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Title:      Anthony Adverse (1933)
            (In 3 volumes - Volume 2)
Author:     Hervey Allen
eBook No.:  0200541bh.html
Language:   English
Date first posted:          August 2002
Date most recently updated: August 2002

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Anthony Adverse (1933)
            (In 3 volumes - Volume 2)
Author:     Hervey Allen

ANTHONY ADVERSE

by

HERVEY ALLEN

1933

VOLUME TWO

THE OTHER BRONZE BOY

VOLUME TWO

THE OTHER BRONZE BOY

In Which Several Images Travel Together

THE TABLE OF THE SUN

That great continental knee that curves southward to thrust the leg of Europe into the boot of Italy also encloses its gulf with a twinkling garter of mountains. These are not always clearly to be seen, but once glimpsed are provocative beyond most vistas, even if the traveller is an experienced one. In winter and other doubtful seasons the gulf hides itself in rain, or mists which sweep down like the swirling skirts of cosmic dancers from the slopes of the Maritime Alps.

But in early summer before a sirocco blows it is quite another thing. Then the sky over the gulf is turquoise, and the Mediterranean Homeric blue. By night the planets appear to lower themselves and burn nearer to the earth, and the stars to march higher as they do in tropic latitudes. Dawn comes from Italy, and if you are so lucky or so wise as to be on deck at that early hour, you need have no fear of an anticlimax in your destination, for before you lies Genoa rising unbelievable, white marble terrace above white marble; red tiles, churches, towers, villas, orchards, and castles ringed in by a noble amphitheatre of hills.

It was thus that Anthony Adverse first beheld it from the deck of the Wampanoag one summer morning while the ship's cutwater slipped contentedly through the untroubled seas. Never since his first bright sight of the world from the top of the tree at the convent had he seen anything quite so beautiful. Something of that first, fresh exaltation now returned to him as he leaned over the rail, gazing his eyes full.

They were tacking in slowly against a land breeze, now on a wide reach to port and now close hauled to windward, while the crew slowly took in sail. The sweet, heavy scent of orange groves and the intangible coolness of jasmine and new-mown grass rolled to him across the water. Only now, after nearly an hour of light, the olive orchards were beginning to stand out greyly amid the brighter green of the pink-topped oleanders.

The light widened and the sea grew bluer. Just a few minutes before it had been dark violet. How could he ever sleep; miss a moment of it? Why did men have to die and leave a world like this? Life could not be long enough on a star so beautiful. He wondered if Captain Jorham, who was at the wheel while the steersman helped take in sail, saw or felt anything similar. Philadelphia called them below to breakfast.

Anthony had slept like a child every night since leaving Livorno. His senses were keen, yet soothed and washed limpid by the clear sea air. There was a tang and a zest about everything--about the movements of his arms, of his hands and fingers. He could feel the most delicate surface texture of things. In the quiet ship he could hear the slightest sound. Captain Jorham looked at him and grinned.

"Feelin' pretty keen, eh? I used ter myself. Glad to get away?" Anthony had to admit that he was. All the little objects of furniture, houses; people that had annoyed him; the pain of familiarity with a thousand things that he wished instinctively to avoid but that had possessed some irksome claim upon him had vanished. He was no longer accountable to them. He need be sorry for nothing. Just now he was too happy to regret even those he loved--had loved! What a magical thing was this, the mere transporting of the body!

He within, he felt, remained the same. He himself had not moved. It was merely the outside world that had shifted. The encumbrances about him had vanished.

So he sat in the cabin that morning inhaling his coffee slowly, feeling the surprisingly healthy warmth of it, watching the green water slip by outside the porthole and enjoying one of the noblest of illusions immensely. Travel had set him free.

The blocks rattled on the deck as the ship came about again. Mrs. Jorham galvanized by the smell of coffee opened her panel and thrust her head, dressed in brown curl-papers and a night-cap, through the narrow aperture. Captain Jorham, seating himself upon the chest marked "Jane," began to feed his wife biscuits and bacon. From the biscuits from time to time he gallantly knocked out the weevils. It was a sign that he was in the best of good humour.

"'Strordinary female bird walled in," thought Anthony.

The lips of Mrs. Jorham pointed, came out of the slot, and surreptitiously pecked her husband on his leather cheek. Then she looked at Anthony and rearranged her cap. Properly embarrassed by such intimate domestic details and endearments before a stranger, she smiled, pecked her husband once again, and closed the panel with an overpowering air of virtue and dignity. Throughout the entire meal her manner had been that of a lady-Putnam. That was it. She was not a toucan, she was a Putnam! Anthony saw that even on shipboard, in the intimate presence of strangers and of the ocean itself, Mrs. Jorham contrived to remain elegant and refined. It was a perfection which knocked out the weevils in their own dust. It was "Putnamism." Captain Jorham, who participated in it distantly by marriage, was proud of it, too. He set down the mess-kid in which only the wriggling weevils remained, triumphantly.

After Philadelphia cleared the board the captain took some papers from his desk and spreading them out on the table with a knowing air, dipped his pen, and beckoned to Anthony. As he sat down beside him he noticed that Captain Jorham not only reeked of tobacco but was also redolent of rum.

"Sign here," said the captain, without previous palaver.

Anthony leaned over the paper, which he found to be a roster of the crew. The captain's stubby finger pointed to the vacant line marked mate.

"Died o' smallpox at Lisbon," vouchsafed Captain Jorham.

But Anthony still hesitated with McNab's first lesson in mind.

"It's all fair and above board," continued Captain Jorham a little anxiously. "Didn't yer old man tell ye about it before ye left? He and I arranged it all before supper that night. Ye're to be carried as second mate. That'll keep the Frenchies from askin' any questions about ye at Genoway. I'll tell ye how it is. It's mighty ticklish work these days bein' a neutral and tryin' to make ports and pick up cargoes with the French lordin' it on land and the king's navee on the water. It all depends pretty much on what cargo ye carry. But if I can git a nice cargo of fryin' ile over to Havaner it'll sell high. That's what I'm pushin' into Genoway fer. There's a sight of it piled up there now. Cost nothin'! It's worth the chance. It would go plum against the grain to run empty to Havaner. I'm layin' to pick up some fine blocks of marble for ballast, tew. I expect even the British ul have a hard time calalatin' that as contraband. And the French 'll let us clear all right if we don't have English refugees aboard. Na-ow if ye just sign on as mate, between ye and me sort of ex-officio--no wages, of course,--ye can pass tolerable fer Yankee born. Better say Virginny, though. Your talk's a lot more like that. Ye don't use your nose proper to Bosting way. I'll tell ye another thing, tew, if the British board us at sea it may save yer bein' pressed, ye bein' a mate. Look here!"

He pointed out on the roll the names of six seamen with the notation, "Pressed at Sea off Ushant, February 6, 1796, by H. M. S. Ariadne."

"A fast frigate or she'd never have done it. Most chasers we just sink in the blue, but there's a few on 'em can overhaul us with a followin' wind. That leaves us six hands forward to git home on. Old 'uns all. That English snotty that boarded us did know how to pick his men. Even the babies now have practice in that, dang 'em! Still it ain't such a bad berth bein' a mate on board with a lady in the cabin."

More than convinced by this time Anthony signed. The captain looked pleased and relieved. He opened up "Elisha" and taking out a bottle poured out a double tot.

"Wall, mister," he said with a twinkle, "here's luck to ye, and a fast first run."

The panel opened slightly as the lady-Putnam sniffed through the orifice.

Anthony saw trouble come into the woman's eyes. Her mouth trembled a little, but she said nothing. At last with a look of unhappy resignation she closed herself in again.

The captain drew his hand across his mouth and went on deck. As the ship beat in toward the harbour he descended twice again for a spiritual interview with "Elisha." Before they passed the Molo Vecchio he was in a genially prophetic humour and moved with a superbly confident roll. It was in this semi-rapt condition that the skipper felt himself most able to cope with a bargaining world. "Well iled." But the precise amount of lubricant necessary to fill the Wampanoag with a profitable cargo was hard to gauge. There was one curious thing about it, however. Liquor had brought the captain luck. A cargo of parrots once proved remunerative beyond all sober expectation. He gave a slight hitch to his trousers.

"Goin' ashore, mister?" he asked with a grin. That a young gentleman like Anthony should be his mate tickled him immensely. In his present mood the joke seemed colossal. "Get yer togs on."

Anthony dived into his chest hastily to get his purse and coat. As he opened the chest for the first time since leaving, he found a letter addressed to him in the engraved strokes of Mr. Bonnyfeather. He opened it very impatiently now and read hastily. He reproached himself for this, but with the early morning noises of the new city coming through the port he could not control his impatience.

It was a prolix letter of instruction how to proceed about the collection of the debt. Mr. Bonnyfeather had apparently foreseen all possible contingencies. They were under nine heads. Bother! This could wait till Havana. How coldly it was written. The old man addressed him as if he were nothing but an agent. There were several enclosures, some drafts on Spanish bankers, and two other letters.

Il Signore Carlo Cibo, Regla, Habana, Cuba.

That could wait, too. How cramped the old man's signature was getting now. Well, his hand . . . Then his eyes fell on a postscript.

P. S. I have not cast this epistle in terms of affection lest I should have no eyes left to see with as I write it. Wherever you are when you read this, remember the hand of him who writ it is (as ever in the past) extended to you in blessing (and even from the grave). I have put this in your chest myself. Do you look under your great-coat for further remembrance, my son. Thine,

J. B.

He sat down on his bunk holding the letter which swam grey before him. How had it been possible for him to forget all past benefits in a few hours? He felt he should like to stab himself to make the hard heart in his breast capable of feeling as it should.

Yet, perhaps gratitude was like sorrow, you could not feel it all at once or it would overwhelm you. He looked at the open chest. He could see the madonna wrapped up there in something that made her look like a mummy. Preserved, eh? So the past was still with him. But he would not disturb her now. And he would look under the great-coat later on. He could not bear to receive anything more from that hand "extended even from the . . ." Oh, for just one day without any past behind it and no future before! The old man must still be well in Livorno.

