riumph song of the journalist:

"A Scoop!"

Stuart slept the clock round. It was evening again when he awoke. A wash
to take the sleep out of his eyes, and down he went to see how big a
dinner he could put away. But the doorman at the hotel, an East Indian,
came forward to him with a telegram on a salver. The boy tore it open,
and read:

"GOOD--STUFF--SEND--SOME MORE--FERGUS."

And if Stuart had been offered the Governor Generalship of all the West
Indian Islands put together, he could not have been more proud.

He spent the evening interviewing some of the passengers who had come on
the mail steamer the day before and who had stayed in Port of Spain and,
before midnight, filed at the cable office a good "second-day story."
Remembering what his friend the reporter had told him, Stuart realized
that though he was still sending this matter to Fergus, as it was
straight news stuff, it probably was being handled by the Night
Telegraph staff. That would not help to fill Fergus' columns in the
Sunday issue, and the boy realized that, no matter what live day stuff
he got hold of, he must not fall behind in his series of articles on the
Color Question in the West Indies.

This question--which takes on the proportions of a problem in everyone
of the West Indian Islands--was very different in Trinidad than in
Barbados. The peoples and languages of Trinidad are strangely mixed.
Though it is an English colony, yet the language of the best families is
Spanish, and the general language of the negro population is Creole
French, a subvariant of that of Haiti. The boy found, too, on his first
long walks in the neighborhood of Port-of-Spain, that there was a large
outer settlement of East Indian coolies, and quite a number of Chinese.
The English, in Trinidad, were few in number.

In his quest for interviews about the hurricane, one of the chattiest of
Stuart's informants had been a Mr. James, a resident of Barbados, but
whose commercial interests were mainly in Trinidad. Since, then, this
gentleman evidently knew the life in both islands, his comparisons would
be of value, and the following day Stuart asked him for a second
interview.

"I'm starting out to my place on the Nariva Cocal," the planter replied,
"going in about an hour. Very glad to have you as my guest, if you wish,
and the trip will give you a good view of the island. Then we can chat
on the way."

Stuart jumped at the opportunity. This was exactly what he