“What date did I understand you to say, sir?” demanded Mr. Augustus Frothingham.

The prince smiled faintly.

“I am well aware,” he said, “that to the western mind—­indeed, to any modern mind save our own—­I shall seem to be speaking in mockery.  None the less, what I am saying is exact.  It is believed that the enterprises of the Phoenicians in the early ages took them but a short distance, if at all, beyond the confines of the Mediterranean.  It is merely known that, in the period of which I speak, a more adventurous spirit began to be manifested, and the Straits of Gibraltar were passed and settlements were made in Iberia.  But how far these adventurers actually penetrated has been recorded only in those documents that are in the hands of my people—­descendants of the boldest of these mariners who pushed their galleys out into the Atlantic.  At this time the king of Tyre was Abibaal, soon to be succeeded by his son Hiram, the friend, you will remember, of King David,—­”

Mr. Frothingham, who did not go to the theatre for fear of exciting his imagination, uttered the soft non-explosion which should have been speech.

“King Abibaal,” continued the prince, “who maintained his court in great pomp, had a younger and favourite son who bore his own name.  He was a wild youth of great daring, and upon the accession of Hiram to the throne he left Tyre and took command of a galley of adventuresome spirits, who were among the first to pass the straits and gain the open sea.  The story of their wild voyage I need not detail; it is enough to say that their trireme was wrecked upon the coast of Yaque; and Abibaal and those who joined him—­among them many members of the court circle and even of the royal family—­settled and developed the island.  And there the race has remained without taint of admixture, down to the present day.  Of what was wrought on the island I can tell you little, though the time will come when the eyes of the whole world will be turned upon Yaque as the forerunner of mighty things.  Ruled over by the descendants of Abibaal, the islanders have dwelt in peace and plenty for nearly three thousand years—­until, in fact, less than a year ago.  Then the line thus traceable to King Hiram himself abruptly terminated with the death of King Chelbes, without issue.”

Again Mr. Frothingham attempted to speak, and again he collapsed softly, without expression, according to his custom.  As for St. George, he was remembering how, when he first went to the paper, he had invariably been sent to the anteroom to listen to the daily tales of invention, oppression and projects for which a continual procession of the more or less mentally deficient wished the Sentinel to stand sponsor.  St. George remembered in particular one young student who soberly claimed to have invented wireless telegraphy and who molested the staff for months.  Was this olive prince, he wondered, going to prove himself worth only a half-column on a back page, after all?