gave me his story.

"Ever been in Ecuador? Then take my advice--and don't. Though I
take that back, for you and me might be hitting it for there
together if you can rustle up the faith in me and the backbone in
yourself for the trip. Well, anyway, it ain't so many years ago
that I came ambling in there on a rusty, foul-bottomed, tramp
collier from Australia, forty-three days from land to land. Seven
knots was her speed when everything favoured, and we'd had a two
weeks' gale to the north'ard of New Zealand, and broke our engines
down for two days off Pitcairn Island.

"I was no sailor on her. I'm a locomotive engineer. But I'd made
friends with the skipper at Newcastle an' come along as his guest
for as far as Guayaquil. You see, I'd heard wages was 'way up on
the American railroad runnin' from that place over the Andes to
Quito. Now Guayaquil--"

"Is a fever-hole," I interpolated.

Julian Jones nodded.

"Thomas Nast died there of it within a month after he landed.--He
was our great American cartoonist," I added.

"Don't know him," Julian Jones said shortly. "But I do know he
wasn't the first to pass out by a long shot. Why, look you the way
I found it. The pilot grounds is sixty miles down the river.
'How's the fever?' said I to the pilot who came aboard in the early
morning. 'See that Hamburg barque,' said he, pointing to a sizable