He rose.  He was a large man.  Billy wondered he had not previously noticed how very large he was.

“To-night at nine o’clock,” he said, “the German boat departs for New York.”  As though aiming a pistol, he raised his arm and at Billy pointed a finger.  “If, after she departs, you are found in Port-au-Prince, you will be shot!”

The audience-chamber was hung with great mirrors in frames of tarnished gilt.  In these Billy saw himself reproduced in a wavering line of Billies that, like the ghost of Banquo, stretched to the disappearing point.  Of such images there was an army, but of the real Billy, as he was acutely conscious, there was but one.  Among the black faces scowling from the doorways he felt the odds were against him.  Without making a reply he passed out between the racks of rusty muskets in the anteroom, between the two Gatling guns guarding the entrance, and on the palace steps, in indecision, halted.

As Billy hesitated an officer followed him from the palace and beckoned to the guard that sat in the bare dust of the Champ de Mars playing cards for cartridges.  Two abandoned the game, and, having received their orders, picked their muskets from the dust and stood looking expectantly at Billy.

They were his escort, and it was evident that until nine o’clock, when he sailed, his movements would be spied upon; his acts reported to the president.

Such being the situation, Billy determined that his first act to be reported should be of a nature to cause the president active mental anguish.  With his guard at his heels he went directly to the cable station, and to the Secretary of State of the United States addressed this message:  “President refuses my pay; threatens shoot; wireless nearest war-ship proceed here full speed.  William Barlow.”

Billy and the director of telegraphs, who out of office hours was a field-marshal, and when not in his shirt-sleeves always appeared in uniform, went over each word of the cablegram together.  When Billy was assured that the field-marshal had grasped the full significance of it he took it back and added, “Love to Aunt Maria.”  The extra words cost four dollars and eighty cents gold, but, as they suggested ties of blood between himself and the Secretary of State, they seemed advisable.  In the account-book in which he recorded his daily expenditures Billy credited the item to “life-insurance.”

The revised cablegram caused the field-marshal deep concern.  He frowned at Billy ferociously.

“I will forward this at once,” he promised.  “But, I warn you,” he added, “I deliver also a copy to my president!”

Billy sighed hopefully.

“You might deliver the copy first,” he suggested.

From the cable station Billy, still accompanied by his faithful retainers, returned to the power-house.  There he bade farewell to the black brothers who had been his assistants, and upon one of them pressed a sum of money.