"That's so," said Norris. "He wrote me last month from
Port-au-Prince that he was moving on to Jamaica. He wrote me from
that club there at the end of the wharf. He said he was at that
moment introducing the President to a new cocktail, and as he had no
money to pay his passage to Kingston he was trying to persuade him to
send him on there as his Haitian Consul. He said in case he couldn't
get appointed Consul, he had an offer to go as cook on a fruit-
tramp."
The men around the table laughed. It was the pleased, proud laugh
that flutters the family dinner-table when the infant son and heir
says something precocious and impudent.
"Who is Channing?" asked the Boston man.
There was a pause, and the correspondents looked at Norris.
"Channing is a sort of a derelict," he said. "He drifted into New
York last Christmas from the Omaha Bee. He's been on pretty nearly
every paper in the country."
"What's he doing in Haiti?"
"He went there on the Admiral Decatur to write a filibustering story
about carrying arms across to Cuba. Then the war broke out and he's
been trying to get back to Key West, and now, of course, he'll make
for Kingston.
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