never rebuilt, and by river steps hewn, to the eye, from the living
rock. A black fog chased us into Westminster Abbey, and, standing
there in the darkness, I could hear the wings of the dead centuries
circling round the head of Litchfield A. Keller, journalist, of
Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A., whose mission it was to make the Britishers sit
up.

He stumbled gasping into the thick gloom, and the roar of the traffic
came to his bewildered ears.

'Let's go to the telegraph-office and cable,' I said. 'Can't you hear
the New York _World_ crying for news of the great sea-serpent, blind,
white, and smelling of musk, stricken to death by a submarine
volcano, and assisted by his loving wife to die in mid-ocean, as
visualised by an American citizen, the breezy, newsy, brainy
newspaper man of Dayton, Ohio? 'Rah for the Buckeye State. Step
lively! Both gates! Szz! Boom! Aah!' Keller was a Princeton man, and
he seemed to need encouragement.

'You've got me on your own ground,' said he, tugging at his overcoat
pocket. He pulled out his copy, with the cable forms--for he had
written out his telegram--and put them all into my hand, groaning, 'I
pass. If I hadn't come to your cursed country--If I'd sent it off at
Southampton--If I ever get you west of the Alleghannies, if----'

'Never mind, Keller. It isn't your fault. It's the fault of your
country. If you had been seven hundred years older you'd have done
what I am going to do.'

'What are you going to do?'