Richard Harding Davis

“ Forrester, “with a pencil, and every time our men empty a bag of cement into the ocean you make a mark. At the same time, if you are not an utter idiot and completely blind, you can’t help but see how a light-house is set up. The company is having trouble in Venezuela, trouble in collecting its money. You might as well know that, because everybody in Venezuela will tell you so. But that’s all you need to know. The other men working for the company down there will think, because you are my son, that you know more about what I’m doing in Venezuela than they do. ”

“ I want you to stick to your own job, and not mix up in anything that doesn’t concern you. There will be nothing to distract you. McKildrick writes me that in Porto Cabello there are no tea-houses, no roads for automobiles, and, except for the fire-flies, all the white lights go out at nine o’clock.
“Now, Roddy,” concluded Mr. Forrester warningly, “this is your chance, and it is the last chance for dinner in the dining-car, for you. If you fail the company, and by the company I mean myself, this time, you can ask Fred Sterry for a job on the waiters’ nine at Palm Beach.” ”

“ All the exiles from Venezuela wait over there until there is a revolution over here, and then they come across. You can’t tell me anything about Curaçao. I don’t have to go to a place to know about it.”
“I’ll bet,” challenged Peter, “you don’t know about the mother and the two daughters who were exiled from Venezuela and live in Curaçao, and who look over here every night at sunset?” ”

“ They were of all ages, from the boys who had never before looked through a transit except across the college campus, to sun-tanned, fever-haunted veterans who, for many years, had fought Nature where she was most stubborn, petulant and cruel. ”

“ Forrester that if the company hoped to obtain the money it had sunk in Venezuela it must finance a revolution, Mr. Forrester, without question, consented to the expense, and put it down under “Political.” Had Sam Caldwell shown him that what was needed was a construction-raft or a half-dozen giant steam-shovels, he would have furnished the money as readily and with as little curiosity.
Sam Caldwell, the third vice-president, was a very smart young man. Every one, even men much older than he, said as much, and no one was more sure of it than was Sam Caldwell himself. ”

“ When the people found out what a blackguard Alvarez is they begged Rojas to run for President against him, and Rojas promised that if, at the next election, the people still desired it, he would do as they wished. That night Alvarez hauled him out of bed and put him in there. He has been there two years. There are healthy prisons, but Alvarez put Rojas in this one, hoping it would kill him. He is afraid to murder him openly, because the people love him. When I first came here I went through the fortress with Vicenti, the prison doctor, on a sort of Seeing-Porto-Cabello trip. ”

“ And the mouse, happening to pass that way, gnawed and nibbled at the net, and gave the lion his life.
The morals are: that an appreciation of humor is a precious thing; that God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform, and that you never can tell. ”

“ There is a story that seems to illustrate how small this world is. In fact, this is the story.
General Don Miguel Rojas, who as a young man was called the Lion of Valencia, and who later had honorably served Venezuela as Minister of Foreign Affairs, as Secretary of War, as Minister to the Court of St. James and to the Republic of France, having reached the age of sixty found himself in a dungeon-cell underneath the fortress in the harbor of Porto Cabello. ”

“ It is an old trick, like killing a man in his cell and giving out that he committed suicide. The first thing Rojas will ask us is, who sends us, and where are our credentials.”
“I guess he will take his chance,” said Peter. “He’ll see we are not Venezuelans.”
“That is the very thing that will make him refuse,” protested Roddy. “Why should he trust himself to strangers—to gringos? ”

“ Roddy, delighted at the change of subject, nodded.
“That ship,” continued his father, “is sailing to Venezuela, where we have a concession from the government to build breakwaters and buoy the harbors and put up light-houses. We have been working there for two years and we’ve spent about two million dollars. And some day we hope to get our money. Sometimes,” continued Mr. Forrester, “it is necessary to throw good money after bad. That is what we are doing in Venezuela.” ”

“ And the commandant told him not to meddle in affairs of state, that his orders from the President were that Rojas ‘must never again feel the heat of the sun.’”
Peter de Peyster exclaimed profanely. “Are there no men in this country?” he growled. “Why don’t his friends get him out?”
“They’d have to get themselves out first,” explained Roddy. “Alvarez made a clean sweep of it, even of his wife and his two daughters, the women you saw. He exiled them, and they went to Curaçao. They have plenty of money, and they could have lived in Paris or London. ”

“ It barks like a machine gun.”
“My idea was,” explained Roddy, “that we would row to the fortress. After we get the General on board, the more it sounds like a machine gun the better.”
Since their return in the launch, and during dinner, which had been served in the tiny patio under the stars, the White Mice had been discussing ways and means. A hundred plans had been proposed, criticised, rejected; but by one in the morning, when the candles were guttering in the harbor breeze and the Scotch whiskey had shrunk several inches, the conspirators found themselves agreed. ”

“ Finding no one else, he blamed Roddy. The interview took place on the twenty-seventh story of the Forrester Building, in a room that overlooked the Brooklyn Bridge.
“You didn’t fall down on the job,” the fond parent was carefully explaining, “because you never were on the job. You didn’t even start. It was thoughtful of you to bring back kimonos to mother and the girls. But the one you brought me does not entirely compensate me for the ninety thousand dollars you didn’t bring back. ”

“ And—I will be Mos’ Exalted Secret White Mouse.”
When he returned to the ship Perry told the wardroom about it and laughed, and the wardroom laughed, and that night at the Grand Hotel, while the Japanese band played “Give My Regards to Broadway,” which Peter de Peyster told them was the American national anthem, the White Mice gave their first annual dinner. For, as the Orchid Hunter pointed out, in order to save life, one must sustain it. ”