On the deck-rail of a coast-wise fruit steamer beating down from equatorial 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."