The big negro only flashed his teeth and waved his arm. His little
vessel went drifting astern.

"Pirates and wreckers--look pretty much like honest people, don't they?"
commented Kieran. "And they are mostly. At least I've bunked with
'em--white ones, though--and I found 'em pretty much like you and
me--except for their ideas in that and maybe one or two other lines. And
most people, when you come to know them, aren't so different, except in
one way--or maybe two or three ways in some cases. Don't you think so?"

The passenger countered with another question. "You've met a good many
different kinds of people in your time, haven't you?"

The pump-man nodded. After a pause he added, "A few," in an absent
manner.

The low-lying reefs sank out of sight, and far astern the green-painted
schooner merged into the mists. It was a warm, pleasant day.

Kieran roused himself. "No, there wasn't any girl in Zanzibar. If there
had been, a fellow couldn't be advertising her to the crew of an
oil-tanker at high-noon, could he? No! But there _was_ a girl, and there
was a friend of mine--call him Cogan. Oh, not a bad fellow--no worse,
maybe no better, than you or I, or most any of the old crowd we used to
know, and he happened to drift down the Isthmus way--into Colon--during
the Revolution. Ever there?"

"Once, just after the Revolution."

"And what did you think of it--the Revolution?"

"M-m--it surely did happen most opportunely for our interests."

"Didn't it, though? And did you ever notice that quite a few of the
revolutions in those Central American latitudes happen most opportunely
for some northern interest or other? Well, Cogan was there during the
Revolution. He told me of a saloon there, about a minute's walk up from
the big steamship dock on the street next the water-side--remember that
street?"

"Where the railroad starts to cross the Isthmus to Panama?"

"That's it. And this saloon was on that street--it may be there yet--the
Fourth of July saloon with its big American ensign painted on the wall
opposite the bar. Remember it?"

"M-m-h-h."

"Well, it was run by a Brooklyn Irishman named Martin Jackson, and Cogan
said he remembered the shock he got when he first heard him talk. His
Irish brogue had a Spanish accent--do you get that? Well, he has nothing
to do with the story, only this--Cogan used to have great ideas about
revolutions, and Martin, he knocked most of them out of him. He'd seen
twenty of them i