The Dreamers Part 13

"Who smoked our struck-stack?" he demanded, in broken English.

"The enemy," cried his crew, with some nervousness. I was listening to their words through the megaphone.

"Then let her sink," said he, clutching his brow sadly with his clinched fist. "Far be it from me to stay afloat in Manila Bay on the 1st of May, and so cast discredit on history!"

The _Reina Cristina_ immediately sank, according to the orders of the Admiral, and I turned my attention to the _Don Juan de Austria_. Rowing across the raging channel to the _Baltimore_, I boarded her and pulled the lanyard of the port boom forty-two. The discharge was terrific.

"What has happened?" I asked, coolly, as the explosion exploded. "Did we hit her?"

"We did, your honor," said the Bo's'n's mate, "square in the eye; only, Commodore, it ain't a her this time--it's a him. It's the _Don Juan de_--"

"Never mind the s.e.x," I cried. "Has she sank?"

"No, sir," replied the Bo's'n's mate, "she 'ain't sank yet. She's a-waiting orders."

"Fly signals to sink," said I, sternly, for I had resolved that she should go down.

They did so, and the _Don Juan de Austria_ immediately disappeared beneath the waves. Her commander evidently realized that I meant what I signalled.

"Are there any more of the enemy afloat?" I demanded, jumping from the deck of the _Baltimore_ to that of the _Concord_.

"No, Commodore," replied the captain of the latter.

"Then signal the enemy to charter two more gunboats and have 'em sent out. I can't be put off with two boats when I'm ready to sink four," I replied.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SINKING THE _CASTILLA_]

The _Concord_ immediately telephoned to the Spanish commandant at the Manila Cafe de la Paix, who as quickly chartered the _Castilla_ and the _Velasco_--two very good boats that had recently come in in ballast with the idea of loading up with bananas and tobacco.

While waiting for these vessels to come out and be sunk, I ordered all hands to breakfast, thus reviving their falling courage. It was a very good breakfast, too. We had mush and hominy and potatoes in every style, beefsteak, chops, liver and bacon, chicken hash, buckwheat cakes and fish-b.a.l.l.s, coffee, tea, rolls, toast, and brown bread.

Just as we were eating the latter the _Castilla_ and _Velasco_ came out.

I fired my revolver at the _Castilla_ and threw a fish-ball at the _Velasco_. Both immediately burst into flames.

Manila was conquered.

The fleet gone, the city fell. It not only fell, but slid, and by nightfall Old Glory waved over the citadel.

The foe was licked.

To-morrow I am to see Dewey again.

I think I shall resign to-night.

P.S.--Please send word to the magazines that all articles by Dewey must be written by Me. Terms, $500 per word. The strain has been worth it.

X

THE MYSTERY OF PINKHAM'S DIAMOND STUD

_Being the tale told by the holder of the eleventh ball, Mr. Fulton Streete_

"It is the little things that tell in detective work, my dear Watson,"

said Sherlock Holmes as we sat over our walnuts and coffee one bitter winter night shortly before his unfortunate departure to Switzerland, whence he never returned.

"I suppose that is so," said I, pulling away upon the very excellent stogie which mine host had provided--one made in Pittsburg in 1885, and purchased by Holmes, whose fine taste in tobacco had induced him to lay a thousand of these down in his cigar-cellar for three years, and then keep them in a refrigerator, overlaid with a cloth soaked in Chateau Yquem wine for ten. The result may be better imagined than described.

Suffice it to say that my head did not recover for three days, and the ash had to be cut off the stogie with a knife. "I suppose so, my dear Holmes," I repeated, taking my knife and cutting three inches of the stogie off and casting it aside, furtively, lest he should think I did not appreciate the excellence of the tobacco, "but it is not given to all of us to see the little things. Is it, now?"

"Yes," he said, rising and picking up the rejected portion of the stogie. "We all see everything that goes on, but we don't all know it.

We all hear everything that goes on, but we are not conscious of the fact. For instance, at this present moment there is somewhere in this world a man being set upon by a.s.sa.s.sins and yelling l.u.s.tily for help.

Now his yells create a certain atmospheric disturbance. Sound is merely vibration, and, once set going, these vibrations will run on and on and on in ripples into the infinite--that is, they will never stop, and sooner or later these vibrations must reach our ears. We may not know it when they do, but they will do so none the less. If the man is in the next room, we will hear the yells almost simultaneously--not quite, but almost--with their utterance. If the man is in Timbuctoo, the vibrations may not reach us for a little time, according to the speed with which they travel. So with sight. Sight seems limited, but in reality it is not. _Vox populi, vox Dei_. If _vox_, why not _oculus_? It is a simple proposition, then, that the eye of the people being the eye of G.o.d, the eye of G.o.d being all-seeing, therefore the eye of the people is all-seeing--Q. E. D."

I gasped, and Holmes, cracking a walnut, gazed into the fire for a moment.

"It all comes down, then," I said, "to the question, who are the people?"

Holmes smiled grimly. "All men," he replied, shortly; "and when I say all men, I mean all creatures who can reason."

"Does that include women?" I asked.

"Certainly," he said. "Indubitably. The fact that women _don't_ reason does not prove that they can't. I _can_ go up in a balloon if I wish to, but I _don't_. I _can_ read an American newspaper comic supplement, but I _don't_. So it is with women. Women can reason, and therefore they have a right to be included in the cla.s.sification whether they do or don't."

"Quite so," was all I could think of to say at the moment. The extraordinary logic of the man staggered me, and I again began to believe that the famous mathematician who said that if Sherlock Holmes attempted to prove that five apples plus three peaches made four pears, he would not venture to dispute his conclusions, was wise. (This was the famous Professor Zoggenhoffer, of the Leipsic School of Moral Philosophy and Stenography.--ED.)

"Now you agree, my dear Watson," he said, "that I have proved that we see everything?"

"Well--" I began.

"Whether we are conscious of it or not?" he added, lighting the gas-log, for the cold was becoming intense.

"From that point of view, I suppose so--yes," I replied, desperately.

"Well, then, this being granted, consciousness is all that is needed to make us fully informed on any point."

"No," I said, with some positiveness. "The American people are very conscious, but I can't say that generally they are well-informed."

I had an idea this would knock him out, as the Bostonians say, but counted without my host. He merely laughed.

"The American is only self-conscious. Therefore he is well-informed only as to self," he said.

"You've proved your point, Sherlock," I said. "Go on. What else have you proved?"

"That it is the little things that tell," he replied. "Which all men would realize in a moment if they could see the little things--and when I say 'if they could see,' I of course mean if they could be conscious of them."