Ch. 22: The Mutiny of the Mavericks

Sec. 7. { Cause } { in forces } Regular forces,
(I) { Consipiring } { belonging } Reserve forces,
{ with other } a mutiny { to Her } Auxiliary forces.
{ persons to } sedition { Majesty's } Navy.
{ cause }

When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient
premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in
a far country, which had nothing whatever to do with the United States.
They foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an
unsavoury quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks,
they conspired because they were conspirators by trade, officially known
as the Third Three of the I.A.A.--an institution for the propagation of
pure light, not to be confounded with any others, though it is
affiliated to many. The Second Three live in Montreal, and work among
the poor there; the First Three have their home in New York, not far
from Castle Garden, and write regularly once a week to a small house
near one of the big hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a
particular section of Scotland Yard knows too well, and laughs at. A
conspirator detests ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia
Borgia daggers and dropped into the Thames for laughing at Head Centres
and Triangles than for betraying secrets; for this is human nature.

The Third Three conspired over whisky cocktails and a clean sheet of
notepaper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work
is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general
election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends,
all the weak points in your opponents' organisation, and unconsciously
dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a
miracle that the hated party holds together for an hour.

'Our principle is not so much active demonstration--that we leave to
others--as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve,' said the first
man. 'Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever a confusion is
thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those who
take on the work; we are but the forerunners.' He was a German
enthusiast, and editor of a newspaper, from whose leading articles he
quoted frequently.

'That cursed Empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless we
doubled the year's average I guess it wouldn't strike her anything
special had occurred,' said the second man. 'Are you prepared to say
that all our resources are equal to blowing off the muzzle of a hundred-
ton gun or spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship on a plain rock in clear
daylight? They can beat us at our own game. 'Better join hands with the
practical branches; we're in funds now. Try a direct scare in a crowded