"I shall not be there, but ten of my men will be. Have no fears of the mass meeting. The snake's head is off--by to-morrow it will be two hundred miles away--and though the body may wriggle, it will be quite harmless. After two or three hours of talk and vain threats the meeting will collapse, and we shall get unconditional surrender." And so it happened. The talk went on for four solid hours--vain, vapouring talk, during which steam was blown off. At the end the surrender, as Dawson predicted, was unconditional. That evening of the morrow a telegram sped away over the long wires to the south addressed to the Secretary of the Admiralty. "Please tell First Lord that the snake is dead. I am returning the Marines carriage-paid and undamaged. My commission as a Captain is no longer required. Dawson." Back flashed a reply from the Minister himself: "To Captain Dawson, R.M.L.I. Adjutant-General insists that you retain rank and pay until the end of the war. So do I. You have done a wonderful piece of work for which you will be adequately punished in official quarters. But you will suffer in good company." Though Dawson thus became entitled to call himself Captain for the duration of the war, he never used the rank or the uniform again. Once more, to my knowledge, he served in his well-beloved Corps, but it was then not as Captain, but as private, during his long watch in the _Malplaquet_, of which I have told the story earlier in this book. CHAPTER XVII DAWSON TELEPHONES FOR A SURGEON