The Reporter Who Made Himself King
D >>
Davis >> The Reporter Who Made Himself King
This etext was prepared with the use of Calera WordScan Plus 2.0
THE REPORTER WHO MADE HIMSELF KING
The Old Time Journalist will tell you that the best reporter
is the one who works his way up. He holds that the only way
to start is as a printer's devil or as an office boy, to learn
in time to set type, to graduate from a compositor into a
stenographer, and as a stenographer take down speeches at
public meetings, and so finally grow into a real reporter,
with a fire badge on your left suspender, and a speaking
acquaintance with all the greatest men in the city, not even
excepting Police Captains.
That is the old time journalist's idea of it. That is the way
he was trained, and that is why at the age of sixty he is
still a reporter. If you train up a youth in this way, he
will go into reporting with too full a knowledge of the
newspaper business, with no illusions concerning it, and with
no ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen and justifiable
impression that he is not paid enough for what he does. And
he will only do what he is paid to do.
Now, you cannot pay a good reporter for what he does, because
he does not work for pay. He works for his paper. He gives
his time, his health, his brains, his sleeping hours, and his
eating hours, and sometimes his life, to get news for it. He
thinks the sun rises only that men may have light by which to
read it. But if he has been in a newspaper office from his
youth up, he finds out before he becomes a reporter that this
is not so, and loses his real value. He should come right out
of the University where he has been doing "campus notes" for
the college weekly, and be pitchforked out into city work
without knowing whether the Battery is at Harlem or Hunter's
Point, and with the idea that he is a Moulder of Public
Opinion and that the Power of the Press is greater than the
Power of Money, and that the few lines he writes are of more
value in the Editor's eyes than is the column of advertising
on the last page, which they are not.
After three years--it is sometimes longer, sometimes not so
long--he finds out that he has given his nerves and his youth
and his enthusiasm in exchange for a general fund of
miscellaneous knowledge, the opportunity of personal encounter
with all the greatest and most remarkable men and events that
have risen in those three years, and a great fund of resource
and patience. He will find that he has crowded the
experiences of the lifetime of the ordinary young business
man, doctor, or lawyer, or man about town, into three short
years; that he has learned to think and to act quickly, to be
patient and unmoved when everyone else has lost his head,
actually or figuratively speaking; to write as fast as another
man can talk, and to be able to talk with authority on matters
of which other men do not venture even to think until they
have read what he has written with a copy-boy at his elbow on
the night previous.
It is necessary for you to know this, that you may understand
what manner of man young Albert Gordon was.
Young Gordon had been a reporter just three years. He had
left Yale when his last living relative died, and had taken
the morning train for New York, where they had promised him
reportorial work on one of the innumerable Greatest New York
Dailies. He arrived at the office at noon, and was sent back
over the same road on which he had just come, to Spuyten
Duyvil, where a train had been wrecked and everybody of
consequence to suburban New York killed. One of the old
reporters hurried him to the office again with his "copy," and
after he had delivered that, he was sent to the Tombs to talk
French to a man in Murderers' Row, who could not talk anything
else, but who had shown some international skill in the use of
a jimmy. And at eight, he covered a flower-show in Madison
Square Garden; and at eleven was sent over the Brooklyn Bridge
in a cab to watch a fire and make guesses at the losses to the
insurance companies.
He went to bed at one, and dreamed of shattered locomotives,
human beings lying still with blankets over them, rows of
cells, and banks of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to
the tunes of the brass band in the gallery. He decided when
he awoke the next morning that he had entered upon a
picturesque and exciting career, and as one day followed
another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more and
more devoted to it. He was twenty then, and he was now
twenty-three, and in that time had become a great reporter,
and had been to Presidential conventions in Chicago,
revolutions in Hayti, Indian outbreaks on the Plains, and
midnight meetings of moonlighters in Tennessee, and had seen
what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and fever could do in
great cities, and had contradicted the President, and borrowed
matches from burglars. And now he thought he would like to
rest and breathe a bit, and not to work again unless as a war
correspondent. The only obstacle to his becoming a great war
correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war, and a war
correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual
as a general without an army. He read the papers every
morning on the elevated trains for war clouds; but though
there were many war clouds, they always drifted apart, and
peace smiled again. This was very disappointing to young
Gordon, and he became more and more keenly discouraged.
