ere.

"Yes," said Spenlove. "Rotterdam for Krupp's of Essen. For three years
Krupp's took a hundred thousand tons per annum of high-grade ore out of
this little island alone. They took it in British bottoms to Rotterdam,
and from there it went by way of their interminable canals to Essen. I
know because I helped to take it. It was just about the time, too, that
Chamberlain was preaching his crusade against the evils of Germany
dumping her steel below cost price on our markets, and I was so
indignant about it that I wrote to the newspapers. I often wrote to the
newspapers in those days. I suppose we all catch the disease at some
time or other. As a rule, of course, nothing happened save that the
letter would not be printed, or else printed full of mistakes, with the
vital paragraphs omitted for 'lack of space.' This letter wasn't printed
either, but I received one in return from a fiery young member of
Parliament who had just been returned on the Protective Tariff ticket.
He asked for full details, which I sent to him. I believe he tried to
make a question of it in the House, but he ran up against the Consular
Service, and that did for him. You see, our Consul here was named
Gruenbaum.

"More than that," went on Mr. Spenlove, sitting upright in his
deck-chair and looking attentively at a near-by ventilator; "more than
that, Mr. Gruenbaum was resident concessionaire of the mining company, he
owned the pumping-plant which irrigates yonder valley, he was connected
by marriage with the Greek governor of the Island, who lives over in the
tiny capital of Ipsilon, and he, Gruenbaum, was the richest man in the
Cyclades. That was his house, that big square white barn with the three
tall windows and the outside staircase. He was a man of enormous size
and weight, and I daresay the people of the Island thought him a god. He
certainly treated them most humanely. Every widow was pensioned by him,
which was not very much after all, for they used to have precious little
use for money. You could get a bottle of wine and a great basket of
grapes and figs for a piece of soap, I remember. He built churches for
them, too, like that one perched up there on the rock above his
house--snow-white with a blue dome. You may have noticed the other day
in the wireless news that the friends of freedom in Greece polished off
a few of what were described as reactionaires. Put them up against a
wall and pumped _mannlicher_ bullets into them. One of the