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 any one 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