wire
after eight, and it's pretty near that now. I'll show you the way."

Smith hurried to the station and despatched his telegram; then,
learning that there was a train due at 8.2 from Andover, he decided to
wait a few minutes and get an evening paper. An aviation meeting had
just been held at Tours, and he was anxious to see how the English
competitors had fared. The train was only a few minutes late. Smith
asked the guard whether he had brought any papers, and to his vexation
learnt that, there being no bookstall at Mottisfont, there were none
for that station. However, the guard himself had bought a paper before
leaving Waterloo.

"Take it and welcome, sir," he said. "I've done with it. You're
Lieutenant Smith, if I'm not mistaken. Seen your portrait in the
papers,' sir."

"Thanks, guard," said Smith, pressing a coin into his reluctant hand.

"Englishmen doing well in France, sir. Hope to see you a prize-winner
one of these days. Goodnight!"

The train rumbled off, and Smith scanned the columns by the light of a
platform lamp. He read the report of the meeting in which he was
interested: a Frenchman had made a new record in altitude; an
Englishman had won a fine race, coming in first of ten competitors; a
terrible accident had befallen a well-known airman at the moment of
descending. The most interesting piece of news was that a Frenchman
had maintained for three hours an average speed of a hundred and
twenty miles.

"I'm only just in time," said Smith to himself. He was folding the
paper when his eye was caught by a heading that recalled the days of
his boyhood, when he had revelled in stories of savages, pirates, and
the hundred and one themes that fascinate the ingenuous mind.

SHIPWRECKED AMONG CANNIBALS.

TERRIBLE SITUATION OF FAMOUS SCIENTIST.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

BRISBANE, Thursday.

A barque put in here to-day with four men picked up from an
open boat south of New Guinea, who reported that the
Government survey vessel Albatross has run ashore in a
storm on Ysabel Island, one of the Solomon group. The crew
and passengers, including Dr. Thesiger Smith, the famous
geologist, were saved, but the vessel is a complete wreck,
and the unfortunate people were compelled to camp on the
shore. They are very short of provisions, and being
practically unarmed are in great da