Algernon Adonis Percival, civil and mining engineer, Cornell, had gone through certain rather harsh stages of development in the mines of Montana and later in the perilous districts of Northern Mexico.

A year or two prior to the breaking out of the great World War, he was sent to South America to replace the general superintendent of a new copper-mining enterprise in a remote section of the Andes, on the Bolivian side of the mountains.

Here he was in charge of the heterogeneous horde of miners, labourers, structural workers and assayists who were engaged in the development and extension of the vast concession controlled by his company.
His description of the camp or town in which this motley assemblage dwelt from one year's end to the other, far from civilization, was illuminating to the two sea-faring men.

It must be confessed, however, that a sound reluctance to swallow the tale without the proverbial grain of salt caused them to watch closely for the slightest sign that might reveal to them the always-to-be expected and seldom successful duplicity so common in those harrowing days when all men were objects of suspicion.

From time to time they glanced inquiringly at each other, but the stranger's story was so straightforward, so lacking in personal exploitation, so free from unnecessary detail, that they were finally convinced that he was all that he represented himself to be and that they had nothing to fear from him.
His long, hazardous journey by horse through the passes down into the forests and jungles, out upon the endless, sparsely settled pampas, and eventually into the remote village that witnessed the passing every second day of a primitive and far from dependable railway train, was presented with agreeable simplicity and conciseness.