To this institution, one evening in the dry weather, came Mr. Merry, making what speed he could and clinging to the handrail all the way up from the landing while he caught his breath and stared painfully about.
Below the point he saw the harbor like a sheet of crinkled copper. Overhead arched a coppery dome. To seaward he could gaze down a vista of rocky and deserted islets resembling slag heaps, where the sinking sun showed like a red-hot spot in the huge, coppered oven in which he found himself. He had been traveling since dawn; he had been without liquor for something like twelve hours; and as he resumed his struggle toward the clutter of tinroofed sheds and arbors which marked his goal he achieved in his mind a dim but quite definite conviction—that hell could hold few surprises for him now, and earth none at all....
But therein he erred.
"Where is the price?" demanded Zimballo, and when Merry laid down a single piece of silver the international ruffian shook his crop head. "No go," he stated.
"It's all I have," said Merry.
"It ain' enough," decided Zimballo, eying him.
In fact, Mr. Merry made an odd figure of a customer. He wore a coolie's grass hat with a pointed crown. About his body hung an old duck jacket, so rotted with rust and mildew as to lend scant anchorage for one brass safety pin. His feet were graced with a pair of aboriginal sandals. It was true he still retained the essential garment, as the frayed ends above his ankles were there to prove. But for political reasons he had swathed himself mid-about with a striped Malay sarong, which is half a skirt and half a sash: whereat Zimballo took purpled offense.
This rogue, himself a mongrel grown fat in the slums of three continents, held starchy notions on the subject of pants.
"A drink," he said with intention, "will be half a dollar. If you don' got it, get out. And if you do got it, pay quick and get out any'ow!"
"I—I haven't it; no. But for any sakes, man," gasped Merry between blackened lips, "you wouldn't turn a chap off! I'm done and double-done. I been knocked out, with the sun and all.... See here now. Give me the worth o' that."