And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to
write his novel. It was to be a novel of New York life, and
he wanted a quiet place in which to work on it. He was
already making inquiries among the suburban residents of his
acquaintance for just such a quiet spot, when he received an
offer to go to the Island of Opeki in the North Pacific Ocean,
as secretary to the American consul at that place. The
gentleman who had been appointed by the President to act as
consul at Opeki was Captain Leonard T. Travis, a veteran of
the Civil War, who had contracted a severe attack of
rheumatism while camping out at night in the dew, and who on
account of this souvenir of his efforts to save the Union had
allowed the Union he had saved to support him in one office or
another ever since. He had met young Gordon at a dinner, and
had had the presumption to ask him to serve as his secretary,
and Gordon, much to his surprise, had accepted his offer. The
idea of a quiet life in the tropics with new and beautiful
surroundings, and with nothing to do and plenty of time in
which to do it, and to write his novel besides, seemed to
Albert to be just what he wanted; and though he did not know
nor care much for his superior officer, he agreed to go with
him promptly, and proceeded to say good-by to his friends and
to make his preparations. Captain Travis was so delighted
with getting such a clever young gentleman for his secretary,
that he referred to him to his friends as "my attache of
legation;" nor did he lessen that gentleman's dignity by telling
anyone that the attache's salary was to be five hundred
dollars a year. His own salary was only fifteen hundred
dollars; and though his brother-in-law, Senator Rainsford,
tried his best to get the amount raised, he was unsuccessful.
The consulship to Opeki was instituted early in the '50's, to
get rid of and reward a third or fourth cousin of the
President's, whose services during the campaign were
important, but whose after-presence was embarrassing. He had
been created consul to Opeki as being more distant and
unaccessible than any other known spot, and had lived and died
there; and so little was known of the island, and so difficult
was communication with it, that no one knew he was dead, until
Captain Travis, in his hungry haste for office, had uprooted
the sad fact. Captain Travis, as well as Albert, had a
secondary reason for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician
had told him to go to some warm climate for his rheumatism,
and in accepting the consulship his object was rather to
follow out his doctor's orders at his country's expense, than
to serve his country at the expense of his rheumatism.
Albert could learn but very little of Opeki; nothing, indeed,
but that it was situated about one hundred miles from the
Island of Octavia, which island, in turn, was simply described
as a coaling-station three hundred miles distant from the
coast of California. Steamers from San Francisco to Yokohama
stopped every third week at Octavia, and that was all that
either Captain Travis or his secretary could learn of their
new home. This was so very little, that Albert stipulated to
stay only as long as he liked it, and to return to the States
within a few months if he found such a change of plan
desirable.
As he was going to what was an almost undiscovered country, he
thought it would be advisable to furnish himself with a supply
of articles with which he might trade with the native
Opekians, and for this purpose he purchased a large quantity
of brass rods, because he had read that Stanley did so, and
added to these, brass curtain-chains, and about two hundred
leaden medals similar to those sold by street pedlers during
the Constitutional Centennial celebration in New York City.
He also collected even more beautiful but less exensive
decorations for Christmas-trees, at a wholsesale house on Park
Row. These he hoped to exchange for furs or feathers or
weapons, or for whatever other curious and valuable trophies
the Island of Opeki boasted. He already pictured his rooms on
his return hung fantastically with crossed spears and
boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly idols.
His friends told him that he was doing a very foolish thing,
and argued that once out of the newspaper world, it would be
hard to regain his place in it. But he thought the novel that
he would write while lost to the world at Opeki would serve to
make up for his temporary absence from it, and he expressly
and impressively stipulated that the editor should wire him if
there was a war.
Captain Travis and his secretary crossed the continent without
adventure, and took passage from San Francisco on the first
steamer that touched at Octavia. They reached that island in
three days, and learned with some concern that there was no
regular communication with Opeki, and that it would be
necessary to charter a sailboat for the trip. Two fishermen
agreed to take them and their trunks, and to get them to their
destination within sixteen hours if the wind held good. It
was a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with calm,
unrelentless persistence from what was apparently a clear sky;
the wind tossed the waves as high as the mast and made Captain
Travis ill; and as there was no deck to the big boat, they
were forced to huddle up under pieces of canvas, and talked
but little. Captain Travis complained of frequent twinges of
rheumatism, and gazed forlornly over the gunwale at the empty
waste of water.
