dispersed it and a perfect May morning welcomed the Santa
Barbara home.
Kirk leaned on the rail, looking with dull eyes on the city he had left
a year before. Only a year! It seemed ten. As he stood there he felt an
old man.
A drummer, a cheery soul who had come aboard at Porto Rico, sauntered
up, beaming with well-being and good-fellowship.
'Looks pretty good, sir,' said he.
Kirk did not answer. He had not heard.
'Some burg,' ventured the drummer.
Again encountering silence, he turned away, hurt. This churlish
attitude on the part of one returning to God's country on one of God's
own mornings surprised and wounded him.
To him all was right with the world. He had breakfasted well; he was
smoking a good cigar; and he was strong in the knowledge that he had
done well by the firm this trip and that bouquets were due to be handed
to him in the office on lower Broadway. He was annoyed with Kirk for
having cast even a tiny cloud upon his contentment.
He communicated his feelings to the third officer, who happened to come
on deck at that moment.
'Say, who is that guy?' he asked complainingly. 'The big son of
a gun leaning on the rail. Seems like he'd got a hangover this morning.
Is he deaf and dumb or just plain grouchy?'
The third officer eyed Kirk's back with sympathy.
'I shouldn't worry him, Freddie,' he said. 'I guess if you had been up
against it like him you'd be shy on the small talk. That's a fellow
called Winfield. They carried him on board at Colon. He was about all
in. Got fever in Colombia, inland at the mines, and nearly died. His
pal did die. Ever met Hank Jardine?'
'Long, thin man?'
The other nodded.
'One of the best. He made two trips with us.'
'And he's dead?'
'Died of fever away back in the interior, where there's nothing much
else except mosquitoes. He and Winfield went in there after gold.'
'Did they get any?' asked the drummer, interested.
The third officer spat disgustedly over the rail.
'You ask Winfield. Or, rather, don't, because I guess it's not his pet
subject. He told me all about it when he was getting better. There was
gold there, all right, in chunks. It only needed to be dug for. And
somebody else did the digging. Of all the skin games! It made me pretty
hot under the collar, and it wasn't me that was stung.
'Out there you can't buy land if you're a foreigner; you have to lease
it from the natives. Poor old Hank leased his bit, all right, and when
he'd got to his claim he found somebody else working on it. It seemed
there had been a flaw in his agreement and the owners had let it over
his head to these other guys, who had slipped them more than what Hank
had done.'
'What did he do?'
