st I am able to procure for them is--a jam bottle!

While the Doctor and I are not novices at golf, this is one "bunker" we
are making so little headway getting out of, that both now seem likely
to quit "down" to it.

I wonder when the little derelict, tiny and inconspicuous as a
Portuguese man-of-war, may be picked up; I wonder when the sheets it
bears may reach my publisher to whom it is consigned. Perhaps not for
years--a score, two score; perhaps not until he himself, whom a few
weeks ago I left in the lusty vigor of early manhood, is gathered to
his fathers; perhaps not, therefore, until the writer has no publisher
left and is himself no longer remembered.

The burning bunker is now a glowing furnace, the men worked down to
mere shadows. Plainly the fire is getting the best of them and, what
is even more discouraging, there is little more fight left in them.

First Mate Watson, who, almost without rest, has led the fight below
since it started, says that another half-hour will--

CHAPTER XIV

THEY WHO MUST BE OBEYED

Few mightier monarchs than Menelek II of Abyssinia ever swayed the
destinies of a people. Throughout the vast territory of the Abyssinian
highlands his individual will is law to some millions of subjects; law
also to hordes of savage Mohammedan and pagan tribesmen without the
confines of his kingdom. His court includes no councillors. Alone
throughout the long years of his reign Menelek has dealt with all
domestic and foreign affairs of state.

But now this last splendid survival of the feudal absolutism exercised
and enjoyed by mediaeval rulers is about to disappear beneath
encroaching waves of civilization, that do not long spare the
picturesque. Cables from far-off Adis Ababa, Menelek's capital, bring
news that he has formed a cabinet and published the appointment of
Ministers of War, Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs, and Commerce. And
this change has come, not from the pressure of any party or faction
within his kingdom, for such do not exist, but out of the fount of his
own wisdom. So sound is this wisdom as to prove him a most worthy
descendant of the sage Hebrew King whom Menelek claims as ancestor--if,
indeed, more proofs were necessary than the statesmanlike way in which
he has dealt with jealous diplomats, and the martial skill with which,
at Adowa in 1896, he defeated the flower of the Italian army and won
from Italy an honorable truce.

No existing royal house owns