“‘Why, you know,’ says Denver.  ’We get the heelers out with the crackly two-spots, and coal-tickets, and orders for groceries, and have a couple of picnics out under the banyan-trees, and dances in the Firemen’s Hall—­and the usual things.  But first of all, Sully, I’m going to have the biggest clam-bake down on the beach that was ever seen south of the tropic of Capricorn.  I figured that out from the start.  We’ll stuff the whole town and the jungle folk for miles around with clams.  That’s the first thing on the programme.  Suppose you go out now, and make the arrangements for that.  I want to look over the estimates the General made of the vote in the coast districts.’

“I had learned some Spanish in Mexico, so I goes out, as Denver says, and in fifteen minutes I come back to headquarters.

“‘If there ever was a clam in this country nobody ever saw it,’ I says.

“‘Great sky-rockets!’ says Denver, with his mouth and eyes open.  ’No clams?  How in the—­who ever saw a country without clams?  What kind of a—­how’s an election to be pulled off without a clam-bake, I’d like to know?  Are you sure there’s no clams, Sully?’

“‘Not even a can,’ says I.

“’Then for God’s sake go out and try to find what the people here do eat.  We’ve got to fill ’em up with grub of some kind.’

“I went out again.  Denver was manager.  In half an hour I gets back.

“‘They eat,’ says I, ’tortillas, cassava, carne de chivo, arroz con pollo, aquacates, zapates, yucca, and huevos fritos.’

“‘A man that would eat them things,’ says Denver, getting a little mad, ‘ought to have his vote challenged.’

“In a few more days the campaign managers from the other towns came sliding into Esperitu.  Our headquarters was a busy place.  We had an interpreter, and ice-water, and drinks, and cigars, and Denver flashed the General’s roll so often that it got so small you couldn’t have bought a Republican vote in Ohio with it.

“And then Denver cabled to General Rompiro for ten thousand dollars more and got it.

“There were a number of Americans in Esperitu, but they were all in business or grafts of some kind, and wouldn’t take any hand in politics, which was sensible enough.  But they showed me and Denver a fine time, and fixed us up so we could get decent things to eat and drink.  There was one American, named Hicks, used to come and loaf at the headquarters.  Hicks had had fourteen years of Esperitu.  He was six feet four and weighed in at 135.  Cocoa was his line; and coast fever and the climate had taken all the life out of him.  They said he hadn’t smiled in eight years.  His face was three feet long, and it never moved except when he opened it to take quinine.  He used to sit in our headquarters and kill fleas and talk sarcastic.

“‘I don’t take much interest in politics,’ says Hicks, one day, ’but I’d like you to tell me what you’re trying to do down here, Galloway?’