ise them when they are good, and smack
them when they are naughty. But if when they are naughty you spare the
rod and try to slobber them with fine words, they will despise you
utterly, and become upon the instant naughtier than ever."

"What about that mass meeting to-morrow?" asked the Colonel.

"I shall not be there, but ten of my men will be. Have no fears of the
mass meeting. The snake's head is off--by to-morrow it will be two
hundred miles away--and though the body may wriggle, it will be quite
harmless. After two or three hours of talk and vain threats the
meeting will collapse, and we shall get unconditional surrender."

And so it happened. The talk went on for four solid hours--vain,
vapouring talk, during which steam was blown off. At the end the
surrender, as Dawson predicted, was unconditional.

That evening of the morrow a telegram sped away over the long wires to
the south addressed to the Secretary of the Admiralty.

"Please tell First Lord that the snake is dead. I am returning the
Marines carriage-paid and undamaged. My commission as a Captain is no
longer required. Dawson."

Back flashed a reply from the Minister himself: "To Captain Dawson,
R.M.L.I. Adjutant-General insists that you retain rank and pay until
the end of the war. So do I. You have done a wonderful piece of work
for which you will be adequately punished in official quarters. But
you will suffer in good company."

Though Dawson thus became entitled to call himself Captain for the
duration of the war, he never used the rank or the uniform again. Once
more, to my knowledge, he served in his well-beloved Corps, but it was
then not as Captain, but as private, during his long watch in the
_Malplaquet_, of which I have told the story earlier in this book.

CHAPTER XVII

DAWSON TELEPHONES FOR A SURGEON

I have never been able to plan this book upon any system which would
hold together for half a dozen consecutive chapters. I am the victim
of my characters who come and go and pull me with them tied to their
chariot wheels. When I wrote the first story of the "Lost Naval
Papers"--which, by the way, were not lost at all--I had not made the
personal acquaintance of William Dawson. When I wrote of my own
encounters with Dawson and of my share, a humble share, in his
researches, my dear Madame Gilbert had not met me and subdued me into
a drivelling worship of her shining personality. While I was amusing
myself trying to convey to