Captain Jinks, Hero Part 27

"Bless my soul! he has disappeared," said Cleary again.

Sure enough, he had suddenly pa.s.sed out of sight, and as suddenly the flash-light went out and the lights on the masts reappeared. In another moment these lights were extinguished, and the flash-light revealed a form standing in the same place in a theatrical att.i.tude with raised sword and uplifted face.

"I believe it's he again," said Cleary. "He must have a trap-door. He's got on another uniform. I think it's a Frank admiral's uniform. There go the Frank guns. He's pa.s.sing their fleet."

"Yes, it is a Frank naval uniform," said a foreign officer near them, as he scrutinized the deck with his gla.s.ses.

Before each of the fleets the same maneuvre was carried out. As their guns fired, the Emperor would disappear for a few moments, and in an incalculably short time he would appear again in the uniform of an admiral of the fleet in question. When he had pa.s.sed the last fleet he disappeared once more, and came back to sight clad in the white and silver armor of a general officer of his own army, with helmet and plume. The flash-light now changed colors through the whole gamut of the rainbow, and the Emperor knelt in the att.i.tude of Columbus discovering America.

Sam was immensely impressed.

"Oh, Cleary!" he said, "if we only had an Emperor."

"The President is doing his best," said Cleary. "Don't blame him."

"Oh, but what can he do? Why haven't we some one like that to embody the ideal of the State, to picture us to ourselves, to realize our aspirations?"

As he said this a strange noise arose from the crowd near the landing-stage where the Emperor was about to alight. The far greater part of this crowd was composed of natives, and they had been entirely taken aback by the exhibition. They were just beginning to understand it, and as the war-lord moved about the deck followed by the glare of the flash-light, and again struck an att.i.tude before descending into the gig which was to take him ash.o.r.e, some one of the Porsslanese in the crowd laughed. His neighbor laughed too, then another and then another, until the whole native mult.i.tude was laughing. The laugh rippled along the sh.o.r.e through the long stretch of natives collected there like the swells from a pa.s.sing steamer. It seemed to extend back from the sh.o.r.e through the whole town, and, tho it was undoubtedly fancy, Sam thought he heard it spreading, like the rings from a stone thrown into the water, over the entire land. The foreigners stood aghast. The Porsslanese are not a laughing people. They had never been known to laugh before except in the most feeble manner. The events of the past year had not been especially humorous, and the coming of the great war-lord was far from being a laughing matter. Yet with the perversity of heathen they had selected this impressive occasion for showing their incurable barbarism and bad taste. Sam fairly shuddered.

"It's a sacrilege," he cried. "I believe that nothing short of extermination will reclaim this unhappy land. They are calling down the vengeance of heaven upon them."

They walked back to town with the foreign officer.

"He's a wonderful man, the Emperor," said he, in indifferent English.

"How quickly he changed his clothes, and what a compliment it was!"

"A sort of lightning-change artist," said Cleary. "He could make his fortune at a continuous performance."

In the dark Sam blushed for his friend, but fortunately their companion did not understand the allusion.

"You should have seen him when he visited our Queen," he said. "She came to meet him in the uniform of a Tutonian hussar, breeches and all.

You can imagine how he was touched by it. That very afternoon he called upon her dressed in the costume of one of our royal princesses with a long satin train. It made him wonderfully popular. Our Queen responded at once by making his infant daughters colonels of several of our regiments. One of them is colonel of mine," he added proudly.

"What would you do if you went to war with Tutonia, and one of the kids should order you to shoot on your own army?" asked Cleary. "It might be embarra.s.sing."

But the foreigner did not understand this either.

"And to think that these Porsslanese dogs have received him with laughter!" said he.

At eleven o'clock on the same evening the Emperor was closeted with his aged field-marshal, von Balderdash, in a handsomely furnished sitting-room. A Turk's head had been set up in the middle of the room, and His Majesty, dressed in the uniform of a cavalry general, was engaged in making pa.s.ses at it with a saber. He had already taken a ride on horseback with his staff. The field-marshal stood wearily leaning against the wall at the side of a desk piled up with papers.

"We have avenged the death of our amba.s.sador," Balderdash was saying.

"We have sent out five punitive expeditions in all. Our quarter of the imperial city shows the power of arms more completely than any other.

We have set the highest standard, and our army is the admiration of all."

The count watched the face of his master as he spoke, but there was no sign of satisfaction in it. The Emperor was out of humor.

"We have not done enough," he said. "If we had, those pagans would not have ventured to laugh--yes, actually to laugh--in our imperial presence. Balderdash, you have not done your duty. I shall take command myself at once. We must have a real punitive expedition, and not one of your imitations. If they want war, let them have it."

"We can not have war, Your Majesty, without an enemy, and we can find no enemy. All their armed men are killed or have fled, and the rest of the population run away from us as soon as we appear."

"Count," said the Emperor sternly, "do you remember your oath to our person? Do you know your duties as a field-marshal?"

"I think so, Your Majesty."

"Is it not your duty to provide every requisite for war at my command?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Then I depend upon you to provide an enemy. What military requisite is more important? Remember the fate of Fismark, and do your duty. We must have a war. That is what I have come here for, and I do not propose to be disappointed. We must have a punitive expedition at once.

What are my engagements for to-morrow?"

