at some distance from the
village a wooden structure with a tin roof.
"I wonder where the town is," asked the consul, with a nervous glance
at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he saw was the town.
"That?" gasped the consul. "Is that where all the people on the island
live?"
The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were other natives
further back in the mountains, but that they were bad men who fought
and ate each other. The consul and his attache of legation gazed at the
mountains with unspoken misgivings. They were quite near now, and
could see an immense crowd of men and women, all of them black, and
clad but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them. They
seemed greatly excited and ran in and out of the huts, and up and down
the beach, as wildly as so many black ants. But in the front of the group
they distinguished three men who they could see were white, though
they were clothed, like the others, simply in a shirt and a short pair of
trousers. Two of these three suddenly sprang away on a run and
disappeared among the palm-trees; but the third one, when he
recognized the American flag in the halyards, threw his