"If I've got to serve a term of imprisonment on a rock in the
middle of the ocean for four years," he said, "I might just as
well have done something first to deserve it. This is a
pretty way to treat a man who bled for his country. This is
gratitude, this is." Albert pulled heavily on his pipe, and
wiped the rain and spray from his face and smiled.
"Oh, it won't be so bad when we get there," he said; "they say
these Southern people are always hospitable, and the whites
will be glad to see anyone from the States."
"There will be a round of diplomatic dinners," said the
consul, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "I have brought two
uniforms to wear at them."
It was seven o'clock in the evening when the rain ceased, and
one of the black, half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed at a
little low line on the horizon.
"Opeki," he said. The line grew in length until it proved to
be an island with great mountains rising to the clouds, and,
as they drew nearer and nearer, showed a level coast running
back to the foot of the mountains and covered with a forest of
palms. They next made out a village of thatched huts around a
grassy square, and at some distance from the village a wooden
structure with a tin roof.
"I wonder where the town is," asked the consul, with a nervous
glance at the fishermen. One of them told him that what he
saw was the town.
"That?" gasped the consul. "Is that where all the people on
the island live?"
The fisherman nodded; but the other added that there were
other natives further back in the mountains, but that they
were bad men who fought and ate each other. The consul and
his attache of legation gazed at the mountains with unspoken
misgivings. They were quite near now, and could see an
immense crowd of men and women, all of them black, and clad
but in the simplest garments, waiting to receive them. They
seemed greatly excited and ran in and out of the huts, and up
and down the beach, as wildly as so many black ants. But in
the front of the group they distinguished three men who they
could see were white, though they were clothed, like the
others, simply in a shirt and a short pair of trousers. Two
of these three suddenly sprang away on a run and disappeared
among the palm-trees; but the third one, when he recognized
the American flag in the halyards, threw his straw hat in the
water and began turning handsprings over the sand.
"That young gentleman, at least," said Albert, gravely, "seems
pleased to see us."
A dozen of the natives sprang into the water and came wading
and swimming toward them, grinning and shouting and swinging
their arms.
"I don't think it's quite safe, do you?" said the consul,
looking out wildly to the open sea. "You see, they don't know
who I am."
A great black giant threw one arm over the gunwale and shouted
something that sounded as if it were spelt Owah, Owah, as the
boat carried him through the surf.
"How do you do?" said Gordon, doubtfully. The boat shook the
giant off under the wave and beached itself so suddenly that
the American consul was thrown forward to his knees. Gordon
did not wait to pick him up, but jumped out and shook hands
with the young man who had turned handsprings, while the
natives gathered about them in a circle and chatted and
laughed in delighted excitement.
"I'm awfully glad to see you," said the young man, eagerly.
"My name's Stedman. I'm from New Haven, Connecticut. Where
are you from?"
"New York," said Albert. "This," he added, pointing solemnly
to Captain Travis, who was still on his knees in the boat, "is
the American consul to Opeki." The American consul to Opeki
gave a wild look at Mr. Stedman of New Haven and at the
natives.
"See here, young man," he gasped, "is this all there is of
Opeki?"
"The American consul?" said young Stedman, with a gasp of
amazement, and looking from Albert to Captain Travis. "Why, I
never supposed they would send another here; the last one died
about fifteen years ago, and there hasn't been one since.
I've been living in the consul's office with the Bradleys, but
I'll move out, of course. I'm sure I'm awfully glad to see
you. It'll make it so much more pleasant for me."
"Yes," said Captain Travis, bitterly, as he lifted his
rheumatic leg over the boat; "that's why we came."
Mr. Stedman did not notice this. He was too much pleased to
be anything but hospitable. "You are soaking wet, aren't
you?" he said; "and hungry, I guess. You come right over to
the consul's office and get on some other things."
