But this story isn't about me: it concerns Foe and Farrell:
and therefore it's enough to say here, that I reached Valparaiso and
found Captain Jeff Hales waiting for me with his schooner fresh from
dock, and fleet: that he and I took to one another in the inside of
ten minutes; that our voyage, first and last, went like a yachting
cruise; that we made the island and spent something more than two
months on it, prospecting, mapping, choosing the sites for our
factories that were to be, even planning a light tramway to cart
their produce down to the grand north-eastern bay which (as Foe had
warned me) proved to be the only anchorage. But Santa's cross was
there, standing yet on the small beach where the castaways had
landed, and no doubt it stands yet. No storm ever seriously troubles
the water within that lovely protected hollow.
Returning to Valparaiso, I travelled north by steamer, by rail, by
steamer and rail again, to New York, hunted up Renton, and found that
my luck held; that I was dealing with a man as honest as Hales and
keen as either of us. With half a dozen cable messages, to and from
Farrell in London, we had everything fixed, and our company as good
as a going concern, when the Chilian Government interposed a long,
vexatious delay which, at one point, appeared to hint at an intention
to repudiate the bargain.
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