Livorno? Where was that? Was there such a place? It was the noise and smell of Genoa that were coming in through the port.

He roused himself. In order to act it would be necessary to shake off the past, to remember it only in its proper place. Be grateful, yes! But not now, not this morning--in Genoa. He closed the lid of the chest with a bang right on the nose of the madonna and all the rest.

But he had forgotten his purse. He had to open the chest again for that. As he put back Mr. Bonnyfeather's letter which he had unconsciously clutched in one hand all the while, the other enclosure fell out before him.

To the Reverend Father Claude Aquaviva Xavier, S. J.
At the Palazzo Brignole, Genoa.

A. A., Deliver this in person. 'Tis the old summer school of the Jesuits in the suburb Albaro. Fail not in this if time permit.

So Father Xavier was in Genoa! Here was the past with a vengeance. How long it had been since he had thought of him! He had sent him his last childish letter to Naples years ago, and he had not answered the last from the priest. Meant to, of course. Naples? These priests of the suppressed Jesuits moved about now from pillar to post. Probably Father Xavier had had no easy time of it. His heart smote him. He might have written him. But it was just after Faith . . . damn it all! How much there was in that chest! Well, he would try to see him. The direction was in Mr. Bonnyfeather's hand, his last request as it were. This time he closed the chest deliberately and locked it, clapped on his hat and went on deck. Captain Jorham eyed him.

"It ain't sea-vility for the mate to keep the captain waitin', mister," he said as they stepped into the boat.

Philadelphia, grinning and sweating, rowed them through the crowded shipping of the old semi-circular harbour. Looking up, Anthony saw the tricolour waving on the massive Fortress of Sperone towering above them on Monte Peraldo. Bugle calls floated down faintly. Here and there along the miles of walls inland the sun glinted on cannon or flashed on bayonets. All the churches were built of black and white marble. There seemed to be any number of their striped façades and towers.

They landed at the Porta Lanterna and it was four mortal hours before the French officers in charge of the port were finished examining papers and quizzing Anthony who had to translate for the captain.

It was not easy to convince the military authorities that a neutral ship was not a legitimate prize of war. They rowed out and made sure she was empty. But they looked disappointed. Captain Jorham had cause to be grateful for his "mate." Finally with his papers reluctantly signed permitting him to purchase "ship's stores, olive-oil, marble, and statuary," he was allowed to go.

"Stat-uary," rumbled the captain, "statoo-ary?"

Anthony laughed. The French had been slow to understand about the marble blocks for ballast. Statuary was made out of marble, marble was statuary. Meldrun! let them buy them both, neither was contraband. The captain kept looking at the document.

"By God, mister, I got an idear!" he suddenly roared.

It was some minutes before Anthony's back stopped stinging between the shoulders as they walked along.

Genoa was a welter of small, crooked streets with narrow, high houses, hunchbacked, twisted, and set at all angles. A perpetual dank shadow lived here as if at the bottom of an old well. Even the stones seemed to be rotten. An odour as of old cheese wrapped in a goatskin weighed on the senses.

The streets swarmed with half-naked urchins, women with baskets of fish or equally redolent dirty clothes on their heads. Soldiers slouched by on unmilitary errands, and every fifth or sixth person was a dark, scurvy-looking priest with a sallow, grimy countenance. Here, about the Porto Franco, where their errands lay that morning, Anthony could scarcely believe that he was really within the walls of the noble city set in green hills that he had seen from the ship.

They passed under endless arcades where the plaster walls had turned black with ages of grime. Festering piles of rubbish and garbage, rag piles, and unspeakable refuse piled against the walls. Yet between the outward-facing arches along the curb the merchants of macaroni and polenta kept their stalls, especially where the sword-like streaks of sunlight descended upon their heads.

The quantity of oil which the captain desired seemed unheard of. Even with his new mate to do the talking, the bargaining took them well past noon. The Ligurian dialects were often difficult, and the Genoese laughed at Anthony's Tuscan. When at last all was completed it took another hour or two to assemble carts to haul the jars to the quay. Captain Jorham was too wise to take his eyes off his purchases for a minute, or to pay until the last jar wrapped in straw ropes was safely deposited in the official confines of the Porto Franco. Then he was forced to see that the custom officials there had good cause to remember him.

But even at that the captain could rub his hands with satisfaction. Since the French had come, trade in Genoa was at a standstill. For that reason he was able to purchase supplies and provisions for the voyage at less than cost. His eyes sparkled, and to Anthony's alarm he showed some signs of being about to clap his newly acquired mate on the back for the second time that day.

Under ordinary circumstances Captain Elisha would have now returned to the ship to take his grub and save his pennies, but the liquor he had taken that morning was already dying out in him by noon. And he had secretly embarked on a long sipping wassail which engaged him for about four months every three years, when he began to hear the stealthy approach of certain footsteps overtaking him out of the past. It was his peculiar habit during the approach of the shadow feet, to mix wine with rum and porter into a potion known as "A Dog's Nose" for the reason that there are no whiskers on it and it drips. Rum and porter he had, but little or no wine.

Also he desired to purchase marble for ballast and to sell that usually unprofitable item at Havana for tombstones. It could be replaced there by ordinary stones, said to be abundant in Cuba. As a cautious measure he desired holes to be drilled in those marble blocks to secure them when once aboard. Then he was pleased with his "mate" for slinging the lingo so well. He intended to use such abilities further.

For above all there was the great "idear."

This was nothing less than to take full advantage of the permission to purchase statuary, so accidentally conferred upon him that morning, and to fill the vacant bunks in the fo'c'sle of the Wampanoag with "idols," to wit: various examples of life-size ecclesiastical statuary, saints, madonnas, and bambinos manufactured at Genoa in vast quantities cheaply, and hence doubtless salable at substantial profit to the less-artistic faithful in Havana. Indeed, the churches in Cuba, as Captain Elisha assured himself, although his data was based on only a few visits of irreverent curiosity, were lamentably bare of "idols." Some Protestant qualms assailed him, but the idea he felt was truly inspired.

Standing on a sunny corner he mopped his brow with a green duster while all this passed rapidly and somewhat confusedly through his troubled old mind. He was hungry, likewise he was very thirsty. Mrs. Jorham was safely "on board." Well, he would get her a present. He would get himself plenty of wine, see the ta-own and make his macaroni mate do the talking.

"Come on, mister, let's find victuals and drink. Lead the way. Captain's and owner's charges."

Anthony was willing. He had been afraid they would go back to the ship. Now he might be able to get time off to see the town--and Father Xavier.

He hailed a French officer passing across the way, an amiable fellow, who led them gayly along a decent, little side street under wrought-iron balconies into a trellised courtyard covered by one huge vine. A party of French officers sat at a big stone table in the centre, their sabretaches, swords and sashes heaped up like tangled trophies on the stone benches. There was a litter of bottles, half-devoured salads, cheeses, loaves, and the remnant of a fine ham garnished with cloves on the wine-stained table-cloth. Corks popped and flew about with oaths. They raised a shout when their comrade appeared. Captain Elisha's eyes brightened. He sensed distraction.

He and Anthony sat down in a corner. A woman with a red petticoat flapping about her bare calves came and placed a small wooden table before them. On this she set a bowl of grape vinegar, a dish of fresh young garlic, salt and a brown loaf.

"Onions," remarked Captain Jorham, "are a sovran remedy for scurvy."

He forthwith fell to and proceeded to eat the entire bowl of garlic, dipping each pearl-like bulb in the vinegar, sprinkling a little salt on it, and then plumping it into his mouth where it disappeared slowly, wagging its green tail nearly to the end. But just before the end, each tail was bitten off at precisely the same distance and spat out upon the floor. After the "onions" he inserted a piece of bran bread off the edge of his knife and rammed it home as if to keep the bullets in place. He looked about him complacently and noted that he was sitting in the centre of a demi-lune of tender garlic tips all pointing outward. He counted them; one to forty-three.

"Scurvy's an awful thing if it gets to you," he said, "makes your fangs loosen." He spat experimentally through his own front teeth again. They were firm. Still he looked a little uneasy about something.

"Liquor, mister," he said, "somethin' hot and stirrin'! I feel them onions prominent in my midst. Ugh! that's better!" The captain plugged with his spoon thoughtfully. "I heard of a schooner from Bermudy what started oncet with a cargo of cedar casks and onions for the whalin' grounds off the South-Shetlands. Them onions was sealed in they casks to keep. That was where trouble started. Afore that ship reached Jamaiky the casks swelled up like a cargo o' newfangled French balloons. Onion gas! The ship went skiddin' along on her side. They couldn't tack her. They had to stave in them casks or they'd a floated clear o' the water and made leeway clear to Afriky. Well, sir, I'm beginnin' to feel like that schooner now. Whiroosh!"

One of the French officers, a man with a long, red beard smeared with salad oil and particles of cheese, looked at him in disgust.

"I'm floatin'," said Captain Elisha, "I'm risin' like bakers' bread. I'm like a bloater when he's tickled, a dead cachalot in the sun. Nothin' but strong cordial will belay it." He reached for the vinegar. Anthony stopped him alarmed. Just then the woman returned with a jug and a large smoking dish. Captain Elisha applied himself to the jug. His throat rippled.

"Coolin'," he said, "but nigh as sour as vinegar." He put it down. Anthony tasted the wine. It was Lachryma Christi. His teeth went on edge. He ordered the sweetest thing available, Mountain-Malaga. The captain gulped a glass of it. He still rumbled but looked more comfortable.

"That's the antidote, mister, now let's sample the grub. I'm blown up fer full capacity."

It was a large basin of rice and boiled chicken. They polished this off between them. It was enough for Anthony. He ordered some muscat of which he was very fond. The captain was captivated with it. After two bottles he looked around on a new world. The "onions" were hopelessly buried.

"Na-ow I allow I'm beginnin' to be hungry." He looked at the empty dish regretfully and at his mate expectantly. Anthony called the woman and ordered further refreshment. Having now some gauge upon the captain's capacity and being enthusiastic with burgundy himself, he commanded a feast.

