“No, I thank you.”

“Darwin—­Say, I’ll send a cart for your baggage, right now.”

“I have it with me—­six shirts, all guilty.”

“Then I’ll send your father a message this minute.  I’m delighted at the privilege of being the first to advise him of your safety and to relieve his mental anguish.”  Mr. Weeks rocked toward the desk, adjusted a chair behind him, spread his legs apart, and sat down sidewise so that he could reach the inkwell.  He overhung his chair so generously that from the front he appeared to be perched precariously upon its edge or to be holding some one in his lap.  “Where are those cable blanks!” he cried, irritably, stirring up the confusion in front of him.

“Here they are.”  Anthony picked one up from the floor.

“It’s that damn wind again.  I can’t keep anything in place unless I sit on it.  That’s the trouble with this country—­there’s always a breeze blowing.  Thanks!  I’m getting a trifle heavy to stoop—­ makes me dizzy.”

In a moment he read what he had written: 

Darwin K. Anthony, Albany, New York.

Your son well and safe.  Here as my guest.  Asks you cable him money for return.  Weeks, American Consul.

“That tells the story.  It’ll please him to know I’m looking after you, my boy.”

“You are very kind.”

“Don’t speak of it.  I’m glad to get in touch with your father.  We need capital in this country.”

“He’s a hard man in money matters,” said Darwin K. Anthony’s son.  “I believe I enjoy the distinction of being the only person who ever made him loosen.”

“All successful men are cautious,” Weeks declared.  “But if he knew the wonderful opportunities this country presents—­” The speaker leaned forward, while his chair creaked dangerously, and said, with impressiveness, “My dear sir, do you realize that a cocoa palm after it is seven years old drops a nut worth five cents every day in the year and requires no care whatever except to gather the fruit?”

“No.”

“Fact!  And we grow the best ones in the world right here.  But the demand is increasing so rapidly that in ten years there will be a famine.  Think of it—­a famine of cocoanuts!” Mr. Weeks paused to lend dramatic effect.

“That’s fierce,” Kirk acknowledged.  “What are they good for?”

“Eating!  People make cakes out of them, and oil, and candy.  Good cocoanut land can be bought for fifty cents an acre, selected seeds for five cents each, labor is sixty cents a day.  No frosts, no worms, no bugs.  You sit still and they drop in your lap.”

“The bugs?”

“No!  No!  The cocoanuts.”

“Fine!”

“But that’s nothing.  Do you realize that this soil will raise sugar-cane the size of your—­of my—­thigh, and once you plant it you can’t keep it cut out?”

“It’s all news to me.”

“You can buy sugar-cane land for a dollar an acre; it costs—­” “I’m no good at figures, Mr. Weeks.”