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Obsessed by vague forebodings,
they found an able and eloquent interpreter of their fears in the
Commissioner who, rather redder in the face than usual, strode fussily
up and down the premises, tugging at his disreputable briar pipe,
drinking the whisky with anybody who cared to pay for it, and declaring
to all and sundry that something must be done. It was his panacea--his
unvarying formula for every emergency, scandalous or otherwise.
Something must be done, he avowed. And from the card-table came two
approving echoes--the voices of Mr. Muhlen and Signor Malipizzo, who did
not care tuppence about the fountain but never lost an opportunity of
expressing their public approval of Mr. Parker's words and actions.
Something must be done and that soon, for in a few brief hours an
atmosphere of gloom, a sense of impending calamity, had begun to hover
over the sunny island. The natives called to mind, with consternation,
that only once within the memory of their ancestors had the fountain
behaved after this fashion.


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