CHAPTER IX.
A SUPPER PARTY.
I shall never forget that supper as long as I live.

Considered merely as a social gathering it would be memorable enough, for I never before or since sat at meat with ten such queer customers as my hosts of that evening.

The officers of the Aureataland Army were a very mixed lot--two or three Spanish-Americans, three or four Brazilians, and the balance Americans of the type their countrymen are least proud of.

If there was an honest man among them he sedulously concealed his title to distinction; I know there wasn't a sober one.

The amount of liquor consumed was portentous; and I gloated with an unholy joy as I saw man after man rapidly making himself what diplomatists call a _quantite negligeable_.