But no retort that he could have
devised could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken
also, and the man caught at the door-post to uphold him.
"Two o'clock! I'm done after all!" said he. His head was tied up in a
bloody handkerchief, his face was crimson, and he stood with his legs
crooked as if the pith had all gone out of his back. The clerk began to
realise that something out of the ordinary was in the wind.
"How long does it take to get a wire to London?"
"About two hours."
"And it's two now. I could not get it there before four."
"Before three."
"Four."
"No, three."
"But you said two hours."
"Yes, but there's more than an hour's difference in longitude."
"By Heaven, I'll do it yet!" cried Anerley, and staggering to a
packing-case, he began the dictation of his famous despatch.
And so it came about that the _Gazette_ had a long column, with
headlines like an epitaph, when the sheets of the _Intelligence_ and the
_Courier_ were as blank as the faces of their editors. And so, too, it
happened that when two weary men, upon two foundered horses, arrived
about four in the morning at the Sarras post-office, they looked at each
other in silence and departed noiselessly, with the conviction that
there are some situations with which the English language is not capable
of dealing.
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