drowning waves of his abyss. He
nodded easily at Goodwin, raised his brimming glass and murmured a
"health" that men had used in his ancient Paradise Lost. And then so
suddenly that he spilled the brandy over his hand, he set down his
glass, untasted.

"In two hours," his dry lips muttered to Goodwin, as he marched down
the steps and turned his face toward the town.

In the edge of the cool banana grove "Beelzebub" halted, and snapped
the tongue of his belt buckle into another hole.

"I couldn't do it," he explained, feverishly, to the waving banana
fronds. "I wanted to, but I couldn't. A gentleman can't drink with
the man that he blackmails."

XII

SHOES

John De Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower.
The tropics gobbled him up. He plunged enthusiastically into his
work, which was to try to forget Rosine.

Now, they who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain. There is a
sauce _au diable_ that goes with it; and the distillers are the chefs
who prepare it. And on Johnny's menu card it read "brandy." With a
bottle between them, he and Billy Keogh would sit on the porch of the
little consulate at night and roar out great, indecorous songs, until
the natives, slipping hastily past, would shrug a shoulder and mutter
things to themselves about the "_Americanos diablos_."

One day Johnny's _mozo_ brought the mail and dumped it on the table.
Johnny leaned from his hammock, and fingered the four or five
letters dejectedly. Keogh was sitting on the edge of the table
chopping lazily with a paper knife at the legs of a centipede that
was crawling among the stationery. Johnny was in that phase of
lotus-eating when all the world tastes bitter in one's mouth.

"Same old thing!" he complained. "Fool people writing for information
about the country. They want to know all about raising fruit, and how
to make a fortune without work. Half of 'em don't even send stamps
for a reply. They think a consul hasn't anything to do but write
letters. Slit those envelopes for me, old man, and see what they
want. I'm feeling too rocky to move."

Keogh, acclimated beyond all possibility of ill-humour, drew
his chair to the table with smiling compliance on his rose-pink
countenance, and began to slit open the letters. Four of them were
from citizens in various parts of the United States who seemed to
regard the consul at Coralio as a cyclopaedia of information. They
asked long lists of questions, numerical