The captain cut himself a large quid of tobacco, which he stuffed into a round place in his cheek, while he continued to look on approvingly. The woman somewhat awed departed. They heard her giving excited directions in the kitchen. Meanwhile the captain extracted what solace he could from the tobacco, evolving in the process great quantities of saliva. Presently he had attracted the notice of the party of French officers who began to bet on his aim.

At some distance on the pavement before Captain Jorham a small lizard was basking innocently in the sun. The captain's front teeth were bared from time to time and immediately afterward the universe of the lizard dissolved in brown juice. It moved each time like a flash. The eye could not follow it. At a distance of about four feet nearer the wall, and farther away from the captain, another and browner lizard seemed to appear. It was about twenty feet to the wall.

The bets began to become interesting. At each saurian remove the stakes became higher and the odds against the captain rose. But the major with the red beard and salad oil, looking at the mahogany tinge of the captain's teeth, bet a meagre fortune upon him. The major was an artilleryman. Two more shifts of the devastated lizard confirmed the major's faith touchingly. He now staked his watch and placed it on the table. The trajectory he hastily calculated was then about four and a half metres, allowing for the curve of the parabola. It was a long chance. But the captain fetched the lizard. The unfortunate, and by now suspicious, animal paused once more, but this time near a hole in the wall. Whatever happened it had only two inches to flinch, and it was now nearly twenty feet away from the captain. The latter ruminated slowly, accumulating ammunition with a lacklustre look. The stakes were by this time reckless even from a military standpoint. Captain Elisha straightened himself, every eye upon him. Suddenly the lizard was washed into its hole. A yellow rainbow had collapsed accurately upon it.

The consequent enthusiasm was loud and prolonged. The major, who had won a month's pay, insisted that the captain should join him and his companions in celebrating so remarkable an event. The artillery, he maintained, had been gloriously upheld. Anthony participated in the reflected glory. The whole party gathered about the big stone table while Anthony translated for the captain the round of congratulatory toasts that followed. Outwardly unperturbed but inwardly ravished, Captain Jorham sat grey and bleak as Plymouth Rock in a gale of laughter. Nevertheless he was adequate to the international occasion.

"Confusion to the British."

The table roared back at him with delight. The major would have embraced him but even Captain Jorham renigged at the salad oil beard. Instantly he was more popular with the others, captains and lieutenants who had only moustaches. In the offing much more food now appeared. The captain resumed his seat and began to feed. Between dishes they plied him with wine. He drank all and everything, setting down his empty glass each time with obvious regret. For the first time in his life, surrounded by enthusiastic friends, he became entirely gay. Into the frozen swamp of his feelings burst a warm April light. He began to croak and to bellow

"Yankee skipper comin' down the river
Ho, ho, ho, ho HO."

"Incroyable, magnifique! Allons, enfants de la patrie!"

The little courtyard rocked with song. Taking the cue from his mate the captain waved his glass, too. The woman in red petticoats stood by loyally. Shouting something to a mysterious "Batcheetcha" in the kitchen she produced a stage thunder there amid the pans. Things were pounded in a pestle. The two timbres of sizzling denoting roasting and frying arose simultaneously. Chickens died noisily several times. The major was a generous man. Cloths whisked and dishes clicked. Everybody began to eat and drink all over again as if their stomachs had expanded as the generous wine enlarged their souls.

They ate tagliarini, they ate ravioli, they ate cocks' combs and sheep-kidney minced with mutton chops and liver. They imbibed tender pieces of shredded veal fried and heaped upon a vast platter like a miraculous draught of shrimps. They ate chickens and spaghetti and mushrooms and ducks. When all the others were satiated Captain Jorham continued. He polished off a heap of sausages fried with garlic, topped that with a dish of green figs, and washed it all into place like a glacial drift that finds the worst is over and warmer times have come again--with waves of Madeira.

A happy silence compounded of satiety and pure human affability settled down upon the party. They looked at one another with complete approval and admiration. A Gascoigne major whose forefathers had been petty, brawling, and carousing nobles gazed into the eyes of Captain Elisha whose grandfather was an English regicide, and belched little nothings into his ear.

"Surely," thought Anthony, looking at a rat-like quartermaster opposite him, "no more gallant band of heroes has ever assembled to do honours to strong souls from the sea like Captain Jorham and his mate."

It mattered not that nothing which Captain Jorham said could be understood intellectually. What was the intellect? Indeed, where was it? The very sounds the old sailor made were enormously popular. He who had overwhelmed the lizard! Mark you, at six metres! When he told a joke and laughed, the courtyard howled. Two brown, dirty little boys sat in a crook of the great vine looking down from the pergola above. They chattered like little monkeys with their arms about each other watching a feast of lions. Yet even they, Anthony felt, and all the rest he thought felt with him, were part of this pleasant perfect society. To be approved, included, and considered. Yes, everything was perfect. Everybody was delightful. He was. They all were.

He had never drunk quite so much or enjoyed it so greatly before. Wine ran in his blood. He was absolved from all responsibility. The world, though slightly hazy, sparkled like a thicket in the sunshine. The pattern of vine leaves and the shadows on the floor under the trellis were revealed to him as beautiful beyond hope of imitation.

For the first few bottles he had still felt himself as a spectator, at times even a disapproving one. Then, as he had returned again and again to the scarlet glass, he seemed to emerge completely into another atmosphere. Delight, warmth, a delicious lightness and a complete identification with a perfect world ensued. He was convinced that this was the way things really were. A sober vision simply did not reveal them or put one in touch. Everything now became very clear, a little enlarged. The edges of things were framed in amber and the vistas beyond became supernal; bathed in auriferous light. Never had he felt so at home with his fellows as with these men in this courtyard. All of these people, all of them, men that he had never seen before today, were friends. The capacity for trouble had been removed from the universe. He was one in a brotherhood of a paradisiacal company.

Wine, the sun and vines had done this. The sun? He looked up at the sun through the vine leaves. This delicious wash of grape shade and shifting light under the trellis was like being at the bottom of a lake, a lake of air. So he was! He remembered that now. And it was in this kind of light under the plane tree that he had first come to life. No one could remember original darkness. He remembered the full, simple, unquestioning joy of light now. The clear light and the warmth and joy that had become part of him, that was still in him. Nothing could ever destroy that. It was what he was. Like the face in the miniature, that face! He crowed like a child again, moving his hands and feet slowly, feeling them. He thought; he dreamed.

It was the sun that brought all of this food and wine and joy out of the earth. That gave light, that made the eyes live. In that light moved shadows, men and things that ordinarily seemed to be to the light what shadows were, projections of something else. You could never quite understand what was throwing these shadows when you were sober. You forgot the origin of them and so you did not see things, and men themselves. But now, now he felt near to these fellow beings and things at last. He could see them as they actually were. You could draw close and know them. The darkness between them was gone. In the sunlight all were of one substance. All were part of this glory of heat and light beating down into the little courtyard. The very food and wine they had eaten came from it. They ate it and it became part of them. All were of one substance, men and things. All of it came out of the light.

Everybody was always eating and drinking everywhere. He longed to tell them about it but he could not. It was the sun that laid this daily table around which humanity gathered. Or something that made the sun. . . . He rose to his feet overpowered by so sublime a thought, striving for words. Only thick, lowing sounds came from his lips. He could not tell them. They shouted back at him but he did not understand. He felt sad. He wandered off somewhere. The world seemed to open out before him. The light became brighter. It flashed; streamed.

A vast table whose gleaming cloth stretched out like a white road to the horizon lay spread out before him thronged by all the nations of men. He could see them coming and going. Beyond the horizon there was nothing, nothing but clouds rising out of an abyss. He too could draw near to the table and partake with everybody. He dragged his feet a few steps farther and seemed to be standing on the table himself. He sat down on it. The table-cloth shone like the sun on water, dazzled.

He did not want to eat after all. He felt dizzy. He put his hand to his head and leaned against something. An hour passed, another. After a while the horizon cleared enough to see again. The monster table of the sun had vanished. He was sitting on the curb before the door of the restaurant looking up the Strada Balbi, long, white, blinding and silent in the late, hot afternoon.

Oh, yes, he knew now where he was. It was Genoa! He had been thinking about something. About a sacrament? Something like that.

An ancient love feast? Oh, well, nonsense! How long had he been sitting here? Where was the captain? They had something to do. What day was it now? But what did he care about time! He turned and walked back into the courtyard steadying himself. He had a great drink of water. It tasted flat. The woman was laughing at him. Everything was clearer now. He must have slept a long time. Only a sense of tremendous well-being and a little irresponsibility remained. After a while the floor grew steady. Bon!

Captain Jorham lay sleeping, leaning back in a chair propped against the wall. A fly was crawling over his bald head slowly.

Those princes, those best of all good fellows, where were they? Vanished. Yet there was something tangible about them. The major had paid the bill. "'For the honour of the French Army,' signore, he said," thus the woman pocketing Anthony's coin. He felt relieved. All that for a tip! Now he knew he was sober.

Inside the skull over which the fly was crawling the captain was not really asleep. His brain had merely slipped the cogs of time backward some twenty years and transported him hence. He was sitting on a bench before his door in Scituate, Massachusetts. Just across the bay over there was Abner Lincoln's house and mill by the stream. The mill wheel was turning. The swallows dipped and left rings in the shallows. It was sunset. Overhead Jane was putting their child to bed. He could hear her singing and the feet of the child padding about on the floor. Now his wife was humming and rocking the baby monotonously. A note of foreboding crept into her voice. Suddenly the mill across the stream started to grind. It seemed to be uttering the letter "R" for minutes at a time. It was grinding up something. His child! Run, do something about it! If only he could move his feet. "Rrrrrrr." He reached up and brushed the fly out of his ear.