"Your Majesty's mustache artist is coming at 5:30," replied the count, looking at a memorandum. "Breakfast at 6--inspection of infantry at 6:30--naval maneuvres at 8--reception of our officers at 10:30--reception of foreign officers at 11:30--reception of civilians at 12--luncheon at 12:30--photographer from 1 to 3. We have made no appointments after 3, Your Majesty."

"Then put down the punitive expedition for 3:15," said the war lord, twisting his mustache in front of his eyes. "I propose to have this whole nation kow-tow before me in unison before I leave their miserable land. Take the necessary measures at once for the ceremony. Now I am going to call out the whole garrison and see if they are kept in readiness. You may go, and send me an aide-de-camp. You understand that you must find me an enemy on whom I can wreak vengeance for all these wrongs."

"I understand, Your Majesty," said the count, bending low before him.

"I accept this Gospel of Your Majesty's most blessed Person," and he took his leave.

The expedition did not start promptly at 3:15, for unexpected complications arose. The other powers wanted to send out punitive expeditions too, and they sought to have it established that the Porsslanese laugh was directed against all the fleets as well as against the Emperor. A judicious distribution of decorations persuaded all the armies to drop this pretension except the Anglian, and it was finally arranged that the Tutonian and Anglian armies should cooperate and take the field together under the Emperor's immediate command. A week had elapsed before this force was prepared, but it finally started out, General Fawlorn commanding the Anglian contingent.

Sam, who was still only convalescent and who had been a.s.signed some duties connected with forwarding despatches which left him a great deal of leisure, looked with envious eyes upon the departing host. He had never seen anything like the magnificence of the uniforms of the Emperor's staff. He envied them their gilt and stars, and he envied them the prospect of winning the great battles which Balderdash had promised them. They marched at once upon a fortified town in which a large force of Fencers were reported to be established. They besieged it for six days according to all the rules of the Tutonian manual, and finally entered it with great precautions, and found it absolutely empty. At one village a regiment of Anglian Asiatics cut to pieces a hundred natives who were alleged to be Fencers, but it transpired afterward that none of them were armed. Balderdash was frightened half to death, expecting his imperial master to protest against the lack of opposition, but, strange to say, he took it very well and delivered orations on all occasions extolling the prowess of his troops in putting to flight the hordes of a vast empire. This campaign lasted a month, and the expedition finally returned to the port and was received with all the marks of glory that Tutonian officialism could command.

The Emperor at once cabled to several kings and all his relations that Providence had graciously preserved him in the midst of great dangers and brought his enterprise to a successful termination.

"They may be great soldiers," said Cleary one day to Sam, "but they don't understand the newspaper business. The Emperor has a natural talent for advertising, but it hasn't been properly cultivated. They oughtn't to have let it leak out that there wasn't even a battle. Why, Taffy says he could go from one end of the Empire to the other with a squadron of cavalry! As for me, I shouldn't mind trying it without the cavalry. When they did kill any people, it was like killing pheasants at one of his famous battues. I wonder he wasn't photographed in the middle of a pile of them, the way he is when he goes shooting at home.

Perhaps he'll get up some sport here in a big hen-coop. I'll suggest it to Balderdash."

Sam refused to think ill of the great war-lord, and embraced every opportunity to see him. He had been formally presented to him at a reception of officers, but there was a crowd present, and Sam did not expect him to recognize him again. On one occasion Sam happened to be standing in the street when the Emperor, accompanied by some of his officers, came past on foot. Sam stood on one side and saluted. To his surprise the Emperor stopped and beckoned to him. Sam came forward, bowing, blus.h.i.+ng, and stammering.

"I am glad to see an officer of your country here, General," said His Majesty. "May I ask your name? Ah, Jinks! I have heard your name before. What do you think of expansion, General?"

"I beg Your Majesty's pardon," said Sam, "but I do not think. I obey orders."

The Emperor gave an exclamation of surprise and delight.

"Hear that, gentlemen," said he in his own language, turning to his officers. "He does not think; he obeys orders! There is a model for you. There is a motto for you to learn. G.o.d has given you an Emperor to think for you. Our friend here, with only a President to fall back on, has perceived the truth that a soldier must not think. He thinks at his peril. General," he added in English, "you have given my army a lesson to-day which they will never forget. It will give me pleasure to decorate you with the Green c.o.c.katoo, third cla.s.s."

Sam began to stammer something.

"Oh, yes, I remember. Your Government does not allow you to receive it.

If that restriction is ever removed, let me be informed," and the Emperor pa.s.sed on, while Sam determined to write to his uncle and have this miserable civilian law changed. It so happened that there was a great dearth of news at this time, and Cleary made the most of this episode. It did almost as much to make General Jinks famous as anything that he had done before, and he was widely advertised at home as the officer who had astounded the Emperor by his wisdom and given a lesson to the finest army in the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PERFECT SOLDIER "THE EMPEROR GAVE AN EXCLAMATION OF SURPRISE AND DELIGHT"]

"Sam, your luck never gives out," said Cleary. "They'll make you a major-general, I expect, now."

"I should rather like to have the thanks of Congress," answered Sam, as if that were a mere bagatelle. This conversation occurred in a restaurant. A young officer was sitting alone at the next table, and he gave his order to the waiter in a high, penetrating voice.