quatorial waters leaned two men, whose ages were seemingly about forty.
Off the starboard bow lay the island of San Lorenzo, yellow in the sun,
with its battered crown of broken fortress. Ahead lay Callao, yellow,
too, with its adobe walls, and rust-red where its corrugated iron roofs
caught and husbanded the heat which needed no husbanding. Far off,
between terraces of sand and the slopes of San Cristobal, one could make
out the church towers of Lima.

The two travellers looked idly, somewhat contemptuously, on a shore line
that had fired the imagination of Pizarro and his conquistadores. They
were not of those to whom historic associations lend glamour, neither
were they themselves precisely objects of romantic interest. One was
dark of hair and skin and saturnine of expression. The other was blond,
floridly blond, and unmistakably Teutonic.

"Know anything about oil, mein friendt?" inquired the fair-haired
traveller, and the other laughed.

"Oil? My middle name's oil. I've drilled it in Mexico and--" abruptly
the speaker became less expansive as he added, "and elsewhere."

The German smiled. "Elsewhere?" he observed. "It is a large place--nein?
Has oil been always your business?"

From Guayaquil they had been travelling companions, but they had shared
no personal confidences. The reply came non-committally.

"I've followed some several things."

The Teuton did not press his interrogations, and a silence fell between
the two. While it lasted, the face of Saul Fulton settled into a frown
of discontent.

At Lima there would perhaps be mail, and upon the answer to a letter
written long ago his future plans depended.

"Shall we dine together in Lima?" The suggestion came at last from the
German. "So perhaps we shall be less bored."

Saul Fulton nodded. "Why not? I'll meet you at the American cafe at six,
but the dinner'll be on me."

Fulton could afford to entertain if the spirit moved him, and if his
news was good he would have the wish to celebrate. These years of his
wanderings since he had left home with an indictment hanging above his
head had not all been lean, but prosperity in exile had of late become
bitter on his tongue with the ashiness of dead-sea fruit. Saul was
homesick. He wanted to shake from his feet for ever this dry dust of the
rainless west coast. He wanted to see the stars come up out of a paling
lemon afterglow, across peaks ragged with hardwood and fringed with
pine.

He had tasted th