Better! The mill had stopped. Dreaming? Why wake up? How happy he and Jane had been until . . . let him hear the child's feet again. Dead! Oh, yes, he had forgotten! He was afraid he might hear them again, at night. No, no, not dead! Yes, dead! Good lord! "Do not cry, Jane. We will go to the cemetery tomorrow." But it is already tomorrow. "Come, you can take your knitting." He started for the cemetery, and woke with his feet slipping. After a few minutes he remembered. The child was dead years ago. Poor little baba! But he must forget that, not hear the feet, on the deck, anywhere. . . . Shove it down, put the lid on it, live only now. "Remember, Elisha, it is pleasant here now, better now, better now," insisted one part of him to the other. "You can always take a drink and make it now. Take a drink, take a drink!" Captain Jorham arose from his chair roaring for liquor.

"This is the way I put soft shoes on my baby's feet, mister," he said as he downed a glass. "Can't hear 'em then." Anthony was sure the captain was still very drunk. Yet he looked sober.

They stayed the rest of the afternoon at the Café of St. Lawrence the Martyr. They had another little nap while it rained. Felt better, all well. The time seemed to have come to sally forth. The captain, Anthony was relieved to find, was now in a gracious Madeiran mood.

----------

At six o'clock of a particularly, fine June evening the City of Genoa was already beginning to bestir itself smoothly for the moonlight night that was to follow. After the shower it was very clear, cool. Long, deepening shadows lay across the streets. Yet the sky was suffused with the red light of the approaching sunset. The air was blue and sparkling, just exhilarating and soothing enough to be grateful as an aftermath to the wine which still warmed them. Responsibility had nobly died.

Scarcely caring where they were going, they threaded their way through a maze of streets so narrow that no vehicles could pass. It was far too late to think of going after the marble blocks. In the mood in which he found himself Captain Jorham was willing to go anywhere and readily fell in with Anthony's suggestion that they should visit Father Xavier in the suburbs. Afterwards they could have supper, more wine, return late, or make a night of it. Yes, the marble and statuary could go till tomorrow. Everything could wait until tomorrow. Just at present they were like two fish swimming indolently and without particular direction, suspended, and suspiring in a golden, liquid atmosphere.

Bell-jingling strings of mules going home, sedan chairs for hire, painted private chairs for the nobility preceded through the dark tunnels of streets by carriers with linen lanterns on poles, passed and crossed and recrossed each other in all directions as if a festa were going on. Tall, narrow houses frescoed in glowing colours with pictures of saints, gods, and angels rose all about them, flinging their balconies half-way across the street. Beneath streamed a medley of motley costumes whose weird, cloaked fashions and screaming colours blent with the voluble soft voices and grotesque street cries into the total spectacle of the life that thronged and flowed, gathered and dispersed, gestured and hurried onward.

It was with some difficulty that Anthony prevented the captain from climbing into a gorgeous but lousy sedan whose bearers kept turning up at every corner and offering themselves. God knows where they would have got to in that. He linked his arm through the captain's. He occasionally wobbled a little yet. Keeping a sharp eye on their pockets, they passed on. Suddenly they left behind them the zone of premature evening in the narrow streets and emerged by pure chance on the Strada Nuova where day was dying brilliantly.

The endless street stretched on up into the hills above, narrow, clean, lined with rows of marble fronts where a few lights were already beginning to twinkle on the balconies. The long rays of light struck along it like a cañon. Only illustrious people could live on a street like that. Beggars were out of place there even in Genoa.

They shook off a man with sore eyes who had followed them holding his inflamed lids apart. Calling a gay little carriage drawn by two mules with pompons and bells they left the beggar toiling and cursing after. The fat driver on the tasselled box was in no more hurry than his team. They trotted on indolently inland toward Albaro, rising every moment a little higher and gradually leaving the crowded port behind. It was now that to his great joy Anthony rediscovered the noble city which he had seen from the ship like a happy morning dream. All day he had lost it amid the narrow streets of the stinking water front.

Although the approach to the suburb of Albaro itself is through ribbon-like lanes giving entrance to long, silent villas painted with vast frescoes which the sea air has dimmed--subjects holy, profane, and grim--yet there are many spaces where the main road passes in an arc over crests and opens upon sweeping vistas of the heights above and the sea below.

It was a little after sunset when the mules and driver as if by mutual consent came to a halt at one of these spots. The breathing of the animals, gradually becoming more regular after the labour of the ascent, as they slowly and more slowly inhaled the restful quiet of the evening air, finally seemed to die away altogether and to become one with the silence of the evening. All in the carriage were in unconscious sympathy with this relaxing rhythm, and the process continued to penetrate even further into their minds as they looked about them.

Lofty hills with fortresses on their crags from which banners of evening mist were already flowing leapt above them. On the lower slopes white villas smouldered in the sunset, set deeply in an ever darkening green intaglio of gardens and lawns. The twelve miles of the city's defences streamed and tumbled like the wall of China across the heights. In the valleys of the Bsagnio and Polcevera an opalescent fog had already begun to gather. Out of it flowed the dark rivers under their bridges into the still flashing bay.

Genoa, the wide far-flung city, lay there at their feet, encircling the light-twinkling harbour with the beautiful curve of its white arms, gathering the ships to its breast from the ruined Chapel of S. Giovanni Battista on the rocky seashore to the Porta Lanterna. Beyond all this, limitless and smooth with distance, stretched the violet tables of the open sea. Westward it glowed with submarine fires that reflected themselves upon the sky, and as they cooled and went out, blotched the long horizon with glazed patches of floating scarlet veiled by narrow clouds touched by the lingering pencils of the sun. Slowly even these melted showing stars behind. It seemed now as if everything earthly were dissolving into the sky. It was like the hood over the Virgin's head, thought Anthony. Even the hills slowly expanded and blended into the same engulfing shadow that was swallowing the sea.

At the centre of all this dying world sat Anthony. Only the mules, the dim outline of the driver on the box above, and the captain beside him still remained outside of his mind as another reality. The wheels had for a while been holding him up, he felt, but soon he knew himself just to be floating in the body of the carriage on a sea of twilight. Then no carriage. He and the outside world merged. Or he held it all within him as a slowly darkening image. The place where his eyes ended and the world began had again been swept away. It was a timeless, spaceless levitation . . .

Only a moment ago his being extended thus had felt limitless. Now as darkness grew he was slowly withdrawing himself again into a point bounded by stars as they came out one by one and grew clearer. Soon he would be back within his head again. Something already had begun to remain outside.

The mules stirred. The carriage moved forward a few inches on solid ground. He looked down and saw his own hand on his knee and felt it. He looked around at the face of the captain. He also had lost himself Anthony could see.

His face had grown wide and peaceful, glimmering. The lines of stress and hard care and sorrow were relaxed on his forehead and cheeks. His lips framed themselves wonderfully about the smile of a younger man. Much had been forgotten and caressed away as though Elisha Jorham had once participated in vivid happiness and the vision remained, one which he only needed to be reminded of to resume.

"This is Elisha himself," thought Anthony. "I hope that he can see me as I am, too." He moved slightly. They looked at each other long and silently in the low twilight. They were both at home with, and comforted by the unspoiled glory of the world. That was an important discovery for friendship. Then the captain suddenly resumed the mask which experience had provided him. His face hardened.

"Well," said he, "what little thing happens next, mister? I'm trustin' my events to you now, see?"

"Nothing that matters much, sir, I suppose," replied Anthony shaking the stars out of his head.

"Wall, na-ow ye never can be sartain I calalate. Let's make sail anyway. We've got to be goin' somewhere."

The captain was getting sleepy. He began to nod shortly afterwards. A quarter of a mile farther brought them to the door of a small inn.

"I'll turn in here while you drive on and see yer friend," said Captain Elisha. "It's bed and not victuals I want now. But be sure to call fer me in the mornin' even if you make a night of it. That's orders, mister. Don't leave me stranded, mate," he added anxiously, "I can't swing the lingo, you know."

Anthony reassured him. He would call him for an early breakfast.

"Good! It's marble and statoo-ary tomorrow, and that may take longer than buyin' ile. They're never in any hurry around cemeteries." The captain yawned. "But you can't live that way; do business."

Anthony left him comfortable enough in a bedroom under the eaves where the moonlight was already beginning to filter through the tiles.

"Looks like one of Jane's crazy-quilts," murmured the captain fingering the covers dreamfully. "Say, mister . . ."

But Anthony had already driven on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE VILLA BRIGNOLE

Half a mile across the valley from the inn Anthony was driving along the endless garden wall of the Palazzo Brignole. It had once been a summer school of the Jesuits but was long since deserted, as most of that suppressed order had fled to Russia or Poland. The hoofs of the mules echoed against the cracked and peeling stucco of the outbuildings in the empty moonlight. The driver turned in reluctantly enough through a rusty iron gate, and unhitching under a shed, began to make himself and his team as comfortable as the fleas would permit. Supper seemed remote. He was heard to wish fervently that il signore would not be long.

"An hour or two at most," replied Anthony, who then began to pick his way gingerly across a weedy terrace, fingering the letter to Father Xavier. The address upon it now seemed improbable, for in the moonlight he stumbled over piles of rubbish and old stable litter while tribes of owl-eyed cats fled wailing before him.

Even in Genoa Father Xavier could scarcely have found another dwelling which expressed so well the departed grandeur and the present desolation of his order. The vast uncompromising façade of the Palazzo Brignole stretched itself before Anthony on the crest of a series of terraces. Its flat face looked blindly at the moon as if it too were oblivious to change. Its lower apertures were stopped with rubbish like gagged mouths. From its upper windows the cracked and wrinkled shutters, like so many grey cataracts over innumerable eyes, told of nothing but seething darkness in the cells behind them. Two ruined arcades, extending from the house at right angles, stumbled with collapsing arches down the giant steps of the terraces and enclosed within their shattered arms the long approach that had once been a landscaped garden but was now a melancholy wilderness.

It seemed to Anthony as he looked up at the great house, from which not a light shone nor a sound emanated, that the garden was rushing down upon him over its arcades in tangled masses of shrubbery and flowing outlines of serpentine vines. It was a river of dark vegetation in sinister spate. What made it worse was that it had once been meant to be as artificial as a canal and neat as a priest with a new tonsure. It was some moments before he could force himself to follow the cats and plunge into its moon-shadowed mazes toward the house itself. At this hour it was a garden fit only for those that could see in the dark.

He tripped over roots that had forced their way through an old pavement cracked in a thousand directions. At other places the walks gave oozily under his feet. Everything was overgrown with weeds, gaunt, or blackly flamboyant. Frogs croaked in the stagnant stone basins, and as he rose turn after turn up the ruined steps, statues with mossy faces started out at him from their vine-tangled niches or lay prone with leprous spots upon them as if dead in the moonlight. Once he thought he saw a lantern gleaming far before him. But it was only a solitary firefly signalling vainly for an answer. The house remained pale and lampless, and grew even huger and more lonely as he approached it.

At last he stood upon the last pleasance, peering in through an open portal whose doors had long lost their hinges and were now leaning drunkenly against the pilasters of the cavern-like vestibule. Into this he did not care to venture. Indeed, he would have ended his mission here had it not been that now for the first time his ears were saluted by a sound other than that made by frogs and crickets.

At first he thought it was water dripping musically into some abandoned well, but as he stood listening intently the ghost of a tune emerged. Someone was negligently touching the strings of a harp. The sound grew louder. It seemed to emanate from the silent, wandering barracks before him. For a while it had come from nowhere, and the effect of the soft music in the moonlight had been so eery as to halt him where he stood. But to the notes of the harp were now added the slightly flat tones of a feminine voice practising the bravura. One, the highest note, was a dismal failure and made him laugh. It was an entirely human anticlimax. He strode through the vestibule eagerly and almost immediately found himself in the inevitable littered courtyard beyond.

From a porter's lodge in one corner of the quadrangle came a few gleams of light and the sound of the harp although the heavy shutters were closed. There were even heavy bars on the windows. He walked over and knocked at the door but there was no reply. The music had stopped instantly. He heard a few stealthy footfalls behind the shutters and the light went out. At first he was inclined to be angry at this reception, but then he could not help but grin. He knocked again. Silence.

After a long interval a queer voice said softly, "I am not at home. I went away years ago. Let me alone."

"Signora, or ma donna," he said, "I am not a brigand, I do not wish to disturb you. I am looking for a priest, Father Xavier. Do you know him?" He waited anxiously but still there was no reply. Some time passed. Then he knocked again, this time impatiently.

"You must call for him in the court. Call loudly," said the tired voice within. "He is getting a little deaf I think. He no longer cares for my music." That was all. After a while the light reappeared and the harp resumed.

He turned away again. The four walls of the high villa frowned down upon him with tightly-barred windows. The moon looked over one corner of the roof a little tilted. Best do as he had been told!

"Father Xavier, oh, Father Xavier!"

"Ier, ier, ier," mocked the echoes, dying away into a solemn gibberish. The harp dripped and tinkled, and the flat voice in the lodge ran through an eery, windy bar or two again. Somewhere in the shadows a chorus of cats began insultingly. He felt enormously irritated. It was warm and damp here, too. He was sweating. The place was decidedly . . . decidedly so!

"Father Xavier!" he roared again in a sane determined tone.

"What is it, my son?" said a familiar voice so close to his shoulder that he wheeled about, startled in spite of himself.

A few feet away stood a slight, emaciated figure with a black robe fluttering in the night breeze that sighed through the archway. There was a small crucifix hanging from its belt. This, and a shining tonsure of thin, grey locks glinted in the moon. Only the face was the same. At the sight of those familiar features, which standing out above the shadows seemed to be glowing with a quiet light from within, Anthony was transported by the fascination of fond memory into the past. He seemed to be standing again in the court of the Convent of Jesus the Child. Each looked at the other searchingly.

"My father, is it possible you do not know me?" said Anthony.

"Anthony, my son, my son!" cried Father Xavier. "I would rather see you here tonight than an archangel. Where have you fallen from?"

He came forward and put his hands on Anthony's shoulders and looked up into his face.

"I used to look down at you. You remember?"

Anthony could feel how old his hands were. A feeling of pity swept over him. An irritating cadenza of the woman's voice interrupted them. Suddenly he felt embarrassed.

"I have a letter from Mr. Bonnyfeather for you," he said awkwardly.

Father Xavier laughed. "A formal introduction I trust--'Anything you may be able to do to further the fortunes of so estimable and prepossessing a young gentleman will be esteemed as a service rendered to your obedient servant'--eh? So, we are on the formal basis of manhood. Come, my son, I shall receive you as I am sure you deserve, letter or no letter."

He laid his hand on Anthony's arm and led him across the court to a little door with a grille in it, a door so narrow as to be successfully concealed behind a large pillar. Taking a candle from the niche where he had left it, Father Xavier extended a shielding hand before the flame and they began to ascend a series of narrow stairs.

The ramifications of the old house were unimaginable. A thousand closed doors loomed mysteriously on a hundred corridors going nowhere. Anthony suddenly felt an overpowering sensation that he had been here before. It seemed improbable that the priest could ever find the way to his own room again. The silence was oppressive, but somehow as they went higher it was not so hostile as it had been on the ground floor. Inside, the house was merely asleep, not dead. People could come back here and be happy again. It was not like the garden. In summer the house was warm and dry, dusty.

They had both unconsciously fallen into their old step as if sauntering again through the corridors of the convent. Father Xavier walked as though he had a child beside him. Anthony's steps became shorter and faster. He did not notice it but the priest did. The light from the candle made the enlarged, blue veins on Father Xavier's hands stand out in knots. A still, porcelain light filtered through his thin, shielding fingers and fell upon his face as if the glow upon it were from within.

As they walked on through endless corridors and up confusing flights of well-like stairs, Father Xavier gave the impression that with all this paraphernalia of the building about him--with the glimpses of frayed frescoes starting up before the candle and dying away into the darkness like the gliding fringes of a delirious dream--the priest had nothing whatever to do. He alone, in all the passing phantasmagoria of vaguely glimpsed scenes of nature and the works of man, held the light which revealed them--and let them go again. Only his face shining as from within remained. Yes, Father Xavier looked that way tonight. Anthony wondered what such impressions might mean.

At last they paused before a door apparently no different from a hundred others they had passed but to which Father Xavier unhesitatingly applied his iron key.

It swung open upon a small apartment under the leads. The moonlight poured in through a dormer window. Beyond was a glimpse of a few pale stars. Even with only one candle and a little moonlight Anthony felt at home in the place immediately. Father Xavier motioned him to a shadowy chair, and when some more candles were lit, he saw it was one of the old, red ones with tassels that had so intrigued him as a child at the convent. Through what vicissitudes had it been since then, he wondered, to come here?

It was marvellous how with the closing of the door the very memory of the labyrinthian chaos of a house that was below and around them had vanished. They might have been in a comfortably furnished, opaque bubble hung somewhere in space, utterly safe from and independent of the outside universe. A few embers from the faggots which had cooked the priest's supper still glowed and made the place, if anything, too warm. Father Xavier threw the window wider and they heard the notes of the harp at a great distance below them.

The priest turned and touched his forehead significantly.

"She is composing an opera which will never be sung," he said. "An old cousin of the Brignoles who has been permitted to live on here in the lodge these ten years now. It is a little weird at times. Let us close it out tonight. What do you say?"

He shut the window again and going over to the fire poured some water on the embers. As the last hissing died away he extended his arms along the mantelpiece, leaning back and looking at Anthony.

"Do you remember my old room in the little house?"

"I now feel as if I had never left it, father."

"Here are some of your books, the ones with the pictures in them," said Father Xavier smiling and running his hands affectionately over the backs of the leather bindings, without turning to look at them. "That was where your world began, was it not? Ah, those were good times at the convent after all. Better than we knew. And now, to think of it, we have ten years or more to talk away between us. Why, a life-time would not be long enough for that! Have you not found it so, Anthony?"

"I remember some days I think it would take ten years to tell about. I do not think I shall live long enough to find out what really happened in some of them, father. And yet looking at you now it all seems as though I had only dreamed them all. I could almost imagine that harp down there was our old fountain in the court splashing away under the plane tree. That sound of water comes often at night. I hear it then."

"So, does it go that way with you? Yes, we often return to ourselves at night, to what we were, or are. Tell me all about yourself, my son. It is long since we have had a good talk. Do!"

He took down a long pipe from the mantel. "Do you smoke? No? I do. It is one benign, fleshly indulgence to which I have finally succumbed."--He began to rummage around in various curious receptacles for another pipe, carrying his guest's attention from one thing to another, but giving him no chance to speak.--"You must inure yourself to the weed before its true virtues can be evoked. Try this. Just one or two whiffs at first, if you do not really care for it. Real Virginia, very light and sweet. Old. I keep it in this jar with a little damp sponge." He lifted the pipe rapidly and brought a lighter. The stem was in Anthony's mouth and he was drawing in the sweet smoke almost before he knew it.

"I am a little cold after all," said Father Xavier, looking at the fire regretfully. "A second till I change into my wool." His voice now came floating in from his little bedroom just beyond. "I am quite luxurious here you see," he added as he secretly put on a stole under his gown.

Anthony had taken a few whiffs of the pipe. The first few were pleasant but he did not care to go on. He felt himself to be floating just a little free in space, his feet not quite on the floor. It was not dizziness but the beginning of levitation. He was no longer connected with anything in space--with nothing except Father Xavier's voice. That was the only reality--and himself.

"Now tell me about yourself, as you said you would," said Father Xavier coming back into the room and seating himself opposite with an air of one who has come to listen to a moving story. He wrapped the loose gown a little closer over his chest. "Tell me everything. What did happen that day I brought you to the Casa? You had an encounter with a goat, didn't you? I remember something about that."

"Ah yes, the goat!" Anthony began, and without being aware of it launched forth into what gradually and surely grew into the minute autobiography of the years since he had left the convent. If there was anything that he omitted he could not remember it. All the people, the house, the books, the benign and sedate Mr. Bonnyfeather, Toussaint, Faith, and Angela crowded into the little room under the eaves of the Villa Brignole where Father Xavier sat with two fingers across his breast holding his woollen gown. At which two fingers somehow Anthony could not help but look as he went on and on.

