"She is some bunged up, colonel, but still in the ring. The old girl will be going strong in another week." "What can I do for you?" "It's not myself that has any kick, colonel. I want your help for a friend of mine. He's not on the job, but I hope it will make no difference with you. He worked for Mr. Naughton on the dynamite ship, and then Major Glendinning half-way promised him a place on the gold roll because he can pitch ball like a streak of greased lightning." Devlin halted and grinned at his own frankness. The colonel smiled back at him. "Base-ball is irrelevant, Devlin, but I am sure Major Glendinning would make your young man earn his salary. So he wanted him to pitch for Cristobal? But you are the catcher of the Culebra nine. You show an unselfish interest, I'm sure." "I'm a fierce rooter on the ball field, colonel, but I can't let it come between friends. This young chap, Walter Goodwin, got General Quesada down on him. He whaled the fat scoundrel with a broomstick on board the _Saragossa_. Quesada was trying to perforate Señor Alfaro here with a gun." The colonel appeared keenly interested and interrupted to say: "Why, I was on the ship and I remember the youngster quite well. He was a seaman. The skipper told me about the row. I liked Goodwin's pluck. Between us, Devlin, the Panamanian gentleman had provoked a drubbing." "Yes, sir. Goodwin was working his passage to the Isthmus to look for a job and----" "Why didn't he let me know it on shipboard?" queried the colonel. "I was interested in him." "He didn't have the nerve. You looked too big to him. To cut it short, he was tipped over by the same landslide that left me and poor old Twenty-six all spraddled out. He came out of Ancon hospital yesterday with no job and his arm tied up. And he wandered down to Balboa and caught General Quesada's steamer, the _Juan Lopez_, stealing commissary stores from the wharf to outfit a filibustering expedition. Quesada got hold of him and lugged him off to sea last night. It's surely a bad fix for Goodwin." The colonel no longer smiled. His resolute mouth tightened beneath the short, white mustache. The blue eyes flashed. He listened to Alfaro's detailed confirmation of the story. With winning courtesy the colonel said to him: "Your father, the Colombian minister of foreign affairs, has no love for the United States, I am told. Will you tell him, with my compliments, that I greatly admire the behavior of his son?" Turning to Devlin he added, crisply, decisively: "I have no reason to doubt your story. You have a fine record. I shall act first and investigate later. Goodwin was kidnapped from the Zone, from American soil, as I understand it. He was living with one of the surgeons at Ancon?" "Yes, colonel. You can find out by telephone easy enough." "How many men were there on the _Juan Lopez_? And how fast is she?" Alfaro answered: