transform Opeki into a powerful and beautiful city. We will
make these people work. They must put up a palace for the
King, and lay out streets, and build wharves, and drain the
town properly, and light it. I haven't seen this patent
lighting apparatus of yours, but you had better get to work at
it at once, and I'll persuade the King to appoint you
commissioner of highways and gas, with authority to make his
people toil. And I," he cried, in free enthusiasm, "will
organize a navy and a standing army. Only," he added, with a
relapse of interest, "there isn't anybody to fight."

"There isn't?" said Stedman, grimly, with a scornful smile.
"You just go hunt up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with your
standing army once and you'll get all the fighting you want."

"The Hillmen?" said Albert.

"The Hillmen are the natives that live up there in the hills,"
Stedman said, nodding his head toward the three high mountains
at the other end of the island, that stood out blackly against
the purple, moonlit sky. "There are nearly as many of them as
there are Opekians, and they hunt and fight for a living and
for the pleasure of it. They have an old rascal named
Messenwah for a king, and they come down here about once every
three months, and tear things up."

Albert sprang to his feet.

"Oh, they do, do they?" he said, staring up at the
mountain-tops. "They come down here and tear up things, do