gest. Next moment he had flounced
from our midst.

"Difficult thing to break your own head," said Raffles later;
"infinitely easier to cut your own throat. Chloroform's another
matter; when you've used it on others, you know the dose to a nicety.
So you thought I was really gone? Poor old Bunny! But I hope
Mackenzie saw your face?"

"He did," said I. I would not tell him all Mackenzie must have seen,
however.

"That's all right. I wouldn't have had him miss it for worlds; and you
mustn't think me a brute, old boy, for I fear that man, and, know, we
sink or swim together."

"And now we sink or swim with Crawshay, too," said I dolefully.

"Not we!" said Raffles with conviction. "Old Crawshay's a true
sportsman, and he'll do by us as we've done by him; besides, this makes
us quits; and I don't think, Bunny, that we'll take on the professors
again!"

THE GIFT OF THE EMPEROR

I

When the King of the Cannibal Islands made faces at Queen Victoria, and
a European monarch set the cables tingling with his compliments on the
exploit, the indignation in England was not less than the surprise, for
the thing was not so common as it has since become. But when it
transpired that a gift of peculiar significance was to follow the
congratulations, to give them weight, the inference prevailed that the
white potentate and the black had taken simultaneous leave of their
fourteen senses. For the gift was a pearl of price unparalleled,
picked aforetime by British cutlasses from a Polynesian setting, and
presented by British royalty to the sovereign who seized this
opportunity of restoring it to its original possessor.

The incident would have been a godsend to the Press a few weeks later.
Even in June there were leaders, letters, large headlines, leaded type;
the Daily Chronicle devoting half its literary page to a charming
drawing of the island capital which the new Pall Mall, in a leading
article headed by a pun, advised the Government to blow to flinders. I
was myself driving a poor but not dishonest quill at the time, and the
topic of the hour goaded me into satiric verse which obtained a better
place than anything I had yet turned out. I had let my flat in town,
and taken inexpensive quarters at Thames Ditton, on the plea of a
disinterested passion for the river.

"First-rate, old boy!" said Raffles (who must needs come and see me
there), lying back in the boat while I sculled and steered. "I suppose
they p