He turned to the natives and gave some rapid orders in their
language, and some of them jumped into the boat at this, and
began to lift out the trunks, and others ran off toward a
large, stout old native, who was sitting gravely on a log,
smoking, with the rain beating unnoticed on his gray hair.
"They've gone to tell the King," said Stedman; "but you'd
better get something to eat first, and then I'll be happy to
present you properly."
"The King," said Captain Travis, with some awe; "is there a
king?"
"I never saw a king," Gordon remarked, "and I'm sure I never
expected to see one sitting on a log in the rain."
"He's a very good king," said Stedman, confidentially; "and
though you mightn't think it to look at him, he's a terrible
stickler for etiquette and form. After supper he'll give you
an audience; and if you have any tobacco, you had better give
him some as a present, and you'd better say it's from the
President: he doesn't like to take presents from common
people, he's so proud. The only reason he borrows mine is
because he thinks I'm the President's son."
"What makes him think that?" demanded the consul, with some
shortness. Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at the consul
and at Albert, and said that he guessed someone must have told
him.
The consul's office was divided into four rooms with an open
court in the middle, filled with palms, and watered somewhat
unnecessarily by a fountain.
"I made that," said Stedman, in a modest, offhand way. "I
made it out of hollow bamboo reeds connected with a spring.
And now I'm making one for the King. He saw this and had a
lot of bamboo sticks put up all over the town, without any
underground connections, and couldn't make out why the water
wouldn't spurt out of them. And because mine spurts, he
thinks I'm a magician."
"I suppose," grumbled the consul, "someone told him that too."
"I suppose so," said Mr. Stedman, uneasily.
There was a veranda around the consul's office, and inside the
walls were hung with skins, and pictures from illustrated
papers, and there was a good deal of bamboo furniture, and
four broad, cool-looking beds. The place was as clean as a
kitchen. "I made the furniture," said Stedman, "and the
Bradleys keep the place in order."
"Who are the Bradleys?" asked Albert.
"The Bradleys are those two men you saw with me," said
Stedman; "they deserted from a British man-of-war that stopped
here for coal, and they act as my servants. One is Bradley,
Sr., and the other Bradley, Jr."
"Then vessels do stop here occasionally?" the consul said,
with a pleased smile.
"Well, not often," said Stedman. "Not so very often; about
once a year. The Nelson thought this was Octavia, and put off
again as soon as she found out her mistake, but the Bradleys
took to the bush, and the boat's crew couldn't find them.
When they saw your flag, they thought you might mean to send
them back, so they ran off to hide again; they'll be back,
though, when they get hungry."
The supper young Stedman spread for his guests, as he still
treated them, was very refreshing and very good. There was
cold fish and pigeon-pie, and a hot omelet filled with
mushrooms and olives and tomatoes and onions all sliced up
together, and strong black coffee. After supper, Stedman went
off to see the King, and came back in a little while to say
that his Majesty would give them an audience the next day
after breakfast. "It is too dark now," Stedman explained;
"and it's raining so that they can't make the street-lamps
burn. Did you happen to notice our lamps? I invented them;
but they don't work very well yet. I've got the right idea,
though, and I'll soon have the town illuminated all over,
whether it rains or not."
The consul had been very silent and indifferent, during
supper, to all around him. Now he looked up with some show of
interest.
"How much longer is it going to rain, do you think?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know," said Stedman, critically. "Not more than
two months, I should say." The consul rubbed his rheumatic
leg and sighed, but said nothing.
The Bradleys returned about ten o'clock, and came in very
sheepishly. The consul had gone off to pay the boatmen who
had brought them, and Albert in his absence assured the
sailors that there was not the least danger of their being
sent away. Then he turned into one of the beds, and Stedman
took one in another room, leaving the room he had occupied
heretofore for the consul. As he was saying good-night,
Albert suggested that he had not yet told them how he came to
be on a deserted island; but Stedman only laughed and said
that that was a long story, and that he would tell him all
about it in the morning. So Albert went off to bed without
waiting for the consul to return, and fell asleep, wondering
at the strangeness of his new life, and assuring himself that
if the rain only kept up, he would have his novel finished in
a month.
