"It was after you left Borneo, Herbert, that I came across two fellows--Englishmen--who told me of some new gold diggings on the west coast, and I was fool enough to join them, working my passage on one of the home-going tramp steamers. Well, we thrashed about for six months and landed on one of the small islands in the Caribbean Sea--the name of which I forget--where we left the ship and hid until she disappeared. The gold fever was well out of us by that time, and, besides, I had gotten tired of scrubbing decks and my two fellow tramps of washing dishes. The port was a regular coaling station and some other craft would come along; if not, we could stay where we were. The climate was warm, bananas were cheap and plenty; we were entirely fit, and--like many another lot of young chaps out for a lark--did not care a tinker's continental what happened. That, if you think about it, is the high-water mark of happiness--to be perfectly well, strong, twenty-five years of age, and ready for anything that bobs up. "This time it was a small schooner with a crew of about one hundred men, instead of the customary ten or twelve. A third of them came ashore, bought provisions and water, and were about to shove off to the vessel again, when one of my comrades recognized the mate as an old friend. He offered to take us with them, and in half an hour we had gathered together our duds and had pushed off with the others. The following week we ran into a sheltered cove, where we began landing our cargo. Then it all came out: we were loaded to the scuppers with old muskets in cases, some thousand rounds of ammunition, and two small, muzzle-loading field-guns. There was a revolution in Boccador--one of the small South American republics--they have them every year or so--and we were part of the insurgent navy! If we were caught we were shot; if we got a new flag on top of Government House in the capital of San Josepho, we would have a plantation apiece and negroes enough to run it. It sounded pleasant, didn't it? "I'm not going into all the details--it's the story of the jail you want, not the revolution. Well, we had two weeks of tramping up to our waists in the swamps; three days of fighting, in which one of the field-guns blew off its nose, killing the mate; and the next thing I knew, my two companions and I were looking down the muzzles of a dozen rifles held within three feet of our heads. That ended it and we were marched into town and locked up in the common jail--and rightly named, I tell you, for a filthier or more deadly hole I never got into. It was a square, two-story building--all four sides to the town--with a patio, or court, in the centre. Outside was a line of sentries and inside were more sentries and a couple of big dogs.