ng
to his own lights. Keller triple-headed his account, talked about our
'gallant captain,' and wound up with an allusion to American
enterprise in that it was a citizen of Dayton, Ohio, that had seen
the sea-serpent. This sort of thing would have discredited the
Creation, much more a mere sea tale, but as a specimen of the
picture-writing of a half-civilised people it was very interesting.
Zuyland took a heavy column and a half, giving approximate lengths
and breadths, and the whole list of the crew whom he had sworn on
oath to testify to his facts. There was nothing fantastic or
flamboyant in Zuyland. I wrote three-quarters of a leaded bourgeois
column, roughly speaking, and refrained from putting any journalese
into it for reasons that had begun to appear to me.

Keller was insolent with joy. He was going to cable from Southampton
to the New York _World_, mail his account to America on the same day,
paralyse London with his three columns of loosely knitted headlines,
and generally efface the earth. 'You'll see how I work a big scoop
when I get it,' he said.

'Is this your first visit to England?' I asked.

'Yes,' said he. 'You don't seem to appreciate the beauty of our
scoop. It's pyramidal--the death of the sea-serpent! Good heavens
alive, man, it's the biggest thing ever vouchsafed to a paper!'

'Curious to think that it will never appear in any paper, isn't it?
'I said.

Zuyland was near me, and he nodded quickly.

'What do you mean?' said Keller. 'If you're enough of a Britisher to
throw this thing away, I shan't. I thought you were a newspaper-man.'

'I am. That's why I know. Don't be an ass, Keller. Remember, I'm
seven hundred years your senior, and what your grandchildren may
learn five hundred years hence, I learned from my grandfathers about
five hundred years ago. You won't do it, because you can't.'

This conversation was held in open sea, where everything seems
possible, some hundred miles from Southampton. We passed the Needles
Light at dawn, and the lifting day showed the stucco villas on the
green and the awful orderliness of England--line upon line, wall upon
wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier. We waited an hour in the
Customs shed, and there was ample time for the effect to soak in.

'Now, Keller, you face the music. The _Havel_ goes out to-day. Mail
by her, and I'll take you to the telegraph-office,' I said.

I heard Keller gasp as the influence of the land closed about him,
cow