a month, and you can take my opinion for what it is worth when I assure you that this concession is a winner, providing the money is forthcoming with which to handle it.
This is a pretty fair country, Jack—if you survive long enough to get used to it. At first you think it's Paradise; then you grow to hate it and know it for hell with the lid off; and finally all your early love for it returns and you become what I am now—a tropical tramp! There is only one social stratum lower than mine, and that's the tropical beachcomber. I am not that—yet; and will not be if my landlady will continue to listen to my blandishments. She is a sweet soul, with a divine disposition, and I am duly grateful.
I would tell you all about the geography, topography, flora and fauna of Sobrante, but you can ascertain that in detail by consulting any standard encyclopedia. Governmentally the country is similar to its sister republics. The poor we have always with us; also a first-class, colorado-maduro despot in the political saddle, and it's a cold day indeed when two patriots, two viva's and a couple of old Long Tom Springfield rifles cannot upset the Sobrante apple cart. We have the usual Governmental extravagance in the matter of statues to countless departed “liberators” in all the public squares, and money is no object. It is depreciated shin-plasters, and I had to use a discarded sugar-barrel to hold mine when I arrived and changed four hundred pesos oro into the national currency. If a waiter brings you a jolt of hooch, you're stingy if you tip him less than a Sobrante dollar.
We have a Malicon along the bay shore and back again, with a municipal bandstand in the middle thereof, upon which the fine city band of Buenaventura plays nightly those languid Spanish melodies that must have descended to us from the Inquisition. If you can spare the cash, send me a bale of the latest New York rags and a banjo, and I'll start something. I have nothing else to do until I hear from you, save shake dice at The Frenchman's with the Présidente, who has nothing else to do except lap up highballs and wait for the next drawing of the lottery. I asked him for a job to tide me over temporarily, and he offered me a portfolia! I could have been Minister of Finance!
I declined, from a constitutional inability, inherent in the Irish, to assimilate a joke from a member of an inferior race.
We haven't had a revolution for nearly six months, but we have hopes.
There are some white men here, neither better nor worse. We tolerate each other.
I am addressing you at the Engineers' Club, in the hope that my letter may reach you there, or perhaps the secretary will know your address and forward it to you. If you are foot-loose and still entertain a lingering regard for your old pal, get busy on this mining concession P. D. Q. Time is the essence of the contract, because I am holding on to the thin edge of nothing, and if we have a change of government I may lose even that. I need you, John Stuart Webster, worse than I need salvation. I enclose you a list of equipment required.
If you receive this letter and can do anything for me, please cable. If you cannot, please cable anyway. It is needless for me to state that the terms of division are as you make them, although I think fifty-fifty would place us both on Easy Street for the rest of our days. Do let me hear from you, Jack, if only to tell me the old entente cordiale still exists. I know now that I was considerable of a heedless pup a few years ago and overlooked my hand quite regularly, but now that I have a good thing I do not know of anybody with whom I care to share it except your own genial self. Please let me hear from you.
Affectionately,
Billy.
Jerome finished reading this remarkable communication; then with infinite amusement he regarded John Stuart Webster over the tops of his glasses as one who examines a new and interesting species of bug.
“So Billy loves that dear Sobrante, eh?” he said with abysmal sarcasm. “Jack Webster, listen to a sane man and be guided accordingly. I was in this same little Buenaventura once. I was there for three days, and I wouldn't have been there three minutes if I could have caught a steamer out sooner. Of all the miserable, squalid, worthless, ornery, stinking holes on the face of God's green footstool, Sobrante is the worst—if one may judge it by its capital city. Jack, there is an old bromide that describes aptly the republic of Sobrante, and it's so trite I hesitate to repeat it—but I will, for your benefit. Sobrante is a country where the flowers are without fragrance, the men without honour, and the women without virtue. It is hot and unhealthy, and the mosquitoes wear breechclouts; and when they bite you, you die. You get mail three times a month, and there isn't a white man in the whole Roman-candle republic that a gentleman would associate with.”
“You forget Billy Geary,” Webster reminded him gently.
“He's a boy. What does his judgment amount to? Are you going to chase off to this God-forsaken fever-hole at the behest of a lad scarcely out of his swaddling clothes? Jack Webster, surely you aren't going to throw yourself away—give up the sure thing I offer you—to join Billy Geary in Sobrante and finance a wildcat prospect without a certificate of title attached. Why, Jack, my dear boy, don't you know that if you develop your mine to-morrow and get it paying well, the first 'liberator' may take it away from you or tax you for the entire output?”
“We'll have government protection, Neddy. This will be American capital, and if they get fresh, our Uncle Sam can send a warship, can't he?”
“He can—but he won't. Are you and Billy Geary of sufficient importance at home or abroad to warrant the vast consumption of coal necessary to send a battleship to protect your dubious prospect-hole? Be reasonable. What did you wire that confounded boy?”
“That I was coming.”
“Cable him you've changed, your mind. We'll send him some money to come home, and you can give him a good job under you. I'll O. K. the voucher and charge it to your personal expense account.”
“That's nice of you, old sport, and I thank you kindly. I'll talk to Billy when I arrive in Buenaventura, and if the prospect doesn't look good to me, I'll argue him out of it and we'll come home.”
“But I want you now. I don't want you to go away.”
“You promised me thirty days in which to have a good time——”
“So I did. But is this having a good time? How about that omelette soufflé all blazing with blue fire, and that shower-bath and the opera and mushing through the art centres, and Sousa's band——”
“They have a band down in Buenaventura. Billy says so.”
“It plays 'La Paloma' and 'Sobre las Olas' and 'La Golondrina' and all the rest of them. Jack, you'll go crazy listening to it.”
“Oh, I don't want any omelette soufflé, and I had a bath before I left the hotel. I was just hearing myself talk, Neddy,” the culprit protested weakly. “Let me go. I might come back. But I must go. I want to see Billy.”
“You just said a minute ago you'd turned the forty-year post,” Jerome warned him. “And you're now going to lose a year or two more in which you might better be engaged laying up a foundation of independence for your old age. You will get out of Sobrante with the price of a second-class ticket on a vile fruit boat, and you'll be back here panhandling around for a job at a quarter of what I am offering you. For Heaven's sake, man, don't be a fool.”
“Oh, but I will be a fool,” John Stuart Webster answered; and possibly, by this time, the reader has begun to understand the potency of his middle name—the Scotch are notoriously pig-headed, and Mr. Webster had just enough oatmeal in his blood to have come by that centre-fire name honestly. “And you, you poor old horse, you could
