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It proved its worth some six days later when, close on the San Francisco-Montevideo mail line, they flagged a big freighter and got provisions enough to last them for a month, then, “more feeling than feet under them,” to use Harman’s expression, they pushed along, protected by the gods of Marco Polo, and the early navigators, untrusting in a compass that might be untrustable through blazing days and nights of stars, smoking—they had got tobacco from the freighter—yarning, lazing and putting their faith in luck.

“Anyhow,” said the philosophic Harman, “we ain’t got no dam chronometer to be slippin’ cogs or goin’ wrong, nor no glass to be floppin’ about and frightenin’ a chap’s gizzard out of him with indications of cyclones and such, nor no charts to be thumbin’, nor no sextan’ to be squintin’ at the sun with. I tell you, Bud, I ain’t never felt freer than this. I reckon it’s the same with money. Come to think of it, money’s no catch, when all’s said and done with, what between banks bustin’ and sharks laying for a chap, not to speak of women and sich, and sore heads an’ brown tongues in the morning. Money buys trouble, that’s all I’ve ever seen of it, and it’s the same all through.”