During the night that came on the heels of this conversation I heard a few pistol shots but paid no attention to them, as there seemed to be no resultant excitement. In the morning I discovered that two hundred alleged revolutionary plotters, of whom my young customer of the day before was one of the chiefs, had been arrested between darkness and dawn and rounded up in a big yard, surrounded by a high fence, directly back of the hotel. At breakfast I was looked at curiously and I soon heard talk that I was also to be taken into custody. A fat and officious English butcher, who was employed by the Governor of Panama to spy on all English-speaking visitors, had reported my meeting with the supposed rebel leader and had advised that I be arrested on the ground that I was fomenting internal disorder. I knew, of course, that I could establish my innocence, but the administration of the law in Latin America is such a fearful and wonderful thing that it might take me weeks or months to do it, and, besides that, I had no desire for a clash with the Colombian Government and the notoriety which would result from it. Therefore, when trouble appeared certain I took refuge with the British consul, who was just then the acting American consul. I explained the situation to him and, while maintaining that my business was perfectly legitimate, denied that I had sold the young patriot any arms, which was technically true as the deal had not been closed, or that I knew he was involved in any proposed revolution. The consul sympathized with me, in compliance with the most important of the unwritten rules of the consular service, but, after satisfying himself that the Governor had been prejudiced against me, he advised that the easiest and quickest way out of the difficulty was the best. The steamship “Ferdinand de Lesseps” was leaving the next day for the Spanish Main, which was where I wanted to go, and I went on board of her, under escort of the consul. I was running into more trouble on this trip than I had ever before encountered in ten times the same length of time and it began to look as though I had brought a hoodoo on myself by forsaking the intricate paths of adventure for the broad, not the straight and narrow, way of ordinary trade.