At first he was aware only of a certain pleasure in the sheer narrative of his own affairs with so good and trusted a listener. Then a kind of exaltation overtook him on the wings of which his story began to move, but always inward toward the core of his being. He was scarcely conscious of the little exclamations, encouragements, and an occasional query from Father Xavier. Their voices seemed to blend, and it seemed to have been suggested to Anthony that he should ask certain questions of himself rather than that he might answer another person's. He even took a certain vague pleasure in inflicting pain upon himself as he related his struggles and doubts, or discussed the perplexing books on Mr. Bonnyfeather's shelves, the curious philosophy of Toussaint, that day in the room with Arnolfo. Now, strangely enough, he could tell everything, even the burning of that night with Faith. It was a relief. Somehow it did not seem so terrible now that he had told it. Father Xavier said nothing disturbing. So he could tell him of his love for Angela too, and the vision afterward.

As he began to speak of the madonna, his madonna, he began to understand that all he said, all his story of the days he had lived and the nights he had dreamed, were bound up and made one intelligible thing to himself by the feeling about a picture of her that he carried within him. It was inexplicable but it was so. She was the one permanent thing he had known. How could words compass it? It was not the little statue. That was only his particular familiar image of her, an inheritance from childhood. Into what had she grown? How could he tell it to Father Xavier?

"You see what she is lives in me, yet that is what I can speak to when I must speak to something beyond me--or be left alone--or die I guess. Shall I say that in her I, and the world, and what she is meet? At her feet! That is not it, but it is how words put it. It seems to me now I came here just to tell you that. I know it now! I came up from the sea, and through that evil, tangled garden with the dead statues, and into the court tonight. And I heard the music of the mad woman, and then I called to you, and you were there. We are not alone in this deserted house, are we? Tell me we two are not alone, my father. There is something beyond us and yet in us and with us. I believe you know. It is not all like walking up through those meaningless corridors tonight, my father. Thou knowest?"

His voice ceased and the candles burned steadily upright. There was not a sound except the tick and tock of the pendulum over the mantel.

Then he saw the two fingers on Father Xavier's breast move. His hand was moving in the air and his lips in absolution. His gown fell apart where the fingers had been holding it, revealing the stole. Neither said anything for a while. On both of them had fallen a great peace. It seemed to Anthony that now he was free of the past forever. But the clock went on. It was after midnight. It was the morning of July 14, 1796. The clock and the calendar both said so. But in the souls of the priest and the young man it was no time at all.

After a while Father Xavier got up and going over to a cupboard took out some white wine. Anthony now remembered he had had no supper. They both felt stiff. A small blaze in the grate and some wine and bread brought them back to the warm room again and the present.

Father Xavier then made up a pallet in one corner of the chamber and insisted that Anthony should lie down. He pulled up a chair close to the fire, and wrapping his gown about him again, stuck his slippers up before the little blaze. Propped upon one elbow Anthony watched the firelight glancing across the priest's strong but sensitive profile. There was something exquisite and smooth about it, but a strength there that might be stern. His eyes were a little sunken and the grey locks of the tonsure gave him the look of a venerable youth.

"I am sure," said Father Xavier at last, "that we are not alone." The clock seemed to interrupt him again.

"You must tell me about yourself, father," said Anthony. "Here I have taken up the whole long evening about my own precious affairs."

The priest smiled a little sadly.

"I have been busy upon the errands of my order. For a while at Naples, then in Sicily. A starving time there. These are very sad days for us. We Jesuits no longer whisper into the ears of kings. It is very difficult to bear the scorn of the world and to reconcile the bull of the Holy Father against us with obedience to the order--and the service of Jesus Christ. It is difficult in practice, that is. I have stayed in Italy, but I have been hunted at times. Indeed, I lately have been very ill, sick in body and mind." He leaned his head on his hand.

"I was educated in this house, before I went to Rome. Did you know that, Anthony? In the old days it was the summer school for the novices. Please God, it may be so again!" He seemed to be seeing things in the coals and went on in a lower tone.

"Many years ago in the days of the Colonnas it was the Villa Brignole. My mother was one of that family. Now that the Jesuits have been driven out it has fallen into their hands again. I have relatives here. They have let me stay on in these rooms quietly until I am stronger and times are better. Since the French have come things are so disturbed I need hide no longer. There is food, an old servant, and my books. I am writing one myself about our holy martyrs for the faith. It has meant more than I can tell you to have you come here tonight. Most of the work of my life seems to have crumbled. But I take courage in you as I see you now."

"Then so do I, father," said Anthony. "You first encouraged me. Indeed, without you . . ." He could not go on.

They were both silent a little again.

"Perhaps, you had better give me the letter from Mr. Bonnyfeather now," said Father Xavier smiling.

"I had forgotten all about it! Forgive me. I seem to have been interested only in myself tonight. Believe me, it is not entirely so."

Father Xavier reassured him. "You can in part blame me for that tonight. But give Mr. Bonnyfeather some of the credit for having brought us together again," he added as he broke the seal and began to read.

As he read further his brows wrinkled. It was as he had thought. All had gone well with Anthony in the matters of this world. More than well. But Mr. Bonnyfeather was in doubt as to his ghostly state of mind. "I have not neglected it," wrote the old man, "I have done what I could, but my ignorance is great and in your absence I have, alas, felt myself somewhat helpless. Sir, you will forgive me, but I am old. Some things have fallen through my hands. Perhaps I should blame myself for having turned the boy over to the Frenchman.

"Perhaps? Yet I would have you remember, too, that he was to be prepared for the world, and that is not a seminary . . . In the matter of first communion I have been most remiss. He is going on the long journey I mentioned above, so to your care and wisdom I leave the matter. Also in the matter of the will I would have your wisdom exercised as to whether he is to be told now the full extent of his benefits. Do as you think best." So the priest read on for several pages. "And this enclosure to you is only an earnest in advance of that other money matter of which I have spoken." Father Xavier sat pondering for some time.

"Anthony!" said he.

"Yes," replied Anthony sleepily, "sir?"

"Rouse yourself. I have some things I must talk to you about. How long will you be in Genoa?"

"Not over a day or so at most. The ship must sail . . ."

"Yes, I see," said Father Xavier. "Then you must take the sacrament at my hands tomorrow. At least I am still an ordained priest," he added with a proud melancholy half to himself. "I know a chapel where we can go together."

Anthony was sitting up now clasping his knees and thoroughly awake. Somehow he felt a little reluctant. He was not sure. It seemed hurried. He recoiled somewhat.

"I have never taken the wafer, father,--you know?"

The priest nodded and tapped the letter. "So I am told."

"I must pick up the captain too at an inn near here. We have much to do tomorrow--and my confession?"

"It was tonight, have you forgotten already?" Anthony winced. No, he had not forgotten. That was it. Somehow he felt that the confession had been drawn from him. It was unpremeditated--and yet?

"I would not put pressure on you, Anthony--but you are going on a long journey," said Father Xavier looking into the fire. His expression was very sad. He continued after a while. "God knows I would give you more preparation. There are many things I would talk about with you. There is one thing I must say to you tonight lest in my weakness I forget it. There is God and His son as well as the Madonna. No, I would not disturb you in what I may call your faith, in the comfort she has brought you. Continue, but let it lead you on. I would put it this way for your peculiar case. Do you from now on consider that which she holds in her arms." He paused to consider his own phrases. "So Christ came into the world, but so did he not go out of it."

Their concentration on each other was again intense.

"Tomorrow early then," said Anthony after a little, and felt himself relax. He lay back gladly again.

Father Xavier rose. "You have made me very happy," he said. He put a little crucifix on the table and left a candle by it. "There is a piece of worldly news which I was also bidden by Mr. Bonnyfeather to convey to you if I thought it wise to do so." He snuffed the candle carefully. "Well, I do think it wise. You are to be his heir." He stayed a minute looking fixedly at Anthony. Then he turned and went into his bedroom. The candle remained burning by the crucifix.

After a while Anthony got up and put it out. He found it impossible to do anything more than say a Pater Noster. He was in a sleepy tumult within. The night had been an exhausting one. He tried to feel grateful in his heart--and went to sleep.

----------

They were awakened next morning by the lusty bellowing in the court below of the man who had driven Anthony the night before. He was much worried about the disappearance of his fare. Anthony stuck his head out of the window and a hearty exchange of divergent views as to the advantage of spending a supperless night in an abandoned shed went on.

"But you always sleep in your carriage," remonstrated Anthony; "why should I pay you extra for it?"

"Si, signore, but always under a dry archway and with wine in my own belly, and hay for the mules. Last night there was famine, fleas, and fog. The cushions are soaked with dew and I in agony from rheumatism. I shall catch the miasmic fever, I shall die. My wife and ten children, my aged mother, my two aunts . . ."

Anthony laughed and tossed something down to him. "I hire you for all day, with meals at restaurants, wine included," he said.

The man picked up the coin and kissed his hand toward the window. "Pardon, signore, I did not understand I was retained by a nobleman. I remain then till you appear." He looked ridiculous bowing there in the court so far below. An obsequious mouse, Anthony laughed again.

"Will it all go as easily as that did? The heir is feeling generous this morning, eh!" said Father Xavier from the next room.

"Very," said Anthony, "and awfully hungry."

"I am afraid you have forgotten something, my son," smiled Father Xavier, standing by the door with his hat under his arm. "We could not eat now, you know. There is holy food for us this morning."

An inexplicable reluctance swept over Anthony. His promise!

"I am sorry. In the joy of the bright morning, after last night, after finding you, I felt like a boy again. I had forgotten."

They emerged into the court and took their way rapidly to the garden. Along the lower terraces a few wisps of mist were still smoking. The rest of the place lay flashing with dewy laurel thickets, flower-beds a riot of colour, and living green steeples of cypresses pointing up through the tangled vines. The sunlight glinted from a hundred little ponds and rain-filled basins. Down at the far gate tossed the scarlet pompons on the mules' bridles.

Anthony stopped and took a deep breath of the cool air just beginning to be tinged with the heat of the coming day. It was, he felt, right, and a fortunate thing to be alive this morning; just to be alive. Then he remembered their errand again and looked a little guiltily at Father Xavier.

