“Br-r-r-r!” said Hedges. “But you’ve got a frappéd flipper! Man, you’re not well. You’re as yellow as a Chinaman. Malarial here? Steer us to a bar if there is such a thing, and let’s take a prophylactic.”

Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del Mar.

“Quinby and I,” explained Hedges, puffing through the slippery sand, “are looking out along the coast for some investments. We’ve just come up from Concepción and Valparaiso and Lima. The captain of this subsidized ferry boat told us there was some good picking around here in silver mines. So we got off. Now, where is that café, Merriam? Oh, in this portable soda-water pavilion?”

Leaving Quinby at the bar, Hedges drew Merriam aside.

“Now, what does this mean?” he said, with gruff kindness. “Are you sulking about that fool row we had?”

“I thought,” stammered Merriam—“I heard—they told me you were— that I had——”

“Well, you didn’t, and I’m not,” said Hedges. “That fool young ambulance surgeon told Wade I was a candidate for a coffin just because I’d got tired and quit breathing. I laid up in a private hospital for a month; but here I am, kicking as hard as ever. Wade and I tried to find you, but couldn’t. Now, Merriam, shake hands and forget it all. I was as much to blame as you were; and the shot really did me good—I came out of the hospital as healthy and fit as a cab horse. Come on; that drink’s waiting.”

“Old man,” said Merriam, brokenly, “I don’t know how to thank you— I—well, you know——”

“Oh, forget it,” boomed Hedges. “Quinby’ll die of thirst if we don’t join him.”

Bibb was sitting on the shady side of the gallery waiting for the eleven-o’clock breakfast. Presently Merriam came out and joined him. His eye was strangely bright.

“Bibb, my boy,” said he, slowly waving his hand, “do you see those mountains and that sea and sky and sunshine?—they’re mine, Bibbsy—all mine.”

“You go in,” said Bibb, “and take eight grains of quinine, right away. It won’t do in this climate for a man to get to thinking he’s Rockefeller, or James O’Neill either.”

Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the Pajaro to be distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers scatter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains.

Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver-rimmed anteojos upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of smaller rolls. A barefooted muchacho dashed in, desiring the post of messenger.

“Bien venido,” said Tio Pancho. “This to Señora Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel—Dios! what a name to say!—that to Señor Davis— one for Don Alberto. These two for the Casa de Huespedes, Numero 6, en la calle de las Buenas Gracias. And say to them all, muchacho, that the Pajaro sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the correo.”

Mrs. Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o’clock. The boy was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his duty by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately gave chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send.

She was idling in a hammock in the patio of the house that she occupied, half awake, half happily dreaming of the paradise that she and Merriam had created out of the wrecks of their pasts. She was content now for the horizon of that shimmering sea to be the horizon of her life. They had shut out the world and closed the door.