Doubtless the momentary magic of Allen's name had something to do with the Westralian Governor's complaisance. In any event, "Squid" Saunders was out of jail and off as a first-class passenger on one of the Solomon Island boats inside of a week. Allen, the correspondents were not long in learning, had bought the ticket, footed all of the very sizable telegraph bills, and given the purser of the steamer a hundred pounds in gold to be handed to "Squid" when he was disembarked at Bougainville. The correspondents, long baulked of any real "Allen stuff," went to that story like hungry hounds.
But scarcely was the "Squid" Saunders story onto the wires before it was followed by the news of Allen's astonishing win of the Planters' Handicap with the rank outsider, Yusuf, at two-hundred-to-one. That win was spectacular enough in itself, but when, on the heels of it, was flashed the word that not only the thousand-guinea purse hung up for the race, but approximately twenty-five hundred pounds paid to Allen by the "tote" as well, had been donated to the owner of Yusuf to forward the realization of his long-cherished dream--the erection of a modern medical mission in Fiji--the climax was capped. Australia echoed anew with acclaim of the "philanthropist hero" (it was now), and press and pulpit moralized and maundered afresh on the Hon. Hartley Allen's goodness of heart and greatness of soul. The clamour of the people of the country to see their idol in the flesh fused the Townsville wires from every direction. It was all very well that the incomparable heroism of the saving of the _Cora Andrews_ should be perpetuated upon canvas, but why should the pushful American artist drag the hero off before his own people had a chance to do him homage? Let the artist rise to the occasion with a display of that famous "Yankee hustle" they had heard so much about and get the job over "right quick." It was the man himself they wanted; let the picture wait if it couldn't be finished straightaway!
That may give some hint of the state of mind of Australians when, waiting on the tip-toe of expectancy for word of the next dashing act of their hero, they received a message of quite another tenor. It was the Sydney _Herald_ man who sent the message that swept the country like the blast of a hurricane. He wired just the bare facts and no more. His imagination, even his reasoning faculties, as he confessed in a later dispatch, were numbed for the moment, temporarily paralyzed by the staggering shock of the horror he had looked upon.