for him from the American consul, the day before he came in. We missed
each other by three days at Levuka--I was sailing the _Wild Duck_
then. He pulled out of Suva as guest on a British cruiser. Sir Everard
Im Thurm, British High Commissioner of the South Seas, gave me more
letters for Graham. I missed him at Port Resolution and at Vila in the
New Hebrides. The cruiser was junketing, you see. I beat her in and
out of the Santa Cruz Group. It was the same thing in the Solomons.
The cruiser, after shelling the cannibal villages at Langa-Langa,
steamed out in the morning. I sailed in that afternoon. I never did
deliver those letters in person, and the next time I laid eyes on him
was at the Café Venus two years ago."

"But who about him, and what about him?" Paula queried. "And what's
the book?"

"Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he's broke--that is, for
him, he's broke. He's got an income of several thousand a year left,
but all that his father left him is gone. No; he didn't blow it. He
got in deep, and the 'silent panic' several years ago just about
cleaned him. But he doesn't whimper.

"He's good stuff, old American stock, a Yale man. The book--he expects
to make a bit on it--covers last year's trip across South America,
west coast to east coast. It was largely new ground. The Brazilian
government voluntarily voted him a honorarium of ten thousand dollars
for the information he brought out concerning unexplored portions of
Brazil. Oh, he's a man, all man. He delivers the goods. You know the
type--clean, big, strong, simple; been everywhere, seen everything,
knows most of a lot of things, straight, square, looks you in the
eyes--well, in short, a man's man."