Channing followed these events with envy.  Once or twice, as a special favor, the press-boats carried him across to Siboney and Daiquiri, and he was able to write stories of what he saw there; of the landing of the army, of the wounded after the Guasimas fight, and of the fever-camp at Siboney.  His friends on the press-boats sent this work home by mail on the chance that the Sunday editor might take it at space rates.  But mail matter moved slowly and the army moved quickly, and events crowded so closely upon each other that Channing’s stories, when they reached New York, were ancient history and were unpublished, and, what was of more importance to him, unpaid for.  He had no money now, and he had become a beach-comber in the real sense of the word.  He slept the warm nights away among the bananas and cocoanuts on the Fruit Company’s wharf, and by calling alternately on his Cuban exiles and the different press-boats, he was able to obtain a meal a day without arousing any suspicions in the minds of his hosts that it was his only one.

He was sitting on the stringer of the pier-head one morning, waiting for a press-boat from the “front,” when the Three Friends ran in and lowered her dingy, and the “World” manager came ashore, clasping a precious bundle of closely written cable-forms.  Channing scrambled to his feet and hailed him.

“Have you heard from the chief about me yet?” he asked.  The “World” man frowned and stammered, and then, taking Channing by the arm, hurried with him toward the cable-office.

“Charlie, I think they’re crazy up there,” he began, “they think they know it all.  Here I am on the spot, but they think—­”

“You mean they won’t have me,” said Channing.  “But why?” he asked, patiently.  “They used to give me all the space I wanted.”

“Yes, I know, confound them, and so they should now,” said the “World” man, with sympathetic indignation.  “But here’s their cable; you can see it’s not my fault.”  He read the message aloud.  “Channing, no.  Not safe, take reliable man from Siboney.”  He folded the cablegram around a dozen others and stuck it back in his hip-pocket.

“What queered you, Charlie,” he explained, importantly, “was that last break of yours, New Year’s, when you didn’t turn up for a week.  It was once too often, and the chief’s had it in for you ever since.  You remember?”

Channing screwed up his lips in an effort of recollection.

“Yes, I remember,” he answered, slowly.  “It began on New Year’s eve in Perry’s drug-store, and I woke up a week later in a hack in Boston.  So I didn’t have such a run for my money, did I?  Not good enough to have to pay for it like this.  I tell you,” he burst out suddenly, “I feel like hell being left out of this war, with all the rest of the boys working so hard.  If it weren’t playing it low down on the fellows that have been in it from the start, I’d like to enlist.  But they enlisted for glory, and I’d only do it because I can’t see the war any other way, and it doesn’t seem fair to them.  What do you think?”