Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/252

 show of official activity about the palace. It was the king's custom, it appeared, to hear petitions and redress wrongs as soon after his return as possible, but to-day the ceremony was to be cut short as his majesty was going out with all his court to a neighbouring mountain to "pray away the comet," which by this time was causing dire alarm all through the city.

"Heaven's own particular blessing on his prayers, my friend," I said to the man who told me this; "unless his majesty's orisons are fruitful, we shall all be cooked like baked potatoes before nightfall, and though I have faced many kinds of death, that is not the one I would choose by preference. Is there a chance of myself being heard at the throne? Your peculiar climate tempts me to hurry up with my business and begone if I may."

"Not only may you be heard, sir, but you are summoned. The king has heard of you somehow, and sent me to find and bring you into his presence at once."

"So be it," I said, too hot to care what happened. "I have no levee dress with me; I lost my luggage check some time ago, but if you will wait outside I will be with you in a moment."

Hastily tidying myself up, and giving my hair a comb, as though just off to see Mr. Secretary for the Navy, or on the way to get a senator to push a new patent medicine for me, I rejoined