"Rejoice," said the priest, "it is not sinful to be gay and happy. We are not bound on a sorrowful errand. Do you not suppose that I am happy about it too? Ah, yes! I am afraid from Mr. Bonnyfeather, and from those books of his you have imbibed a sombre tinge about the matter. The northern races, you know, do not have a talent for religion. It is, after all, an affair of the heart, liable either to sour or to effervesce if it goes too much to the head. It is between the heart and the head that the church mediates. But come! You would not have me making a homily to you here with that shattered Calypso grinning at us from the grass!"

They began to descend the sweeping steps of the approach. Through the gaping gateway behind them came the distant notes of the harp. Father Xavier shook his head. Anthony wondered if she had been playing all night.

"Sometimes for two days and nights at a time, then she sleeps--and so do I," said Father Xavier.

It was a little uncomfortable, thought Anthony, to have his thoughts replied to this way out of the thin air. There was something in the tone of the harp that had reminded him of the garden the night before, damp moon shadows and dripping moss.

"But very beautiful here this morning," continued Father Xavier, "in full day or by the light of memory it can be very lovely even in its ruin. And I remember it when it was kept to the old marchesa's taste. I spent my childhood here and by a curious chance my novitiate, too, after the fathers took it over, years ago. A long time ago now it seems."

They had descended somewhat into the shades of the vegetation and dense paths.

"To that little pool over there I can remember coming with my mother and sailing a toy boat, a divine little Argo, I assure you. And it was in this grotto I spent a year alone as a novice. You see, Anthony, this is my--my convent." He lifted a heavy branch and they stepped through into a space of open green with an artificial grotto in the rocks behind it.

Before this cave staggered pitifully enough even though in dull green bronze a large figure of a water carrier. Once from the mouth of his receptacle had gushed a refreshing stream into the basin before him. But that now lay cracked and empty with a few plants struggling in its many fissures, dependent for their sustaining moisture solely upon the accidents of heaven. Already in the growing heat of the morning they were beginning to droop. Yet the eye scarcely noticed their small and ordinary tragedy. It was inevitably fixed by the terrible predicament of the water carrier himself. Above his patient human limbs the empty, lead pipe that had once conducted his secret supply was now uprooted and writhing like a snake determined to trip him.

They stood for a minute looking at this. Father Xavier picked a small flower from the basin and put it in his pocket. His lips moved. Then they went on along the terrace and down a flight, along another terrace and down, and still another--and climbed into the carriage at the gate.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE STREET OF THE IMAGE MAKERS

The hard road, dustless with the damp of night still on it, and shining before them, clicked cheerfully under the wheels. Under the spell of the exhilarating miracle of motion an enchanted seascape opened itself before them. The Mediterranean sparkling from headland to headland rolled away northward toward France. The still, white town at the foot of the distant hills with the sun upon it might have been an eternal one. For a moment the mood of the day-before possessed Anthony again. He could apprehend the vision of the table. He could not see it any longer, but he felt that he was united again with all men in the bounty of that feast. The feast of the sun and wine! "It was an affair of the heart." The words recurred to him with startling clearness. The head had nothing to do with it. Why meditate?

What was this that Father Xavier was trying to tell him about the holy communion as they drove along over these ineffable hills? What of sorrow and pain and mercy; of the meaning of certain words? It was true that he could not really hear them. Meaning should be attached to words like these. What was it he was about to do? Something for Father Xavier! It would be his pupil who would do it then; who would take the wafer. Not Anthony, not Anthony Adverse. He would not do it. No, that was it, that was it exactly. He, Anthony, would not do it. Presently he would have to tell Father Xavier that he would not. That was going to be hard. He sat back for a minute against the seat and felt the grit of the road crunch reassuringly under the wheels. Clip, clop, clip, clop, rang the iron shoes on reality.

"Thus the communion of saints . . ." said Father Xavier.

"Father," said Anthony suddenly, interrupting him, "I must talk to you now. I must tell you that I cannot take the wafer this morning. It is impossible. It would not be I. You would merely be giving it to me. Don't you see, it would be neither the head nor the heart? Not now at least." His eyes widened. "Not now . . ."

Father Xavier had gone grey. He looked as if something within him had crumbled. He sat very still.

"In the house," he thought, "in the house, before we left this morning. Now it is too late. I had prayed for this but it is not to be given to me. The work of my own hands . . ."

They were climbing a hill again, with no visible ending. The mules began to walk dragging the weight behind them slowly upward.

"Will it always be like this, I wonder?" thought the priest--and then bit his own tongue.

"Forgive me, forgive me, my father. I am sorry to have given you pain," said Anthony. "I would not be so sudden in telling you but . . ."

"In God's time and not mine," replied the priest. The colour slowly came back to his face. "Let us say no more about it. Now where are you going today? Perhaps I can help you. At least I know something about Genoa." He smiled, still quite pale.

It was not until many years later that Anthony understood that he had been present at a miracle that morning after all--a miracle of self-control.

At the top of the hill he unexpectedly found himself driving past the inn where he had left the captain the night before. A hearty "Avast there, mister," apprised him of the fact and revealed Captain Elisha gesticulating from the door with a napkin, while wiping egg from his moustache.

There was something about his portly figure poised on its thick legs like a tree that has gripped the rocks and withstood tempests, which caused Father Xavier to appraise the mariner with approval, nor did a slightly puzzled twinkle in the captain's steady blue eyes escape him. He had seen a deeply concealed but unsolved trouble effervesce in humour like that before.

Captain Elisha on his part soon ceased to regard the kindly priest as a "foreigner." Anthony was more relieved than anyone. It had been impossible for him to imagine upon what grounds these two could meet. It was simply to be as man to man over the breakfast table. Their legs were soon under it.

"I swan to Jesus, mister," said Captain Jorham pouring a little coffee into his rum, "ye're the first mate I ever did have servin' under me that spent his shore leave with the clergy. Beggin' yer pardon, father. Not that I have any pecoolar objectshune. There's wus ways of killin' time I heard tell on. Didn't know Mr. Adverse was of the persuasion." He grew more offhand as he felt himself getting into deeper water.

"You see, Mr. Adverse was a pupil of mine a good many years ago," vouchsafed Father Xavier, "I used to teach him geography and Latin."

"Wall now then," said the captain glad of so naturalistic an explanation of his mate's intimacy with the priesthood, "I did hear him tell ye was by way of bein' an old friend. Sort of a reunion, then eh?"

"Exactly," said Father Xavier.

"I met a priest in Canton oncet that had a whole school o' Chinee orphans. He was a good man for all they might say at home. Heard he was murdered afterwards. One of them slow demises they devils goes in for. Begin with yer fingers and toes and work in." He began to cut up a piece of potato graphically. "It's wonderful how little holdin' ground the soul needs. I've seen a Chinee shaped like an egg and his eyes still bright. Fact! . . . Course it's different with children. They just up anchor and goes." He looked troubled.

"What was the priest's name?" asked Father Xavier.

Captain Elisha could not remember but Father Xavier did. It had been one of his own order. "I have his story in my book."

"Wall, I swan--to man!" said the captain. He began to tell them about his voyages to Canton. They all felt at ease with one another. "Seemed like that poor fellow died jes' to make us better acquaint," he averred finally.

"That has been one remote result," said Father Xavier half to himself. "Who knows?"

Anthony observed that the captain was doing well with his "coffee." The mood of the evening before seemed likely to continue. After a while they got up and smoked a pipe outside. Anthony indulged in one, too. He did not care much for it yet. But after the experience of the night before he had made up his mind to go in for tobacco. It might pay to investigate it as well as wine. He felt just a little light in the knees as they climbed into the carriage. The captain had Anthony interpret while he paid his bill.

"And you might ask the woman," he said, "if they have a child in the house."

"Si, signore, just learning to walk. I trust its cries were not disturbing. She is very little yet."

The captain looked relieved. "'Taint the cryin'," he said. His face seemed to forbid curiosity about his inquiry.

Soon they drove on, merrily enough, it seemed to Anthony. He glanced at Father Xavier curiously. All seemed well there, too. But it had been profane food that morning after all.

"Is your hunger fully satisfied, my son?" said Father Xavier quietly in Anthony's ear. His face did not change. Anthony did not answer.

Not one to neglect any aspect of opportunity, Captain Jorham had been quick to see in the accidental presence of the priest that morning an expert aide and adviser in the purchase of church statuary. As they drove down the hills back to Genoa he began without further ado, or any sense of embarrassment, to unfold his scheme for improving the condition of the church in Cuba.

Somewhat to Anthony's surprise Father Xavier consented to serve in an advisory capacity. Indeed, as the priest listened to the captain's rather remarkable plan unfold an amused smile seemed to be hiding itself in the deep shadows under his eyes. But his mouth remained grave.

Yes, he could undoubtedly aid the captain in making the proper purchases. "It is in the Street of the Image Makers that you will find what you are looking for, I think. As to the marble blocks--I do not know whether I can help you, but I suggest that you ask some of the masons and sculptors at the place that I spoke of. Do you want to go there now?"

Captain Jorham assured him that he did. The less delay the better. Father Xavier directed the driver.

Just where the Albaro Road approaches the city gate they passed a small chapel with a fresco upon its outside walls so striking as to cause Captain Jorham to stop and descend to examine it. Outside the door there was a little money box for the benefit of souls in purgatory. Just above it on either side of the grated portal, behind which an altar could be seen, was an enormous picture of souls frying in hell. The sympathy of the artist had evidently been with the devils who were undoubtedly enjoying themselves. A small baby for the extreme trespass of not having been baptized had had both its thumbs cut off and could find nothing but a hot coal to put in its mouth. This seemed to hold the captain, although the main exhibit was an old-man-soul with a grey moustache and carefully parted hair who was being put feet first into a furnace vomiting flames. Various minor activities of a somewhat frank and painful nature were being carried on in the background. These occasionally caused Captain Jorham to "swan to man." He paused for some minutes, thoughtfully.

