that I am answering the call of a great adventure.”
He did not know how truly he spoke, of course, but if he had, that knowledge would not have changed his answer.
CHAPTER V
THE morning following his decision to play the rôle of angel to Billy Geary's mining concession in Sobrante, John Stuart Webster, like Mr. Pepys, was up betimes.
T
Nine o'clock found him in the office of his friend Joe Daingerfield, of the Bingham Engineering Works, where, within the hour, he had in his characteristically decisive fashion purchased the machinery for a ten-stamp mill and an electric light plant capability of generating two hundred and fifty horsepower two electric hoists with cable, half a dozen steel ore buckets, as many more ore-cars with five hundred feet of rail, a blacksmithing outfit, a pump, motors, sheet steel to line the crushing-bins and form shovelling platforms for the ore in the workings, picks, shovels drills, and so forth. It was a nice order and Dangerfield fwas delighted.
“This is going to cost you about half your fortune, Jack,” he informed Webster when the order was finally made up.
Webster grinned. “You don't suppose I'm chump enough to pay for it now, do you, Joe?” he queried.
“You'll pay at least half, my son. We love you, Jack; we honour and respect you; but this stuff is going to Central America, and in the event of your premature demise, we might not get it back. They have wars down there, you know, and when those people are war-mad, they destroy things.”
“I know. But I'm going first to scout the country, Joe, and in the meantime keep all this stuff in your warehouse until I authorize you by cable to ship, when you can draw on me at sight for the entire invoice with bill of lading attached. If, upon investigation, I find that this mine isn't all my
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