The American lawyer, a chubby, red-faced man of forty, with clear grey eyes and a stubby mustache, whistled soulfully.

“What’s the trouble?  Cut their wages?” he asked.

“Wages?  My good man, we’ve never laid eyes on ’em,” said Deppingham, drawing himself up.

“I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Browne.  Got to have cooks, eh, Lord Deppingham?” Without waiting for an answer he dashed off.  His lordship observing that his wife had disappeared, followed Browne to the balustrade, overlooking the upper terrace.  The native carriers were leaving the grounds, when Britt’s shrill whistle brought them to a standstill.  No word of the ensuing conversation reached the ears of the two white men on the balcony, but the pantomime was most entertaining.

Britt’s stocky figure advanced to the very heart of the group.  It was quite evident that his opening sentences were listened to impassively.  Then, all at once, the natives began to gesticulate furiously and to shake their heads.  Whereupon Britt pounded the palm of his left hand with an emphatic right fist, occasionally pointing over his shoulder with a stubborn thumb.  At last, the argument dwindled down to a force of two—­Britt and a tall, sallow Mohammedan.  For two minutes they harangued each other and then the native gave up in despair.  The lawyer waved a triumphant hand to his friends and then climbed into one of the litters, to be borne off in the direction of the town.

“He’ll have the servants back at work before two o’clock,” said Browne calmly.  Deppingham was transfixed with astonishment.

“How—­how the devil do you—­does he bring ’em to time like that?” he murmured.  He afterward said that if he had had Saunders there at that humiliating moment he would have kicked him.

“They’re afraid of the American battleship,” said Browne.

“But where is the American battleship?” demanded Deppingham, looking wildly to sea.

“They understand that there will be one here in a day or two if we need it,” said Browne with a sly grin.  “That’s the bluff we’ve worked.”  He looked around for his wife, and, finding that she had gone inside, politely waved his hand to the Englishman and followed.

At three o’clock, Britt returned with the recalcitrant servants—­or at least the “pick” of them, as he termed the score he had chosen from the hundred or more.  He seemed to have an Aladdin-like effect over the horde.  It did not appear to depress him in the least that from among the personal effects of more than one peeped the ominous blade of a kris, or the clutch of a great revolver.  He waved his hand and snapped his fingers and they herded into the servants’ wing, from which in a twinkling they emerged ready to take up their old duties.  They were not a liveried lot, but they were swift and capable.

Calmly taking Lord Deppingham and his following into his confidence, he said, in reply to their indignant remonstrances, later on in the day: