The letter had been written in England, of which the Captain was already weary.  He must have more space about, he confessed; and although he did not intend to break his pledge on the matter of navigating, he was soon to book a passage for the Americas.  He imagined there was the proper sort of island for him somewhere in those waters.  He had always had a weakness for “natives and hot weather.”  Bedient was asked to make his need known in any case of misfortune or extremity.  This was the point of the first letter, and of all the letters....

At length Captain Carreras settled in Equatoria, a big island well out of travel-lines in the Caribbean.  The second and third letters made it even plainer that the old heart valves ached for the young man’s coming.  A mysterious binding of the two seems to have taken place in the months preceding the day of the great wind; and in that instant of stress and fury the Captain realized his supreme human relationship.  It grew strong as only can a bachelor’s love for a man.  Indeed, Carreras was probably the first to discover in Andrew Bedient a something different, which Bedient himself was yet far from realizing....  The latter wished that the letters from the West Indies would not always revert to the strength of his hands.  It brought up a memory of the despoiled face of the Chinese with the knife, and of the inert figure afterward on the planking....  Bedient knew that sometime he would go to find his friend.

Three years after the great wind, the excitement in Manila called Bedient across the China Sea.  There had been a coup of the American fleet, and soldiers from the States were on the way to the Islands....  In the following weeks, there was much to do and observe around that low large city of Luzon, the lights of which Andrew had seen many times at night from the harbor and the passage—­lights which seemed to lie upon still waters.  When Pack-train Thirteen finally took the field from the big corral, to carry grub and ammunition to the moving forces and the few outstanding garrisons, Bedient had already been tried out and found excellent as cook of the outfit.

It is to be doubted if history furnishes a more picturesque service than that which fell to Luzon pack-trains throughout the following two years.  It was like Indian fighting, but more compact, rapid and surprising.  The actions were small enough to be seen entire; they fell clean-cut into pictures and were instantly comprehensive.  As the typhoon confirmed Carreras, this Luzon service brought to Bedient an important relation—­his first real friendship with a boy of his own age.