once.

Carefully-worded letters were despatched by District Messenger boys to
the other generals. Towards nightfall the replies began to come in,
and, having read them, the Prince saw that this business could never be
settled without a personal interview. Many of the replies were
absolutely incoherent.

Raisuli, apologising for delay on the ground that he had been away in
the Isle of Dogs cracking a crib, wrote suggesting that the Germans and
Moroccans should combine with a view to playing the Confidence Trick on
the Swiss general, who seemed a simple sort of chap. "Reminds me of
dear old Maclean," wrote Raisuli. "There is money in this. Will you
come in? Wire in the morning."

The general of the Monaco forces thought the best way would be to
settle the thing by means of a game of chance of the odd-man-out class.
He knew a splendid game called Slippery Sam. He could teach them the
rules in half a minute.

The reply of Prince Ping Pong Pang of China was probably brilliant and
scholarly, but it was expressed in Chinese characters of the Ming
period, which Prince Otto did not understand; and even if he had it
would have done him no good, for he tried to read it from the top
downwards instead of from the bottom up.

The Young Turks, as might have been expected, wrote in their customary
flippant, cheeky style. They were full of mischief, as usual. The body
of the letter, scrawled in a round, schoolboy hand, dealt principally
with the details of the booby-trap which the general had successfully