"You...from a circus?" asked the sergeant, walking sideways, saber unsheathed.

<<Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - In a manner of speaking, sir. In a manner of speaking. This metal fellow came all the way from Washington City as a gift from the Cabinet. Did I neglect to mention that Secretary Marcy secured my services for your behalf? (Vice-President Dallas sends his howdy-do, too.) Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - The Philadelphian Mechanics sent me to Senator Calhoun, in order that I might, by means of my elastic tongue, impress on him the logical and reasonable necessity of protecting the national genius for fabrication with protective tariffs. Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - The Senator promptly bid me to mimic his oratory on the benefits of a Greek Democracy; thither he sent me, until I publicly predicted his death by catarrh in 1850, and Negro emancipation thirteen years after - Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - he packed me in a crate and sent me as a good-will gift to Senator Webster, whom I informed, upon his immediate inquiry, that never would he be President, that the Union will soon suffer severe secessionitis - Tick! - Tick! - to which he roared, `Tell that to Young America!' And so he arranged an audience with President Polk. Tick - a - tick! - I told Mr. Polk that war will come on the second of May, that the U. S. A. would be victorious, and - Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - Whig victory in `48 with General Taylor. Mr. Polk frowned at this; but Secretary Marcy and Vice President Dallas bent at either ear, and - Tick! - Tick! - bid me balloon to the Moon and General Taylor's camp with all due alacrity...'Mind you,' Marcy added, `all due alacrity!' Ah, here we are!>> he added, for the gate had dropped forward, becoming a drawbridge over the briars and bramble-filled ditch.

("Sergeant Mallory!" called my brother's voice from the open gate. "Get that stranger and his mule inside on the double!")

("Aye, sir!" called the sergeant.) "You may go ahead, Mr. Metal."

<<Tick! - Prince>> corrected the stranger, <<President Stove...>> A little steam escaped his nostrils, and he lurched forward.

" - Borginnis, get inside. Rawlings, it's your watch," the sergeant said.

My sentry duty finally ended, I led the procession of metal, mule, and men. We clomp-clomped over the wooden drawbridge. A soldier's boots and ankles stood over us, on top the gate's cross beam, the rest of him obscure in silhouette. The Lieutenant and a platoon of armed men waited behind. "Close it up!" Kelly bawled. "Fetch the Captain, corporal. You - light a lantern, and bring it here." The men rushed and heaved on the drawbridge pulleys. It swung wobbling up, groaned, and clomped shut. The spindly drummer-boy ran back with a light swinging, his shadow leaping all around. Captain George Washington Seawell strode behind.

The Prince-President looked funny in the light. He was tall - even taller, with his stove pipe hat - and his face was handsome - even proud - but false, like a mask. He stood solemnly, ticking pleasantly, stroking the square trimness of his porcelain beard. "He says he's Prince somebody or other, sir," saluted Mallory. "He says he's made of metal. He's an educated automaton, sir, so he says. A surgeon. Sent by the President, too. And sir, he's brought us a mule."

"We can use his mule, that's certain," mused Captain Seawell. "As to him being metal or not, I don't care if a man is a Pope-Kissing Mick, Heathen Mandarin, Black Rascal, Drunkard Injun, or Rag- Picking Heeb, long as he's an American. But right now, none of us are worth our weight in cow pies lest we get those bomb-proofs finished. Take his mule to the pit right now! Maybe now we can complete it by daylight, god willing. Give it, with my compliments, to Captain Mansfield!"

Puffing his long cigar furiously, he examined the stranger up and down and all around. "You!" he called, pointing his cigar. "So you're a prince, eh? So you're not an American, eh?"

Captain Dixon Miles climbed down from Gun Platform 4 on the other side of the gate and came to stand beside Captain Seawell, arms folded. Old Sock ran over with a crystal of toddy, Miles' habitual indulgence.

<<Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - Tick! - On the contrary,>> bowed the Metal Man, his stove pipe describing an arc of smoke and ash. <<I am of Philadelphian manufacture - modified and improved in New Orleans - Tick! - my name is Prince...>>

" - The great United States Constitution," observed Captain Seawell with an unfriendly expression, "says no citizen can hold an aristocratic title like king or lord or prince..."

Perhaps he was thinking this Metal Man a spy of the Great Powers. After all, they had all tried to make a dirty deal with Texas when it was its own republic. They all wanted to steal crescents from the Moon, on the grounds that the Moon owed them millions. Only a few years ago, in `39, a whole passel of Great Powers sent, as a bankers' warning, a joint stock balloon fleet to bombard the fortress of Fracastorius Crater. They even went so far as to knock down the northern wall of Fracastorius with a new kind of cannonball, a hollow iron shell stuffed with powder, lit by a fuse. Besides the infamy of experimenting their terrible new weapon on the little Moon, I wouldn't neglect to mention that dirty trick Great Deimos played on us, making a deal with some Lunar general for the rights to dig the Tunnel of Heraclitus even as we waited for a president to stay in power long enough to exchange diplomatic niceties. Thus a monarch stole the fast route to Venus from a republic, showing the nature of Martian despotism:Conquest and meddling all around the Inner Spheres, not to mention unfair monopolies of Saturn's silk, rubber and spices. Also they felt free to shoot down our slaver balloons in orbit around Jupiter; - although some folks like Corporal Hernani Klager thought our own navy wasn't doing enough to enforce Congress' law against that kind of import, it just wasn't fair that the monarchs got all the spoils of that Sphere. But the point is this Outer Sphere meddling in Inner Sphere affairs really got our Monroe Doctrine dander going.

No doubt them pesky Lunars wanted to use our Monroe Doctrine (and Polk Corollary to it) against us in our legitimate defense of Texas. No doubt they wanted to set the mighty Union Jack balloon- fleets against our own, in which case the little Moon, in the middle, might be spared.

Wasn't this metal fellow a spy, then?

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