izzically at the smoke feather
as if it mattered little to him where he was. The blond watched it with
the wistfulness of one who sees the last sign of his own world fade out.

Behind them, at a respectful distance, a number of swarthy individuals
of both sexes in nondescript garments smoked and stared at the trio with
the interest always accorded strangers by the dwellers of the Out
Places. They eyed the uncompromising back of the tall one, the easy
lounge of the red one, the thoughtful attitude of the light one. The
copper-faced men peered at the rifles hanging in the right hands of the
newcomers, their knee boots, khaki clothing, and wide hats. The women
let their eyes rove over the boxes and bundles reposing in the mud
beside the three.

"_Ingles?_" hazarded a woman, speaking through the stem of the black
pipe clutched in her filed teeth.

"_Notre-Americano_," asserted a man, nodding toward the broad hats.
"Englishmen would wear the round helmets of pith."

"_Mercadores?_ Traders?" suggested the woman, hopefully running an eye
again over the bundles.

"_Exploradores_," the man corrected. "Explorers of the bush. Have you no
eyes? Do you not see the guns and high boots?"

The woman subsided. The others continued what seemed to be their only
occupation--smoking.

The smoke streamer in the north vanished. As if moved by the same
impulse, the three strangers turned their heads and looked
south-westward, upriver. The red-haired man spoke.

"So we've lit at last, as the feller said when him and his airyplane
landed in a sewer. Faith, I dunno but he was better off than us, at
that--he wasn't two thousand miles from nowheres like we are. The
steamer's gone, and us three pore li'l' boys are left a long ways from
home."

Then, assuming the tone of a showman, he went on:

"Before ye, girls, ye see the well known Ja-va-ree River, which I never
seen before and comes from gosh-knows-where and ends in the Ammyzon.
Over there on t'other side the water is Peru. Yer feet are in the mud of
Brazil. This other river to yer left is the Tickywahoo--"

"Tecuahy," the blond man corrected, grinning.

"Yeah. And behind ye is the last town in the world and the place that
God forgot. What d'ye call this here, now, city?"

"Remate de Males. Which means 'Culmination of Evils.'"

"Yeah. It looks it. Wonder if it's anything like Hell's Kitchen, up in
li'l' old N'Yawk."

They turned and looked dubiously at the town--a row of perhap