you'll go to the calaboose as sure as
you're a foot high!"

I found myself out upon the sun-broiled street, with the two grinning
guards barring my return. It had never entered my mind before that Uncle
Sam is sometimes served by an ignorant and pompous nincompoop!

But the satisfaction of making this discovery had a bitter taste. I did
not know what to do. My mind was in a whirl. I had some few letters and
papers in my pockets by which I had expected--after a time--to assure
the consul of my identity. But it seemed that I wasn't to be given a
chance to explain who and what I was.

Somebody had been ahead of me. Some person unknown had represented me
before the consul and had, it appeared, made good. My money and my
letters had been turned over to this person----

"Paul Downes for a dollar bill!" I ejaculated. "It can't be anybody
else. Who else would know enough about me to represent himself as Clint
Webb? He probably knew all about the money and letters. He got away from
home broke, worked his passage out here got here only a few hours before
I did, and he has beaten me to the consul. Whatever shall I do?"

It was not that I was entirely helpless, although I had only a dollar
in my pocket. Captain Rogers was to pay me the hundred dollars he had
promised me at the end of the whaling voyage, if I decided not to return
to the Scarboro. Ben Gibson was sick in the hospital, and old Tom and I
were both dependent upon him for our board money. I didn't propose to be
an object of charity. But I must confess that what I _did_ mean to do
had not as yet formed itself rationally in my mind when I got back to
old Maria Debora's.

Tom was out somewhere seeing the sights. He had not gone with me to the
consul's office. Supper time came before the old man showed up and I sat
down among the first of the boarders. They were a cosmopolitan lot,
rough seamen from several quarters of the globe. They spoke half a dozen
different languages and dialects.

I sat with my back to the door, and was only aware of the entrance of
another party of men by the noise and stir behind me.

"Will you pass down a dish of those beans mate?" I had just called above
the hubbub, speaking to a man across the table.

Instantly somebody stepped quickly behind my chair. A hand came down
heavily on my shoulder.

"By all the e-tar-nal snakes!" ejaculated a nasal voice. "I knew I
couldn't be mistaken about that back. But the voice convinced me. By the
e-