Brandon of the Engineers

"Then he's lodging in this street," he said.

"That's what they told me at the wine-shop. He had to quit the last place

because he couldn't pay."

"Wasn't he with Oliva?" Dick inquired.

"He was, but Oliva turned him down. I allow it was all right to fire him,

but he's surely up against it now."

Dick put his hand in his pocket. "If you find him, you might let me know.

In the meantime, here's five dollars----"

"Hold on!" said Kemp. "Don't take out your wallet here. I'll fix the

thing, and ask for the money when I get back."

Dick left him, and when he had transacted his business returned to the

dam. An hour or two later Kemp arrived and stated that he had not

succeeded in finding Payne. The man had left the squalid room he occupied

and nobody knew where he had gone.

During the next week Dick had again occasion to visit the harbor, and

while he waited on the mole for a boat watched a gang of peons unloading

some fertilizer from a barge. It was hard and unpleasant work, for the

stuff, which had a rank smell, escaped from the bags and covered the

perspiring men. The dust stuck to their hot faces, almost hiding their

color; but one, though equally dirty, looked different from the rest, and

Dick, noting that he only used his left arm, drew nearer. As he did so,

the man walked up the steep plank from the lighter with a bag upon his

back and staggering across the mole dropped it with a gasp. His heaving

chest and set face showed what the effort had cost, and the smell of the

fertilizer hung about his ragged clothes. Dick saw that it was Payne and

that the fellow knew him.

"You have got a rough job," he remarked. "Can't you find something

better?"

"Nope," said the man grimly. "Do you reckon I'd pack dirt with a crowd

like this if I could help it?"

Dick, who glanced at the lighter, where half-naked negroes and mulattos

were at work amid a cloud of nauseating dust, understood the social

degradation the other felt.

"What's the matter with your arm?" he asked.

Payne pulled up his torn sleeve and showed an inflamed and half-healed

wound.

"That! Got it nipped in a crane-wheel and it doesn't get much better.

Guess this dirt is poisonous. Anyway, it keeps me here. I've been trying

to make enough to buy a ticket to Jamaica, but can't work steady. As soon

as I've put up two or three dollars, I have to quit."

Dick could understand this. The man looked gaunt and ill and must have

been heavily handicapped by his injured arm. He did not seem anxious to

excite Dick's pity, though the latter did not think he cherished much

resentment.