* * * * *

‘We must pool our notes,’ was the first coherent remark from Keller.  ’We’re three trained journalists—­we hold absolutely the biggest scoop on record.  Start fair.’

I objected to this.  Nothing is gained by collaboration in journalism when all deal with the same facts, so we went to work each according to his own lights.  Keller triple-headed his account, talked about our ‘gallant captain,’ and wound up with an allusion to American enterprise in that it was a citizen of Dayton, Ohio, that had seen the sea-serpent.  This sort of thing would have discredited the Creation, much more a mere sea tale, but as a specimen of the picture-writing of a half-civilised people it was very interesting.  Zuyland took a heavy column and a half, giving approximate lengths and breadths, and the whole list of the crew whom he had sworn on oath to testify to his facts.  There was nothing fantastic or flamboyant in Zuyland.  I wrote three-quarters of a leaded bourgeois column, roughly speaking, and refrained from putting any journalese into it for reasons that had begun to appear to me.

Keller was insolent with joy.  He was going to cable from Southampton to the New York World, mail his account to America on the same day, paralyse London with his three columns of loosely knitted headlines, and generally efface the earth.  ’You’ll see how I work a big scoop when I get it,’ he said.

‘Is this your first visit to England?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said he.  ’You don’t seem to appreciate the beauty of our scoop.  It’s pyramidal—­the death of the sea-serpent!  Good heavens alive, man, it’s the biggest thing ever vouchsafed to a paper!’

’Curious to think that it will never appear in any paper, isn’t it?  ’I said.

Zuyland was near me, and he nodded quickly.

‘What do you mean?’ said Keller.  ’If you’re enough of a Britisher to throw this thing away, I shan’t.  I thought you were a newspaper-man.’

’I am.  That’s why I know.  Don’t be an ass, Keller.  Remember, I’m seven hundred years your senior, and what your grandchildren may learn five hundred years hence, I learned from my grandfathers about five hundred years ago.  You won’t do it, because you can’t.’

This conversation was held in open sea, where everything seems possible, some hundred miles from Southampton.  We passed the Needles Light at dawn, and the lifting day showed the stucco villas on the green and the awful orderliness of England—­line upon line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier.  We waited an hour in the Customs shed, and there was ample time for the effect to soak in.

’Now, Keller, you face the music.  The Havel goes out to-day.  Mail by her, and I’ll take you to the telegraph-office,’ I said.

I heard Keller gasp as the influence of the land closed about him, cowing him as they say Newmarket Heath cows a young horse unused to open courses.