o 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 any one 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 straw hat in the water and
began turning handsprings over the sand.

"That young gentleman, at least," said Albert, gravely, "seems pleased
to see