It did look rather blue. Just five dollars and a boat on my hands that was burning up a hundred a day in coal alone, and we at the end of the earth and the central object of interest in town. Morris keenly enjoyed the delicateness of the situation. He was never so happy as when we were in a tight place. “What are we going to do?” he queried, cracking the joints in his knuckles. I looked at my watch. It was lacking five minutes of nine. “Morris,” I said, “we are going back to the _France_ and have some breakfast.” And I smiled serenely, for my cable had gone and we couldn’t be robbed of that much, even if everything else went to the bad. So we walked down to the embankment and I whistled for the ship’s boat, and was soon in my saloon eating the best breakfast that Stomati could cook. There is nothing like a full stomach to give one courage and to make one’s brain work up to the situation of the moment. There is a good rule in whist (or some game of cards) that says “When in doubt, lead trumps.” A good axiom for a war correspondent (or anyone else for that matter) in trouble would be “when in a desperate plight and all seems lost—eat, and then do your thinking.” It is poor business worrying at best, and especially on an empty stomach. So I banished from my mind the delicacy of my situation and ate the most luxurious breakfast which the _France_ afforded. When this duty was completed, I lighted a cigar, which I intended to smoke to the bitter end before I attempted that painful process of putting one’s mind through a wringer in an endeavor to make something out of nothing. While the smoke from the first puff was floating out of the skylight, there came a tap at the companion-way hatch. I sent Morris to investigate. He returned clicking his heels and grinning from ear to ear. “Here’s your chance,” he said. “It’s a banker guy named Rodwaner. He is doing a stunt in bum English, from which I gather that here is where we make the grand touch.” Morris’s English may have been ambiguous, but I translated it as it was for the benefit of the solving of problems in slang. “What did you tell him?” I asked. Morris grinned, cracked his thumb joints. “Was I eager? Not on your life! I said, ‘My boss is a very busy man; don’t think he can see you at all to-day.’ Well, the old man was some impressed. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘yes, I realize your master must be busy—but this is an important matter about a loan.’ Well, sir, when he says loan, Monroe D. Morris makes his great stall. ‘Loan! Do you think my master is borrowing money at every port and from an unknown party like yourself?’ And then I gives him a line of talk and finally consents to getting him an interview for just a moment.”