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Updated: June 5, 2025
Young Skiddy, on a modest salary of two hundred dollars a month and a house rent-free, was supposed, if need be, to marry you, divorce you, try you for crimes and misdemeanors, and in extreme cases might even dangle you from the flagstaff in his front yard. He had been very seldom called on, however, to use these extensive powers.
These unfortunates were absent at the time of Skiddy's visit, employing a very languid leisure on the improvement of the roads; and the consul could not have penetrated the jail at all had it not been for the king, who, on being appealed to, was obliging enough to lend the diplomat his spare key. Skiddy stood and regarded the place with an immense depression. It would not do at all.
Captain Satterlee took an immense fancy to this youthful representative of their common country, and treated him with an engaging mixture of respect and paternalism; and Skiddy, not to be behindhand, and dazzled, besides, by his elder's marked regard and friendship, threw wide the consular door, and constantly pressed on Satterlee the hospitality of a cot on the back veranda.
He opened the stout, blue, and important-looking letter, and There were no white men in the crew of the Southern Belle. They were all Rotumah boys, with the exception of Ah Foy, the Chinese cook. This amiable individual was singing over his pots and pans when he was suddenly startled by the apparition of Skiddy at the galley door.
He was to live in their cottage, have his meals served from the International Hotel, and, while carefully guarded night and day, was to be treated "first class" throughout. "The law of the United States," boomed out little Skiddy, "assumes that a prisoner is innocent until he is actually convicted. I want both of you to remember that."
On the reassembling of the Court on the morning of the third day, little Skiddy, from the majesty of the dais, summed up the case at length. It covered nine sheets of foolscap, and had cost him hours of agonizing toil.
Dicky lets out a roar, makes a plunge for him, hammers him on the back, works the pump handle, and talks a blue streak. "Well, Skiddy, old man, here we are!" says he. "Thought you'd given us the shake for good, eh? But we heard you'd gone in with the Corrugated, saw Blicky in Venice and he told us, so when we came ashore we wired father to hold the car over one train for us while we hunted you up.
As Mr. Skiddy, the boyish American consul, expressed himself, "You can't get anybody to do anything these days." Possibly this long spell of monotony contributed to Captain Satterlee's pronounced and instant success. The topsails of the Southern Belle had hardly more than appeared over the horizon, when people began to wake up and realize that stagnation had too long held them in its thrall.
"I want to know what I'm to do NOW!" The two high officials gazed at him sadly. Skiddy should have embarrassed the government at a time when its whole position was so precarious. Had he not better refer the matter to Washington? Doubtless Washington, recognizing the fact that Skiddy flung himself out, lest his anger should get the best of him.
He professed to be dumfounded at the accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a ghastly smile, to reassert his old dominion, calling Skiddy "old man" and "old chap" in a shaky, fawning voice, and wanting to take him below "to talk it over." But the little consul was adamantine. The law must take its course.
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