e bound. Upon the point of their purpose in visiting the
place Condon found the boy reticent, and so he did not push the
matter--he had learned all that he cared to know as it was.

Several times Condon attempted to draw the lad into a card game; but
his victim was not interested, and the black looks of several of the
other men passengers decided the American to find other means of
transferring the boy's bank roll to his own pocket.

At last came the day that the steamer dropped anchor in the lee of a
wooded promontory where a score or more of sheet-iron shacks making an
unsightly blot upon the fair face of nature proclaimed the fact that
civilization had set its heel. Straggling upon the outskirts were the
thatched huts of natives, picturesque in their primeval savagery,
harmonizing with the background of tropical jungle and accentuating the
squalid hideousness of the white man's pioneer architecture.

The boy, leaning over the rail, was looking far beyond the man-made
town deep into the God-made jungle. A little shiver of anticipation
tingled his spine, and then, quite without volition, he found himself
gazing into the loving eyes of his mother and the strong face of the
father which mirrored, beneath its masculine strength, a love no less
than the mother's eyes proclaimed. He felt himself weakening in his
resolve. Nearby one of the ship's officers was shouting orders to a
flotilla of native boats that was approaching to lighter the
consignment of the steamer's cargo destined for this tiny post.

"When does the next steamer for England touch here?" the boy asked.

"The Emanuel ought to be along most any time now," replied the officer.
"I figgered we'd find her here," and he went on with his bellowing
remarks to the dusty horde drawing close to the steamer's side.

The task of lowering the boy's grandmother over the side to a waiting
canoe was rather difficult. The lad insisted on being always at her
side, and when at last she was safely ensconced in the bottom of the
craft that was to bear them shoreward her grandson dropped catlike
after her. So interested was he in seeing her comfortably disposed
that he failed to notice the little package that had worked from his
pocket as he assisted in lowering the sling that contained the old
woman over the steamer's side, nor did he notice it even as it slipped
out entirely and dropped into the sea.

Scarcely had the boat containing the boy and the old woman starte