hands?" he said. "I never could stand--I never could--"

"Take one more," said Wade, "and then come on. I'll see you through."

Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o'clock the next morning
Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes,
stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East
River pier. The vessel had brought the season's first cargo of limes
from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance
of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile
up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was
no time for anything more.

From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to
Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp
bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the
discursive skipper from his course.

It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land--La Paz the Beautiful,
a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that
banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little
steamer stopped to tread water while the captain's dory took him
ashore that he might feel the pulse of the cocoanut market. Merriam
went too, with his suit case, and remained.

Kalb, the vice-consul, a Graeco-Armenian citizen of the United States,
born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries,
considered all Americans his brothers and bankers. He attached
himself to Merriam's elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who
wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.