The sun was shining brightly when he awoke, and the palm-trees
outside were nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. From the
court came the odor of strange flowers, and from the window he
could see the ocean brilliantly blue, and with the sun coloring
the spray that beat against the coral reefs on the shore.
"Well, the consul can't complain of this," he said, with a
laugh of satisfaction; and pulling on a bath-robe, he stepped
into the next room to awaken Captain Travis. But the room was
quite empty, and the bed undisturbed. The consul's trunk
remained just where it had been placed near the door, and on
it lay a large sheet of foolscap, with writing on it, and
addressed at the top to Albert Gordon. The handwriting was
the consul's. Albert picked it up and read it with much
anxiety. It began abruptly--
"The fishermen who brought us to this forsaken spot tell me
that it rains here six months in the year, and that this is
the first month. I came here to serve my country, for which I
fought and bled, but I did not come here to die of rheumatism
and pneumonia. I can serve my country better by staying
alive; and whether it rains or not, I don't like it. I have
been grossly deceived, and I am going back. Indeed, by the
time you get this, I will be on my return trip, as I intend
leaving with the men who brought us here as soon as they can
get the sail up. My cousin, Senator Rainsford, can fix it all
right with the President, and can have me recalled in proper
form after I get back. But of course it would not do for me
to leave my post with no one to take my place, and no one
could be more ably fitted to do so than yourself; so I feel no
compunctions at leaving you behind. I hereby, therefore,
accordingly appoint you my substitute with full power to act,
to collect all fees, sign all papers, and attend to all
matters pertaining to your office as American consul, and I
trust you will worthily uphold the name of that country and
government which it has always been my pleasure and duty to serve.
"Your sincere friend and superior officer,
"LEONARD T. TRAVIS.
"P. S. I did not care to disturb you by moving my trunk, so I
left it, and you can make what use you please of whatever it
contains, as I shall not want tropical garments where I am
going. What you will need most, I think, is a waterproof and
umbrella.
"P. S. Look out for that young man Stedman. He is too
inventive. I hope you will like your high office; but as for
myself, I am satisfied with little old New York. Opeki is
just a bit too far from civilization to suit me."
Albert held the letter before him and read it over again
before he moved. Then he jumped to the window. The boat was
gone, and there was not a sign of it on the horizon.
"The miserable old hypocrite!" he cried, half angry and half
laughing. "If he thinks I am going to stay here alone he is
very greatly mistaken. And yet, why not?" he asked. He
stopped soliloquizing and looked around him, thinking rapidly.
As he stood there, Stedman came in from the other room, fresh
and smiling from his morning's bath.
"Good-morning," he said, "where's the consul?"
"The consul," said Albert, gravely, "is before you. In me you
see the American consul to Opeki.
"Captain Travis," Albert explained, "has returned to the
United States. I suppose he feels that he can best serve his
country by remaining on the spot. In case of another war,
now, for instance, he would be there to save it again."
"And what are you going to do?" asked Stedman, anxiously.
"You will not run away too, will you?"
Albert said that he intended to remain where he was and
perform his consular duties, to appoint him his secretary, and
to elevate the United States in the opinion of the Opekians
above all other nations.
"They may not think much of the United States in England," he
said; "but we are going to teach the people of Opeki that
America is first on the map and that there is no second."
"I'm sure it's very good of you to make me your secretary,"
said Stedman, with some pride. "I hope I won't make any
mistakes. What are the duties of a consul's secretary?"
"That," said Albert, "I do not know. But you are rather good
at inventing, so you can invent a few. That should be your
first duty and you should attend to it at once. I will have
trouble enough finding work for myself. Your salary is five
hundred dollars a year; and now," he continued, briskly, "we
want to prepare for this reception. We can tell the King that
Travis was just a guard of honor for the trip, and that I have
sent him back to tell the President of my safe arrival. That
will keep the President from getting anxious. There is
nothing," continued Albert, "like a uniform to impress people
who live in the tropics, and Travis, it so happens, has two in
his trunk. He intended to wear them on State occasions, and
as I inherit the trunk and all that is in it, I intend to wear
one of the uniforms, and you can have the other. But I have
first choice, because I am consul."