"To announce his arrival at Manila," remarked Colonel Webster dryly. "And the Hong-Kong papers had already published descriptions of the destruction caused by the seaquake, of the tidal waves, and the accidents to ships," came from another quarter. "The news being of especial interest to this archipelago, where we have the misfortune to be and where we noticed nothing of the whole affair," returned Harryman. "You don't mean to imply," broke in the colonel, "that the news of this catastrophe is a pure invention--an invention of the English papers in Hong-Kong?" "Don't know, I'm sure," said Harryman. "Hong-Kong papers are no criterion for me." And then he added quietly: "Yes, man is great, and the newspaper is his prophet." "But you can't dispute the fact that a seaquake may have taken place, when you consider the striking results as shown by the cable interruptions which we have been experiencing for the last six days," began Webster again. "Have we really?" said Harryman. "Are you quite sure of it? So far the only authority we have for this supposed seaquake is a Japanese captain--whom, by the way, I am having sharply watched--and a bundle of worthless Hong-Kong newspapers. And as for the rest of my hallucinations"--he jumped down from the window-sill and, going up to Webster, held out a sheet of paper toward him--"I'm in the habit of using other sources of information than the English-Japanese fingerposts." Webster glanced at the paper and then looked at Harryman questioningly. "What is it? Do you understand it?" "Yes," snapped Harryman. "These little pictures portray our war of extermination against the red man. They are terribly exaggerated and distorted, which was not at all necessary, by the way, for the events of that war do not add to the fame of our nation. Up here," explained Harryman, while several officers, among them the colonel, stepped up to the table, "you see the story of the infected blankets from the fever hospitals which were sent to the Indians; here the butchery of an Indian tribe; here, for comparison, the fight on the summit of the volcano of Ilo-Ilo, where the Tagala were finally driven into the open crater; and here, at the end, the practical application for the Tagala: 'As the Americans have destroyed the red man, so will you slowly perish under the American rule. They have hurled your countrymen into the chasm of the volcano. This crater will devour you all if you do not turn those weapons which were once broken by Spanish bondage against your deliverers of 1898, who have since become your oppressors.'" "Where did you get the scrawl?" asked the colonel excitedly. "Do you want me to procure hundreds, thousands like it for you?" returned Harryman coolly. The colonel pressed down the ashes in his pipe with his thumb, and asked indifferently: "You understand Japanese?" "Tagala also," supplemented Harryman simply. "And you mean to say that thousands----?"