When Andres issued from the counting-house of Palmacristi he was examining critically the trigger of a gun. That fine Winchester it was which had been the wonder and delight of the natives since the Se?or Don Juan Smit' had brought it down from the es-States. When the Se?or Silencio had asked the Se?or Don Juan Smit' if the gun would shoot straight, the Se?or Don Juan Smit' had laughed softly, and had answered, "Well, I guess!" and the Se?or Don Juan Smit' had not exaggerated.

"And El Rey?"

"El Rey will go with Andres, Se?or," answered the thin voice.

"The muchachito will do as he chooses, Se?or." The child was following close upon his father's steps.

"It is too far for him, Andres. Stay with me, El Rey."

The child looked wistfully up at Andres.

"Andres will carry El Rey. Perhaps we shall find Roseta at the place where Andres goes to shoot."

[Pg 140]

"I will carry him, Se?or. His weight is nothing. Dear God! nothing!"

Andres swung the child up to his hip, where he sat astride, securely held by Andres's strong arm, and descended the veranda steps.

"Come and tell me when it is done," Silencio called after them.

"Si, Se?or. Buen' noch', Se?or."

"Buen' noch', Se?or," echoed El Rey's piping voice.

"Here, Andres." From his height on the veranda floor Don Gil tossed a key to Andres. "Open the boat-house, and run the boat out upon the southern ways. The southern ways, do you hear? Those nearest the Port of Entry."

Andres looked up wonderingly.

"Ah! you are trying to think. Do not try. It is useless. Obey! that is all."

Blindly faithful, Andres, having caught the key, turned away with an "As the Se?or says," and disappeared down the camino which led toward the ocean cliff.

When he reached the headland of Palmacristi he suddenly diverged from the cliff path and ran hurriedly down the bank. The boat-house stood upon a safe eminence in the middle of the sand spit, with ways running down to the water on either side. Andres set El Rey down in the warm sand, and[Pg 141] unlocked the boat-house door. He then pushed the boat to the end of the ways. The tide was still falling; it was nearly low water. He laid the oars ready; then he arose and looked southward along the coast. Ah! There shone the signal upon Los Santos headland. Old Gremo was at his post, then. Andres raised his shoulders to his ears, turned the palms of his hands outward, and said:

"Thy labour is of no use to-night, Gremo." He then took El Rey up from his nest in the warm sand, swung the child again to his hip, and remounting the bank, proceeded on his way.

So soon as Andres had departed Don Gil entered the comidor, and going to the table, struck a bell hanging above it. Jorge Toleto lounged to the doorway, against the side of which he propped himself.

"Tell Piomba to go over to the bodega at once, and ask the padre to dine with me this evening. Piomba has little time. Tell him to be off at once."

Jorge Toleto shuffled away, with the remnant of what in his youth had been a respectful bow. When he was gone Don Gil crossed the living-room, passed through two long passages, and entered a door at the end of the second. Here was a sort of general storeroom. When he emerged he carried in one hand a lantern, in the other he held a flat[Pg 142] parcel. "A new lantern will burn more brightly," he said to himself.

It was growing dusk now. Don Gil descended the veranda stair and followed in the footsteps of Andres. As he crossed the rough grass beyond the veranda, old Guillermina espied him from a further window. She was engaged in opening the Se?or's bed for the night, searching among the snowy linen to make sure, before tucking the rose-coloured netting beneath the mattress, that no black spider had hidden itself away, to prove later an unwelcome bedfellow to her adored Don Gil. For your tarantula will ensconce itself in unexpected corners at times, and is at the best not quite a desirable sleepmate.

"And for the love of the saints, where is our Don Gil departing to at this hour of the night? The dinner nearly ready, old Otivo watching the san coch' to see that it does not burn! The table laid, everything fine enough for a meal for the holy apostles! Aie! aie! for our Don Gil is one who will have it as fine for himself as for the alcade, when—pouff! off he goes, and we breaking our hearts while we wait. Ay de mi! ay de mi!"

The Se?or, unconscious that he had been observed, passed hurriedly along the camino, and shortly struck into the little path or sendica which Andres had traversed but a short time before. As[Pg 143] Don Gil glanced over the cliff, he saw that the sea was still; almost calm. Even the usual ocean swell seemed but a wavelet, as it reached weakly up the beach, expending itself in a tiny whirl of pebbles and foam whose force was nil, and lapsed in a retreat more exhausted than its oncoming.

A walk of ten minutes brought Silencio to the headland which bounded his property on the south. It was growing so dark that he could hardly distinguish the staff upon which it had been Andres's custom to hang each night his lanterna de se?ales, to send forth its white beam of cheer across the sea. When, after passing the red light of Los Santos Head, the pilot steered for the open ocean, the remark to the captain was always the same stereotyped phrase:

"Ah! There is the Palmacristi lantern bidding us Godspeed."

It is a sad thing when the habit of years must be changed. When a custom, fixed as the laws of the Medes, must be broken, chaos is often the result. Thus thought Silencio, as he reached the foot of the asta. It is, however, not necessary to say that his hand was not retarded by the thought. He groped for the cords which dangled from the top, and found them. He lighted a fusee and searched for and found the red slide, which he had laid on the ground. This was all that he wanted. By[Pg 144] feeling, almost entirely, he removed the white pane from the lantern and replaced it by the red one, which he took from its wrapping. He then lighted the lantern, passed the cords through the metal hasps, and drew the signal to the top of the staff. The cords were so arranged as to permit of no swaying of the lantern. The light was fixed, and now from the top of the staff a red beam shone southward.

