aken a
great fancy to Dan, was at infinite pains to impress upon him the fact
that in the duties of captain of a vessel calling regularly at the
ports of small Latin republics many requirements aside from mere
ability to navigate a ship are involved. Seductive arts, such as
verbal or financial propitiation; knowledge when to give a dinner and
when to threaten to invoke the "big stick"; when to hold to a position
and when to recede from it;--all these attributes of diplomacy were
acquired by Dan under Harrison's tutelage, so that when the old Captain
finally retired to his well-earned rest on a Long Island farm, he
"allowed" that young Merrithew had the stuff in him of which smart
officers are made.

On his own account, Dan, by keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open,
learned not a little of the methods which characterized the relations
of his company with various Governments; and while not all that he
learned could in the widest implication of the phrase he designated as
morally--or, say, rather, ethically--elevating, it afforded an
interesting side-light upon the business character of Horace Howland.

In this connection it is well to state that the ultra clamorous days in
San Blanco had long ceased, and that the new _Presidente_, Rodriguez,
who had arisen to his honors out of the midst of the travail of fire,
powder, and a modicum of bloodshed, was conducting affairs of state
much to the liking of the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company, of
which company Mr. Howland was the brains and guiding spirit. Need it
be suggested that this amounts to saying that Mr. Howland was the
brains and guiding spirit of the San Blanco Republic as then
constituted?

At all events, with peace smiling over troublous San Blanco, Mr.
Howland sent word to Dan that early in April he, his daughter, Mrs. Van
Vleck, and a party of ten, would sail on the _Tampico_ for Belle View,
the Howland estate, just outside of San Blanco City.

Dan was not altogether surprised at this message. The passenger
accommodations of the _Tampico_ were elaborate, and hints of Mr.
Howland's intention had reached him in one way or another. But now
with definite assurances in hand life took on added zest. He had not
seen Miss Howland since the dinner; but it would have been futile for
him to attempt to convince himself that she had not formed a more or
less vague background for many of his thoughts and moods since that
epochal event. Occasionally he saw