“’Just in from a gold-hunting expedition on the coast of Costa Rica,’ he explained.  ’Second mate of a banana steamer told me the natives were panning out enough from the beach sands to buy all the rum, red calico, and parlour melodeons in the world.  The day I got there a syndicate named Incorporated Jones gets a government concession to all minerals from a given point.  For a next choice I take coast fever and count green and blue lizards for six weeks in a grass hut.  I had to be notified when I was well, for the reptiles were actually there.  Then I shipped back as third cook on a Norwegian tramp that blew up her boiler two miles below Quarantine.  I was due to bust through that cellar door here to-night, so I hurried the rest of the way up the river, roustabouting on a lower coast packet that made up a landing for every fisherman that wanted a plug of tobacco.  And now I’m here for what comes next.  And it’ll be along, it’ll be along,’ said this queer Mr. Kearny; ’it’ll be along on the beams of my bright but not very particular star.’

“From the first the personality of Kearny charmed me.  I saw in him the bold heart, the restless nature, and the valiant front against the buffets of fate that make his countrymen such valuable comrades in risk and adventure.  And just then I was wanting such men.  Moored at a fruit company’s pier I had a 500-ton steamer ready to sail the next day with a cargo of sugar, lumber, and corrugated iron for a port in—­well, let us call the country Esperando—­it has not been long ago, and the name of Patricio Malone is still spoken there when its unsettled politics are discussed.  Beneath the sugar and iron were packed a thousand Winchester rifles.  In Aguas Frias, the capital, Don Rafael Valdevia, Minister of War, Esperando’s greatest-hearted and most able patriot, awaited my coming.  No doubt you have heard, with a smile, of the insignificant wars and uprisings in those little tropic republics.  They make but a faint clamour against the din of great nations’ battles; but down there, under all the ridiculous uniforms and petty diplomacy and senseless countermarching and intrigue, are to be found statesmen and patriots.  Don Rafael Valdevia was one.  His great ambition was to raise Esperando into peace and honest prosperity and the respect of the serious nations.  So he waited for my rifles in Aguas Frias.  But one would think I am trying to win a recruit in you!  No; it was Francis Kearny I wanted.  And so I told him, speaking long over our execrable vermouth, breathing the stifling odour from garlic and tarpaulins, which, as you know, is the distinctive flavour of cafes in the lower slant of our city.  I spoke of the tyrant President Cruz and the burdens that his greed and insolent cruelty laid upon the people.  And at that Kearny’s tears flowed.  And then I dried them with a picture of the fat rewards that would be ours when the oppressor should be overthrown and the wise and generous Valdevia in his seat.  Then Kearny leaped to his feet and wrung my hand with the strength of a roustabout.  He was mine, he said, till the last minion of the hated despot was hurled from the highest peaks of the Cordilleras into the sea.