"Yet he can't have told you all: for he doesn't know it all--about Renton, for instance, and how I did that bolt from him to Costa Rica, and from Costa Rica to San Ramon. You must hear all about that, if you will: because, when you've inspected the island for yourself, your next business will be with Renton, and I want you to understand the man you will be dealing with." Thereupon he told me: and that is how I was able, the other night, to relate what happened in Costa Rica and at San Ramon. One of these days, when you're fairly rested, you shall have a full, dull, true, and particular account of the voyage upon which I started, next day, with Jephson, as per schedule: with a detailed description of Santa Island, or Santa Santissima (to give it its full name). But this story isn't about me: it concerns Foe and Farrell: and therefore it's enough to say here, that I reached Valparaiso and found Captain Jeff Hales waiting for me with his schooner fresh from dock, and fleet: that he and I took to one another in the inside of ten minutes; that our voyage, first and last, went like a yachting cruise; that we made the island and spent something more than two months on it, prospecting, mapping, choosing the sites for our factories that were to be, even planning a light tramway to cart their produce down to the grand north-eastern bay which (as Foe had warned me) proved to be the only anchorage. But Santa's cross was there, standing yet on the small beach where the castaways had landed, and no doubt it stands yet. No storm ever seriously troubles the water within that lovely protected hollow. Returning to Valparaiso, I travelled north by steamer, by rail, by steamer and rail again, to New York, hunted up Renton, and found that my luck held; that I was dealing with a man as honest as Hales and keen as either of us. With half a dozen cable messages, to and from Farrell in London, we had everything fixed, and our company as good as a going concern, when the Chilian Government interposed a long, vexatious delay which, at one point, appeared to hint at an intention to repudiate the bargain. Back I travelled; this time with Renton in company, and Renton mad as fire. It all turned out to be a bungle by some clerk that had taken to drink and forgetfulness; but it cost us a month or two before the Government of Senor Orrego, having no case, decided to do us justice without troubling the Courts. Renton and I returned in triumph through the grilling heats of July, and reached New York to find the papers announcing this war for a certainty: whereupon, without unpacking, I pelted for home.