STROMBOLI AND THE GUNS

"A bullet splashed against the wall." (Page 191)

CONTENTS.

Stromboli and the Guns
The Short Shrift of the Filibuster
The Hunted Pole
The Counter Revolution
The Man with the Ultimatum
The Friend of the Policeman
The Secret Society
The Visit to the Holy Man

Illustrations

"'Yes, my comrades, it was I who made the revolution of 1848!'"

"'If you prefer not to sign, I am willing to renew the combat."'"

"'Strongboiler,' he said, 'You're a gentleman.'"

"I hurled the teacup at the foremost of them."

"I calmed them with a friendly gesture."

"'Is abdicate the same as git?' asked Colorado Charlie."

"We wrestled together on the floor."

"We walked together on the high, green hill."

"I assailed the door, first with a chair."

"As soon as my right foot was planted on the ground, I launched the *coup de savate* with my left."

"'It was no time for argument. I hurled my stool at the nearest of them.'"

STROMBOLI AND THE GUNS.

It was in the old days, when a certain famous anarchist club held its meetings in a house in one of the dismal streets abutting on the Tottenham Court Road. An evening paper had asked me to write an article about the club. An Italian waiter, whom the proprietors of a West-End café were protecting from the Milan police, introduced me to it as his guest; and there, in an atmosphere of pipes and lager-beer, I met Stromboli. His full name, sprawling in true cosmopolitan fashion over three languages, was Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski; but Stromboli is as much of it as I have ever been able to recall without a special effort of the memory. He was old, white-haired, white-bearded, with a furrowed brow only half hidden by his broad-brimmed, unbrushed, soft felt hat. He wore a coloured flannel shirt, with a turn-down flannel collar, showing the strong line of his throat. Beneath bushy eyebrows his eyes gleamed, keen and restless; and when I first saw him he was the centre of a group of younger revolutionists, whom he was