"

Barry eyed the other quizzically. Liking Tom Little at first sight, he
liked him more now.

"You're putting a lot of faith in a stranger," he warned.

Little cut him short. "Cut out the cackle and talk hoss," was the
retort. "I size up men first pop. My bet's down now on your blue eye.
Let's get a rig. I don't know a darn thing about this part of the world
except the drummers' hotels. But Houten takes a chance on me. And if I'm
his blue-eyed boy, you're mine. I'm taking a chance without a qualm,
Barry."

Little passed an arm through his companion's, and they turned towards
the railroad station. As they picked out a _sadoe_ from among the
waiting vehicles, Barry strove desperately to recover a grip on himself.
He had been all but swept off his feet by Little's cheery optimism and
breezy confidence. Jack Barry was also accustomed to sizing up men
quickly. Despite the typewriter salesman's slangy, easy-going way, he
saw underneath a man shrewd, efficient, utterly dependable. And as the
_sadoe_ rattled at the heels of the tiny Timor pony along the wide
avenue, past the dirt-choked canals of the old port, he fell into rosy,
perhaps premature, dreams of the future. Little awakened him with
rapid-fire speech.

"Selling typewriters out here is easy. Like getting rid of pink lemonade
at a kid's party," chattered the salesman. "Was doing a wildfire
business. Chucked the job clean, on Houten's face. Imagine how he struck
me to make me do that." Perhaps thirty seconds of silence--a long
silence for Little--then, "How'd you get stranded, Barry?"

Barry told of the foundering of the _Gregg_, and though the recital was
in the plainest of sailorese terms, Little's eyes popped in amazement.

"Holy smoke! You've been shipwrecked? Floating around in an open boat?
Didn't believe it was done, except in Perilous Polly Feature Fillum
Bunk! Ph-e-ew!" and Little relapsed into a real, awed silence.

They passed into old Batavia, amid its swamps and silted canals. Further
along lay Welterreden, the new city, with its magnificent avenues and
residences; but the business in hand lay in the older section. Here,
among clustering mangroves, huge rooted and malarial, Chinese and native
_kampongs_ huddled in the shadow of decaying ruins. Here was a deserted
city, with jungle creeping over Dutch waterways and red-brick houses,
whose quaint gables and leaded windows spoke of eighteenth-century
Holland rather than of twentieth-century Java. One