two. They were just such
heels (only clumsier and made of wood instead of cork and crimson
morocco or silk) as _Siegfried_ wears for mountain climbing, dragon
fighting, or other deeds of derring-do. And with these heels to guide
me, I sighed, and said:

"Signor Recent-Venetian-Tower, you have the most beautiful pure golden
tenor voice that I have ever heard in my life."

Have you ever been suddenly embraced by a pile-driver, and kissed on
both cheeks by a blacking-brush? I have. Then he held me by the
shoulders at arm's length, and looked me in the eyes as if I had been a
long-lost son returned at last. Then he gathered a kiss in his finger
tips and flung it to the heavens. Then he asked if by any chance I had
any spaghetti with me. He cried when I said that I had not; but quietly,
not harassingly. And then we got down to real business, and found out
about each other.

_He_ was the prisoner of Prana Beach. The treasure that he had to share
with his rescuer was his voice. Two nights a week during the season, at
two thousand a night. But--There was a great big But.

Signor What-I-said-before, his voice weakened by pneumonia, had taken a
long travelling holiday to rest up. But his voice, instead of coming
back, grew weaker and weaker, driving him finally into a suicidal
artistic frenzy, during which he put on his full suit of evening
clothes, a black pearl shirt stud, a tall silk hat, in the dead of
night, and flung himself from the stern of a P. & O. boat into the sea.
He had no knowledge of swimming and expected to drown at once. But he
was not built for drowning. The laws of buoyancy and displacement caused
him to float upon his back, high out of the water, like an empty
barrel. Nor was the water into which he had fallen as tepid as he had
expected. From his description, with its accompaniment of shudderings
and shiverings, the temperature must have been as low as 80 deg.
Fahrenheit, which is pretty sharp for dagoes. Anyhow, the double shock
of the cold and of not drowning instantly acted on his vocal chords.
Without even trying, he said, he knew that his voice had come back.
Picture the poor man's despair--overboard in the ocean, wanting to die
because he had nothing to live for, and suddenly discovering that he had
everything to live for. He asserts that he actually forgot the cold, and
thought only of how to preserve that glorious instrument, his voice; not
for himself but for mankind. But he could not think out