s in soak to buy a ship for Columbus,"
commented Jack Bosworth. "I read about it when I was laid up with my
broken arm. You remember the time the horse climbed into my motor car?"

"The police say you never stopped running until you bumped against one of
the White Mountains," laughed Harry. "Who was this white man who first
climbed the divide?" he asked; "as I'm going down there, I want to know. I
may set up a monument to his memory."

"Don't be too sure about going," warned Glen Howard. "Lieutenant Gordon
may kick on the whole bunch of us."

"Then we'll all go down in my motor boat," replied Harry. "You can't keep
me out of the Canal Zone when there's things doing."

"The man's name was Balboa," said Peter, in answer to the question, as he
smiled at this tardy recognition of the services of the explorer. "He went
broke at St. Domingo, one day in the year 1510, and hired a fellow to head
him up in a wine cask and put the cask on board a ship bound for Darien.
He made the trip, all right, and landed broke, but in three years he was
captain of the precinct, as they say in Manhattan, and on his way to the
Pacific. He looked out on the big ocean for the first time on the 26th of
September, 1513. Some say it was the 25th. I don't know which is right."

The door of the clubroom now opened and Lieutenant Gordon entered. He was
a man of not more than thirty, with a stern though not forbidding face and
an alert military figure. His brown eyes lighted up with sudden humor as
he dodged the clamorous boys, and dropped into a chair.

"What about it?" asked Jimmie, who seemed to be a favorite with the
officer. "Do we go with you, or do we trail along in the motor boat?"

"The man higher up," began the lieutenant, "says you may go with me if you
will try to--"

There was no necessity for the lieutenant going on with the sentence. He
had warned the boys so many times as to their conduct on the Isthmus, if
permitted to go with the secret service men, that they now knew in advance
what he was going to say, and they repeated his former admonitions with
shouts of laughter.

"All right," said the lieutenant, trying to look dignified, "if you won't
listen you can't go."

"Go on an' talk your chin off," shouted Jimmie. "We'll listen to every
word until our arms drop to the floor."

"Never mind that now," laughed the officer. "I'm too busy at present to
speak the advice you'll all forget before I'm out of the room. Where is
Frank S