kegs of water, three storm-beaten palms rising like gallows, and the green and yellow flag of Valencia crawling down the staff.  Somewhere entombed in that blotched and mildewed masonry an old man of seventy years was shivering and hugging himself from the damp and cold.  A man who spoke five languages, a just, brave gentleman.  To me it was no new story.  I knew of the horrors of Cristobal prison; of political rivals chained to criminals loathsome with disease, of men who had raised the flag of revolution driven to suicide.  But never had I supposed that my own people could reach from the city of New York and cast a fellow-man into that cellar of fever and madness.

As I watched the yellow wall sink into the sea, I became conscious that Schnitzel was near me, as before, leaning on the rail, with his chin sunk on his arms.  His face was turned toward the fortress, and for the first time since I had known him it was set and serious.  And when, a moment later, he passed me without recognition, I saw that his eyes were filled with fear.

When we touched at Curacoa I sent a cable to my sister, announcing the date of my arrival, and then continued on to the Hotel Venezuela.  Almost immediately Schnitzel joined me.  With easy carelessness he said:  “I was in the cable office just now, sending off a wire, and that operator told me he can’t make head or tail of the third word in your cable.”

“That is strange,” I commented, “because it’s a French word, and he is French.  That’s why I wrote it in French.”

With the air of one who nails another in a falsehood, Schnitzel exclaimed: 

“Then, how did you suppose your sister was going to read it?  It’s a cipher, that’s what it is.  Oh, no, you’re not on a secret mission!  Not at all!”

It was most undignified of me, but in five minutes I excused myself, and sent to the State Department the following words: 

“Roses red, violets blue, send snow.”

Later at the State Department the only person who did not eventually pardon my jest was the clerk who had sat up until three in the morning with my cable, trying to fit it to any known code.

Immediately after my return to the Hotel Venezuela Schnitzel excused himself, and half an hour later returned in triumph with the cable operator and ordered lunch for both.  They imbibed much sweet champagne.

When we again were safe at sea, I said:  “Schnitzel, how much did you pay that Frenchman to let you read my second cable?”

Schnitzel’s reply was prompt and complacent.

“One hundred dollars gold.  It was worth it.  Do you want to know how I doped it out?”

I even challenged him to do so. “’Roses red’—­war declared; ’violets blue’—­outlook bad, or blue; ’send snow’—­send squadron, because the white squadron is white like snow.  See?  It was too easy.”

“Schnitzel,” I cried, “you are wonderful!”

Schnitzel yawned in my face.