"
"And Keating's kicking because he has to go," growled the Sun man.
"Yes, he is, I saw him last night, and he was sore because he'd just
moved his wife down here. He said if he'd known this was coming he'd
have let her stay in New York. He says he'll lose money on this
assignment, having to support himself and his wife in two different
places."
Norris, "the star man" of the World, howled with indignation.
"Good Lord!" he said, "is that all he sees in it? Why, there never
was such a chance. I tell you, some day soon all of those war-ships
will let loose at each other and there will be the best story that
ever came over the wire, and if there isn't, it's a regular loaf
anyway. It's a picnic, that's what it is, at the expense of the
Consolidated Press. Why, he ought to pay them to let him go. Can't
you see him, confound him, sitting under a palm-tree in white
flannels, with a glass of Jamaica rum in his fist, while we're
dodging yellow fever on this coral-reef, and losing our salaries on a
crooked roulette-wheel."
"I wonder what Jamaica rum is like as a steady drink," mused the ex-
baseball reporter, who had been converted into a war-correspondent by
the purchase of a white yachting-cap.
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