“Yessir,” he went on raptly, “coal is the thing. And I don’t mind admitting that I’ve got it.”
He hauled a black object from his pocket and held it out. Eagerly it was snatched from his hand. There it was, hard, shiny, black, varying in no way from those in the kitchen scuttle at home—a splendid sample of anthracite coal! It was too good. They laughed.
“Bring it from home?” they asked pleasantly.
The mountainous engineer chuckled contentedly. “That’s anthracite and as fine a specimen as I ever saw. I don’t mind talking a little freely since I’ve got it covered in an iron-clad contract.
“You see,” he went on good-naturedly, “I’m always wide awake and the morning we left the Boca a young chap came aboard—American, too, and right pleasant spoken—where I was sort of loafing and we got acquainted. To make a long story short, he’d been wandering around up in the back country of Colombia and had located this coal. He didn’t have any special idea of what coal meant down these ways—he was from Pennsylvania, son of a pit boss or something and coal was as common to him as water to a duck—but when he pulled out a couple of these samples you bet I froze fast. He tried to be mighty quiet and mysterious when he saw I was interested—you know how such a chap is when he thinks he’s got a good thing, and he was sort of on the beach, down on his luck you know—but I pumped him all right.
“He had a fool idea of going home as best he could and then taking the family sock and combining it with other family socks and coming back and opening up his coal mine.” The big engineer chuckled again. “Why there’s a king’s fortune in that mine, so your Uncle Jim stepped right in and tied him up close. I cabled my principals and I’ll get a cable when we reach Callao. This coal makes their silver look like thirty cents. Of course, I wasn’t going to take any chances at this stage—it might be phony—but that fellow is on the level. Said he wouldn’t take any money down—not that I’d have given it by a long shot—but after I got back he’d join me and come back into Colombia. He gave me a map of the location in case of accident.”
“Gave him no money—poor fellow, art for art’s sake?” asked one.
“Well, yes,” the big man nodded good-humoredly, “thirty dollars—enough to take him back to the States steerage—I felt almost ashamed. Said he didn’t need any more to get home with—that sounded on the level, didn’t it? He’d had a tough time all right—fever, grub and etcetery back in the country—and was down to dungaree breeches, rope-soled shoes, and one of these slimpsey native calico jackets.”
“And he could roll a cigarette with one hand better than most can with two?” I asked.
The big engineer paused for an instant’s thought and then suddenly sat up. No wonder my friend of the Fifth Army Corps and the dungaree breeches, alpargatas, and battered Panama and muslin jacket had suddenly disappeared. Thirty large, golden dollars of real money, good at par in the States or for three pecks of local paper collateral anywhere on the Mosquito Coast! And all that for one paltry little yarn.