ed and happy, with our long anxiety over, we returned to the shore.

With Mac sailing northward ho! with Wilson's passport and ticket in his
pocket, and all our money save two thousand pounds in his trunk, our
buccaneering expedition on the Spanish Main was over and all but a
failure when comparing the L10,000 we had captured with our magnificent
expectations.

Here was a gigantic and well-conceived scheme which had almost collapsed
through trifles, which, to an honest enterprise would have been light as
air, but which to us and to our plans were of crushing force, built up,
as all schemes of wrong doing are, on foundations of sand.

To conclude very briefly the narrative of this expedition, I will here
add that the day after Mac's departure, altering his passport to fit
George's description, we sailed on the Chimborazo south to Montevideo.
Upon our arrival we, with all other passengers for the town, were
promptly put in quarantine for ten days in a vile little island called
in irony the Isle of Flowers; but the mails were fumigated and sent
through, as were two additional mails arriving from Europe and Rio. When
our quarantine was over we were permitted to enter the city. We found
that some advice or rumor had reached there, and we feared to venture
our letters of credit for money. So, destroying all documents save our
passports, we paid a visit to Buenos Ayres, and then we embarked on a
French steamer for Marseilles, arriving there without any particular
adventure, and the next day had a happy meeting with Mac in Paris.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LITTLE FISHES WRIGGLING THROUGH GREEN WAVES.

Once more together and our adventures since we separated related, the
question arose: What next?

We determined to abandon our dangerous business, for we had capital
sufficient to start in an honest career, and resolved to do so. For a
long time our attention had been turned to Colorado, and we had
frequently talked over a project of going to some growing city there,
starting a bank and building a wheat elevator and stockyards. Fifty
thousand dollars would start our bank, and $10,000, with some credit,
the elevator and yards. This sum we had, with an additional $10,000 to
pay our way until profit came in from our investments. Here was another
great and honorable scheme--one easily carried out had we only gone on
with it. What a success we might have made, particularly so when
considered in the light of the development of Colo