“As to the papers not publishing anything,” explained Barry, “there are no newspaper correspondents in the Isle of Pines, and I recall now that Beecham told me that the authorities at Havana were so frightened over the reports of the harbor masters, that that they had prohibited their circulation. The thing may prove grave enough.” “Let us hope,” said Ned Garrett, “that such rumors do not get abroad before to-morrow. They are only half-proven assertions, based upon some accidental and momentary circumstance. In a few days the Isle of Pines may be the same as it was, with the salt springs thrown in, and the harbor of Havana back again to its old position without so much as a jolt. The sea serpent is now advancing towards our shores at the summer resorts, why not a few nightmares from the tropics? A truce to ghosts. Let us drink to the President and the Canal.” The glasses were raised, their lips, before they touched the sparkling lymphs, offering, as if in silent prayer, to the consecration of the beaded wine, unuttered hopes for the country’s great head, and its great enterprise, had but felt the amber current flowing from the engraved chalices, musical with the tinkling of bits of ice, when,--a sharp cry of voices, a babel of tumultuous and precipitated outcries smote upon their ears, entering the open windows like an execrable assault. It was the shouting, thrilling with an unusual impetus of omen, of the newsboys, as if they had forgotten their mercantile relations to the news, which, whether of joy or grief, they commonly announce in the shrill yells of indifference and gloating expectation. Now their multitudinous voices mingled in a monstrous hoarseness, as if constrained by a personal and immediate sorrow and horror. Even ejaculations from men in the streets buying the papers from the hawkers, entered the room, and brought pallor to the cheeks of the mute company. Ned Garrett pushed back his chair and sprang to the door, followed by Brig Barry, and the rest stayed, immobile, like a stricken throng, waiting the next minute for an impending immolation. Scarcely thirty seconds had elapsed when the two men came back with the papers of the street, one having the _Baltimore Times_, the other holding in his hands the _Southern Herald_. The faces of both men were pale, and on the cheeks of Ned Garrett shone a trace of tears. Barry was the first to enter the room, and as Mr. Garrett, now standing at the head of the table, his body half turned towards the door, his face suffused with unchecked emotion--as Mr. Garrett said, “Well, what is it?” he faltered, and dropping the paper to his side, he faced the convulsed merchant, and was silent. It was Ned Garrett who cried out, “The Isthmus is crumbling to pieces and the Canal is doomed.”