ost.

"Our end?" said Bones. "Well, you will find out for yourself. I'd hate
to disappoint you."

"Now, how am I going up?" asked the man after a pause.

"You can hire a canoe, and live on the land, unless you have brought
stores."

The man chuckled. "I've brought no stores. Here, I will show you
something," he said. "You are a very good fellow." He opened his bag and
took out a tight packet which looked like thin skins. There must have
been two or three hundred of them. "That's my speciality," he said. He
nipped the string that tied them together, stripped one off, and,
putting his lips to one end, blew. The skin swelled up like a toy
balloon. "Do you know what that is?"

"No, I cannot say I do," said Bones.

"You have heard of Soemmering's process?"

Bones shook his head.

"Do you know what decimal 1986 signifies?"

"You've got me guessing, my lad," said Bones admiringly.

The other chuckled, threw the skins into his bag, and closed it with a
snap. "That's my little joke," he said. "All my friends tell me it will
be the death of me one of these days. I like to puzzle people"--he
smiled amiably and triumphantly in Bones's face--"I like to tell them
the truth in such a way they don't understand it. If they understood
it--Heavens, there'd be the devil to pay!"

"You are an ingenious fellow," said Bones, "but I don't like your face.
You will forgive my frankness, dear old friend."

"Faces aren't fortunes," said the other complacently, "and I am going
out of this country with money sticking to me."

"I'm sorry for you," said Bones, shaking his head; "I hate to see
fellows with illusions."

He reported all that occurred to the Commissioner, and Sanders was a
little worried.

"I wish I knew what his game is," he said; "I'd stop him like a shot,
but I can't very well in the face of the Administrator's wire. Anyway,
he will get nothing out of the N'gombi. I've tried every method to make
the beggars bank their surpluses, and I have failed."

"He has got to come back this way, at any rate," said Hamilton, "and I
cannot see that he will do much harm."

"What is the rest of his baggage like?"

"He has a case of things that look like concave copper plates, sir,"
said Bones, "very thin copper, but copper. Then he has two or three
copper pipes, and that is about his outfit."

Mr. Corklan was evidently no stranger to the coast, and Bones, who
watched the man's canoe being loaded that afternoon, and heard his