enwah and the Hillmen with your standing army once
and you'll get all the fighting you want."

"The Hillmen?" said Albert.

"The Hillmen are the natives that live up there in the hills," Stedman
said, nodding his head toward the three high mountains at the other
end of the island, that stood out blackly against the purple, moonlit
sky. "There are nearly as many of them as there are Opekians, and they
hunt and fight for a living and for the pleasure of it. They have an
old rascal named Messenwah for a king, and they come down here about
once every three months, and tear things up."

Albert sprang to his feet.

"Oh, they do, do they?" he said, staring up at the mountain-tops.
"They come down here and tear up things, do they? Well, I think we'll
stop that, I think we'll stop that! I, don't care how many there are.
I'll get the two Bradleys to tell me all they know about drilling,
to-morrow morning, and we'll drill these Opekians, and have sham
battles, and attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot of wild,
howling Zulus out of them. And when the Hillmen come down to pay their
quarterly visit, they'll go back again on a run. At least some of them
will," he added, ferociously. "Some of them will stay right here."

"Dear me, dear me!" said Stedman, with awe; "you are a born fighter,
aren't you?"

"Well, you wait and see," said Gordon; "maybe I am. I haven't studied
tactics of war and the history of battles, so that I might be a great
war correspondent, without learning something. And there is only one
king on this island, and that is old Ollypybus himself. And I'll go
over and have a talk with him about it to-morrow."

Young Stedman walked up and down the length of the veranda, in and out
of the moonlight, with his hands in his pockets, and his head on his
chest. "You have me all stirred up, Gordon," he said; "you seem so
confident and bold, and you're not so much older than I am, either."

"My training has been different; that's all," said the reporter.

"Yes," Stedman said, bitterly. "I have been sitting in an office ever
since I left school, sending news over a wire or a cable, and you have
been out in the world, gathering it."

"And now," said Gordon, smiling and putting his arm around the other
boy's shoulders, "we are going to make news ourselves."

"There is one thing I want to say to you before you turn in," said
Stedman "Before you suggest all these improvements on Ollypybus, you
must remember that he ha