When Don Gil mounted the steps of his veranda at Palmacristi a tall, thin figure arose to greet him.

"Ah, padre, I am glad that Piomba succeeded in finding you. My dinners are lonely ones."

The padre laughed in the cracked voice of an old man.

"Better is the stalled ox where love is, than a dinner of herbs and poverty therewith."

"Just enough learning to misquote," quoted Don Gil, laughing also, but in a preoccupied manner.

"Perhaps it would be better to say 'just enough appetite.' My dinners are bad enough, since Plumero left me."

"Better to have him leave you, even if under a guard of soldiers, padre, than to let him put you where you can eat no more dinners. What was that, padre? Did you hear anything?"

"Nothing, my boy, but Jorge Toleto calling us to dinner. The willing ear, you know."

[Pg 145]

Don Gil ushered the old man into the comidor. His tall figure was bent and thin. The shabby black coat, whose seams shone with a generation's wear, flapped its tails about the legs of his scant white trousers. The good priest's figure was one in which absurdity and dignity were inextricably combined. The padre showed his years. He had never quite recovered from the attack made upon him by his trusted servant Plumero, the Good—Plumero, who now languished in the cep' over at Saltona.

The savory meal was ended. The night was warm and close.

"Let us sit upon the veranda and enjoy our cigarillos, padre."

Silencio seemed unlike himself. He was nervous, ill at ease. He had no sooner seated himself than he arose and paced the long veranda, the spark of his cigarette, only, showing his whereabouts. He looked often out to sea, and often in the direction of the lanterna de se?ales, whose ray was hidden from sight by the near hill.

"Do you hear anything, padre? Anything like a cry or a—"

"No, nothing! my boy. And as I was saying, there was my poor fighting cock lying in the corner, worse maltreated than he had ever been in any garito, and when I awoke—"

[Pg 146]

"That was certainly a gun. You are not rising to leave, padre; why, your cigarillo is not even half finished. I expect you to stay the night. No, no! I will take no denial. Guillermina, prepare the western room for the Padre Martinez."

"You know my weaknesses, muchacho mio. Very well, then, I will." But Silencio was down the steps and some feet away in the darkness, straining his ear for the sound which he knew must come. He took out his watch, and by the light of the veranda lantern noted the time. "Early yet," he muttered under his breath.

"Pardon, my son, you spoke to—"

"I was but saying that the moon is very late to—hark!"

"You are restless, Gil."

"It is this muggy weather. There! you certainly heard something?"

"Nothing, Gil; nothing but the nightingale yonder."

A cuculla flew into the padre's face. He brushed it gently away. It returned to wander over the long wisps of grey hair which straggled over the collar of the hot, dignified coat. The padre took the cuculla in his fingers, and placed it gently upon the leaves of the bougainvillia vine.

"I certainly think that the sweetest songsters I ever heard are the nightingales in this enclosure."

[Pg 147]

A footstep sounded on the graveled pathway which ran close to the veranda.

"Buen' noch', Se?or."

Silencio started nervously.

"Ah! It is you, Andres? Buenas noches." Silencio raised his hand with a warning gesture. Andres's stolid face expressed as stolid acquiescence.

"Buen' noch', Se?or. We did not find her at the asta de lanterna, Se?or."

"Andres, take the child home; he is weary."

The tone was curt, unlike the kindly Don Gil. It was as if he had laid his hands on Andres's shoulders and were pushing him along.

"I should like to remain here, Se?or. Perhaps she may come to-night. Who knows? Perhaps the good God will send her. He knows that I—cannot—bear—it, I can not bear—" The child's voice broke in a sob.

Silencio's kindly nature was touched. "Take him round to Guillermina, Andres, and get dinner; both of you."

The two disappeared in the darkness.

Then Piombo brought a flaring Eastern lamp, at which Don Gil relighted his often extinguished cigarette.

"How still the night! How far a sound would carry on a night like this." The padre had but[Pg 148] just uttered these words when a long, booming sound struck upon the listening as well as the unexpectant ear.

Silencio bounded from his chair. He caught up a cloak which was lying conveniently ready.

"A steamer ashore!" he shouted. The old padre struggled to his feet. "Do not come. Go round to the quarters. Send the men to help. It must be at the sand spit. Follow me to the headland," and he was gone in the darkness. The padre wondered somewhat at Silencio's suspecting at once the locality of the stranded steamer, if that were the cause of the gun of distress. As he wondered, it spoke again, and gathering his wits together, he hastened round to the quarters.

Silencio bounded along the camino and up the cliff pathway. His feet seemed winged. The familiar local knowledge of childhood stood him in good stead at this crucial moment. He reached the staff. It was short work to release the cord and lower the lantern, extinguish the light, replace the red slide with a white one, and hoist the darkened signal in place again. Then he turned and ran quickly down the sandy bank.

"Now the light has simply gone out," he said to himself as he ran. His boat was where Andres had left it, the rising water making it just awash. A glance seaward showed to Silencio a steamer's[Pg 149] lights. There came to him across the water bewildered shouts, the sounds of running feet, and evidences of confusion. He pushed his boat into the water, and bent to the oars. The steamer was, at the most, not more than a quarter of a mile distant. He pulled with desperation. He heard the sound of the foam as the propeller turned over, and he feared that with every revolution the vessel would back off into deep water. When he rowed alongside he was not noticed in the dark and confusion of the moment. He held his long painter in his hand, and as he climbed up over some convenient projections of............