The correspondents
were forbidden to send out any news whatever of his plans; and every
message that was allowed on the wires was censored with rigid
severity.
The correspondent for the London paper handed in a cablegram
describing Kuroki's plans; but as it was wrong from beginning to end
the censor grinned and let it go through.
So, there they were--Kuroki on one side of the Yalu with forty-two
thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and one hundred and
twenty-four guns. On the other side, Zassulitch waited for him with
only twenty-three thousand men, and with a long stretch of river to
guard. And Calloway had got hold of some important inside information
that he knew would bring the _Enterprise_ staff around a cablegram as
thick as flies around a Park Row lemonade stand. If he could only get
that message past the censor--the new censor who had arrived and
taken his post that day!
Calloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down
on a gun carriage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for
the rest of the story belongs to Vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week
reporter on the _Enterprise_.
Calloway's cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four
o'clock in the afternoon. He read it three times; and then drew a
pocket mirror from a pigeon-hole in his desk, and looked at his
reflection carefully.
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