This sudden plunge into geographical examination took his guests aback; they did not know where Griqualand West was; perhaps they had been equally misty as to the whereabouts of Denver City, Colorado. "It's in South Africa. Ah, that's the way to learn geography, to travel about and see the places,--pitch your books into the fire!" "And is the other place in South Africa?" queried Griffin. Mr. Bankes gave him a look the like of which he had never received from Mr. Fletcher; a look of thunder, as though he would have liked to pick him up, then and there, and pitch him after the books into the fire. "Denver City, Colorado, in South Africa?" he roared. "Why, you leather-headed noodle, where were you at school? If I were the man who taught you, I'd flog you from here to Dublin with a cat-o'-nine-tails, rather than I'd let you expose your ignorance like that!" The sudden advent among them of an explosive bomb might have created a little more astonishment than this speech, but not much. Griffin felt that he had better abstain from questioning, and let his host run on. "Denver City is in the United States of America, in the land of the stars and bars, as every idiot knows! As I was saying, before that young gentleman wrote himself down donkey--and he looks it, every inch of him!--as I was saying, when I was going up from the coast to Kimberley, there was a boy who used to do odd jobs for me; he hadn't sixpenny-worth of clothes upon his back! I lost sight of him; five years afterwards I met him again. It was like a tale out of the _Arabian Nights_, I tell you! That ragged boy that was, when I saw him again five years afterwards, he reckoned to cover what any half-dozen men might have put down, and double it afterwards. And look at the life he'd led! It's no good my talking about it here, you'd hardly believe me if I told you half the things he'd done. Don't you believe any of your adventure books. There aren't half the adventures crowded into any book which that lad had seen. Yes, a life of adventure was the life for him, and he'd had it, too!" Mr. Bankes returned to his post of vantage in front of the fire. In his excitement he had smoked his pipe to premature ashes; he refilled and lighted it. Then he addressed himself to Bailey, marking time as he went on by beating the palm of his right hand against his left.