g in ventilation.

"Here's my friend, Captain Jinks," said a husky voice which Sam
recognized as that of old Reddy. "Here, take this chair near the fire."

Sam accepted the offered chair, altho he would have preferred a
situation a little less torrid.

"Gentlemen, this is Captain Jinks," said the old man, determined to get
all the credit he could from his acquaintance with Sam. "Captain, this
is my friend, Mr. Jackson."

Mr. Jackson was a tall, thin, narrow-chested man with no shoulders, a
rounded back, and a gray, tobacco-stained mustache. His face was
covered with pimples, and a huge quid of tobacco was concealed under
his cheek. He was sitting on a chair tipped back rather beyond the
danger-point, and his feet rested on the rim which projected from the
stove half-way up. He made no effort to rise, but slowly extended a
grimy, clammy hand which Sam pressed with some hesitation.

"Glad to make your acquaintance, Captain," he drawled in a half-cracked
voice that suggested damaged lungs and vocal organs. "Shake hands with
Mr. Tucker."

Mr. Tucker, a little, old, red-faced man on the other side of the
stove, advanced and went through the ceremony suggested.

"We were just a-talking about them Cubapinos," explained Reddy. "The
idee of them fellers a-pitching into us after all we've done for 'em.
It's outrageous. They're only monkeys anyway, and they ought to be
shot, every mother's son on 'em. Haven't we freed 'em from the cruel
Castalians that they've been hating so for three hundred years?"

"They seem to be hating us pretty well just now," said a man in the
corner, whose voice sounded familiar to Sam. He turned and recognized
the commercial traveler of the day before.

"They're welcome to hate us," answered Jackson, "and when it comes to
a matter of hating I shouldn't think much of us if we couldn't make 'em
hate us as much in a year as the Castalians could in three hundred.
They're a blamed slow lot and we ain't. That's all there is of it. What
do you think, Captain?"

"I fear," said Sam, "that they don't quite understand the great
blessings we're conferring on them."

"What blessings?" asked the drummer.

"Why," said Sam, "liberty and independence--no, I don't mean
independence exactly, but liberty and freedom."

"Then why don't we leave them alone instead of fighting them?"

"What an idee!" exclaimed Tucker. "They don't know what liberty is, and
we must teach '