“Do you remember what started the revolution down in Honduras the second week after we struck Puerto Barrios, Greggy?  It was a girl, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and she wasn’t half pretty at that.”

“It was less than a girl,” went on Philip.  “Scene:  the palm plaza at Ceiba.  President Belize is drinking wine with his cousin, the fiancee of General O’Kelly Bonilla, the half Irish, half Latin-American leader of his forces, and his warmest friend.  At a moment when their corner of the plaza is empty Belize helps himself to a cousinly kiss.  O’Kelly, unperceived, arrives in time to witness the act.  From that moment his friendship for Belize turns to hatred and jealousy.  Within three weeks he has started a revolution, beats the government forces at Ceiba, chases Belize from the capital, gets Nicaragua mixed up in the trouble, and draws three French, two German, and two American war-ships to the scene.  Six weeks after the wine-drinking he is President of the Republic, en facto.  And all of this, Greggy, because of a kiss.  Now, if a kiss can start a revolution, unseat a President, send a government to smash, what must be the possibilities of a fish?”

“I’m getting interested,” said Gregson.  “If there’s a climax, come to it, Phil.  I admit that there must be enormous possibilities in —­a fish.  Go on!”

II

For a moment the two men stood in silence, listening to the sullen beat of surf beyond the black edge of forest.  Then Philip led the way back into the cabin.

Gregson followed.  In the light of the big oil-lamp which hung suspended from the ceiling he noticed something in Whittemore’s face he had not observed before, a tenseness about the muscles of his mouth, a restlessness in his eyes, rigidity of jaw, an air of suppressed emotion which puzzled him.  He was keenly observant of details, and knew that these things had been missing a short time before.  The pleasure of their meeting that afternoon, after a separation of nearly two years, had dispelled for a time the trouble which he now saw revealing itself in his companion’s face and attitude, and the lightness of Whittemore’s manner in beginning his explanation for inducing him to come into the north had helped to complete the mask.  There occurred to him, for an instant, a picture which he had once drawn of Whittemore as he had known him in certain stirring times still fresh in the memory of each—­a picture of the old, cool, irresistible Whittemore, smiling in the face of danger, laughing outright at perplexities, always ready to fight with a good-natured word on his lips.  He had drawn that picture for Burke’s, and had called it “The Fighter.”  Burke himself had criticized it because of the smile.  But Gregson knew his man.  It was Whittemore.

There was a change now.  He had grown older, surprisingly older.  There were deeper lines about his eyes.  His face was thinner.  He saw, now, that Philip’s lightness had been but a passing flash of his old buoyancy, that the old life and sparkle had gone from him.  Two years, he judged, had woven things into Philip’s life which he could not understand, and he wondered if this was why in all that time he had received no word from his old college chum.