"I hope, father," said Anthony taking the opportunity while they were left sitting in the carriage, "that you are not shocked at the captain's scheme for taking the saints to Cuba. I am not responsible, you know."

Father Xavier smiled. "Far from it," he rejoined. "I regard Captain Jorham, and men like him, as respectable means to higher ends. Sailors, soldiers, shopkeepers, and the like are usually commendable in themselves. One should consider what is using them and why. In this case I have my own idea that the end may be a worthy one. But let us say no more, he is returning." They heard a small coin fall in the box. The captain climbed in tilting the carriage slightly. For some distance he seemed inclined to get the priest's views on infant baptism. From these he could derive small comfort.

"Er--na-ow that picture," he went on, "is that your idee of the hereafter?"

Father Xavier was non-committal though not reassuring.

"I'll tell ye some o' the parsons on the Cape could get p'inters from it," he resumed. "It would fill a church down Truro way every Sunday. It's not wasted here I guess. Nope! Do you know I calalate we're all like to be surprised by the way etarnity really is. 'Nearest I ever come to it was oncet off the Andamans when a bolt of fire fell into the sea right plumb off'n the starboard quarter. Left me blind for a week, it did." He paused dreamfully as if remembering something, closing his eyes.

"What did you see on the other side of the lightning, Captain Jorham?" asked Father Xavier very quietly.

The captain opened his eyes and looked at him. "I'm not giving away etarnal information for nothin' ara-ound here," said the captain. The thought of the coin he had dropped in the box for the baby remained with him. With it he had secretly bought a little comfort and was now indignant at himself for having done so.

They were now well within the town again driving through crowded streets. A seemingly endless number of twists and turns finally landed them in front of an apothecary shop that was built into the side of a hill. They told the driver to wait and entered.

As they did so a number of shabby men who were waiting near the door hurried forward to meet them. "We want medicines only," said Father Xavier. Whereupon these physicians, for such they were, sank back disconsolately into their chairs.

They left the light of the street behind them and continued to walk along a bottle-lined passageway that gradually grew darker.

It was some seconds before Anthony's eyes became used to the deepening shadows or comprehended the meaning of a bright patch of sunlight some distance ahead. The air became dank and cool. They ascended a few rock steps, where some white mushrooms flourished, and then suddenly came out of the long tunnel into a drench of sunshine just beyond.

"This," said Father Xavier, "is the Street of the Image Makers. Without me, my son, I do not think you could have come even so far."

"Swan to man, if we ain't come clean through the hill into a lot of old stone quarries," exclaimed the captain shoving his hat back. "Thar's the sky."

The captain was correct. The Street of the Image Makers descended straight before them into a huge, rocky pocket in the hill which had once been an immense stone quarry. From the surrounding white cliffs tall, forbidding houses turned their bleak backs upon it, and from dizzy ledges goats looked down indulgently upon the place. In fact, the only entrance, that through which they had just come, had been mined in ancient times. Hence, where the tunnel ended the street began. It was merely a gash in the living stone, a gradually widening continuation of the tunnel now open to the sky like the bed of a dry canal.

In the walls of this marble prism shops and dwellings had been hollowed out from time to time, and their fronts carved in the various styles which the caprices of the owners had dictated. Before several doors an arcade rested upon Ionic pillars, one solid piece of stone. Another shop affected a classic façade with a temple-like entablature resembling a rock tomb. Some had severely plain fronts pierced by doors and windows only, but even around these openings skilful chisels had traced wreaths of flowers and vines. Farther on the street widened away and descended into the heart of the abandoned quarry, where at the end of its gleaming vista sparkled a dark blue pond.

Completely removed from the noise and sweaty confusion of the city, the first impression of this little community was that of a sepulchral place set apart from the living interests of mankind. It seemed to brood upon its peculiar affairs exclusively, as if the inner moods of its troglodytical inhabitants were reflected by the single eye of the pool in the marble at the end of their curious avenue.

"This is where most of the holy images, shrines, and ecclesiastical carvings in this part of Italy are made," said Father Xavier. "Look, that is a forge over there." He pointed to a hole in the rock topped by a little chimney pot from which smoke and flames were issuing. "There are also several small potteries scattered about. Sculptors work here in both stone and wood. Those who apply colour are a separate fraternity and live farther down the street. I would not be surprised if the images of the gods had been made here when Genoa was a Roman town. Some of these places you can see from the weathered carvings escape the memory of man."

The priest's remarks had by now brought them before the arcaded shops. From these a continuous muffled thudding proceeded. Looking in, they saw a number of workmen with wooden mallets beating upon chamois skins. Stepping to the first window Father Xavier called loudly for "Messer Stefano." An artisan in a leather apron appeared at the door. Tall, thin, and very dark, there was something Egyptian about the man, as he stood peering out into the sunlight with hawklike eyes, small gold earrings, and a short leather apron. "Stefano, I have brought you some customers," said Father Xavier. The man hastened to lay aside his tools.

"This is the potentate of the whole street," whispered the priest to Anthony. "A rather remarkable fellow. You will have to do all your bargaining through him. Humour him. He regards himself with some justice as an artist and a philosopher."

The thudding in the shop had ceased. Only from the forge down the street a thin troll-like clinking could still be heard. As Father Xavier explained the nature of their errand to Messer Stefano at some length it seemed as though not only the padrone but the place itself was listening.

"Go on with your work in there," said Stefano after a while. The hammers of the gold beaters resumed.

"Since the captain here speaks nothing but English," concluded Father Xavier, "you will have to conduct your negotiations with Signore Adverse. You will find him not without a natural insight in this affair, a young gentleman of honour and sensibility, a former pupil of mine." The workman bowed slightly.

"And now," said Father Xavier, turning to Anthony unexpectedly and with a smile that was almost tremulous, "you see I have brought you as far as I can. It is time to say good-bye. Let it be here then."

"To see you again, and when, my father?"

Father Xavier wrung Anthony's hands and hurried up the street. At the mouth of the tunnel he turned. Anthony raised his hand in farewell. He saw that the priest was blessing him. Then he disappeared into the shadow of the tunnel behind.

"If the signori care to, I will show them about the street," said the voice of Stefano smooth but not obsequious. He led the way into the shop.

"All the shops here are now under my direction," the man continued a little proudly, "but the gold leaf is my special care. Would you like to see?"

He drew aside a chamois skin revealing the beautiful, yellow metal underneath spreading out from a lump in the middle in one shining sheet. He showed them the process. "Under a skilful hammer, you see, there will be no holes."

The captain was much impressed. "Wall, sir, I used to think my dad could make gold spread further than any living man. It would have hurt his pride to see this. He was pretty talented though. When I was nine years old he brought me a penny after a successful v'y'ge to Nassau. Sir, I had to show him that coin every Thanksgivin' for ten years. I've kept it so durned long I larned the only Latin off it I ever knowed. 'Expulsis piratus, resti-too-shia commercia.' Kick out the pirates and reopen the stores," he translated, flushed with his own learning. "And that penny was only copper, and here it is."

Stefano had managed to catch the Latin. "We are not pirates here," he said grievously displeased. Anthony was forced to explain. The man summoned a vague laugh from somewhere and laying down his hammer led them out again.

"You will find each little place given up to its own specialty, signore," he explained. "Trade in images has not been very good for nearly a hundred years. My grandfather remembered a better time. With the makers of holy images it now goes hard. War, it is always war! Few churches or shrines are being built. No one makes vows. It is mostly the women and antiquarians who buy now. I have been forced to control things here in Genoa. I buy up even the old figures and retouch them. Only a few of the most popular blesséd ones still sell. In here we make nothing but bambinos."

He threw open a door for them at the side of the street. Inside a number of boys and girls were preparing plaster and pouring it into moulds. From a drying kiln at one end of the room a girl returned with a tray full of white baby dolls and laid them before an old man who sat with brushes and various paints before him. They watched him a while.

"Do not vary the smile, Pietro," said their guide. "How often must I tell you? It is that one beatific expression of Buonarrotti's which I desire you to repeat. What do you know of ecstasy?"

"Si, si, padrone," said the artist deprecatingly as he retouched a few cherubic lips. "But memory plays me tricks with these smiles. I once had children of my own. You should have let me stay moulding resignation into holy hands. I was good at that."

"Not so good as you think," said Stefano as they went out.

"It is very difficult to have to make these artists always do the most perfect thing and keep repeating it," he continued as they went along further. "So many of them have their own ideas. And that would be well enough, signore, if this street were given over to secular art. But you see, in my case, in what I have undertaken to do here, the perfect examples both in life and art have already been given. It is restraint therefore and imitation that are needed . . .

"Si, I have thought much and often as to the effect of these statues upon those who will acquire them. They are to bring to mind the very image of the holy one whose intercession is sought or whose example is to be followed. In that, as in everything, a certain technique is necessary. Have you ever thought of that, signore? Without a technique, a bodily method for faith, morality, religion itself would perish. Without the church as one immortal corporation, without the methodology which it inculcates and even turns into a habit, the memory of divine things would be lost. Or it would be left in the minds of women to be told to babies. It is true most vital things are remembered that way from generation to generation. But our religion is not so simple as that. There must ever be images, concrete moulds into which it can be poured." He flung up his hands excitedly. "But, pardon me, I do not wish to bore you. You see this is my life work, my enthusiasm, this small street. It is not altogether that I live by it. I live in it." He checked himself somewhat embarrassed.

"Tell me what you think," said Anthony. "It is seldom that people will do so. I have often thought about what you are speaking of. Tell me, you would not have them worship the image itself?"

"I would not stop them," said Stefano. "What can you do with such minds as that but give them something outside themselves to adore? Let them play in their divine doll house. Let them dress their saints and be happy. Those who plague such people with abstract ideas about God are foolish. Is it not better to leave them with an image which may lead to something beyond?

"I am not speaking of philosophers and savants, my friend. They are idolaters of ideas. With them both the image and the technique of the ways of life they would inculcate are always lacking. Hence their dreams must be renewed every generation in adults, by the few who can read and understand. God forgive me, I hope I utter no heresy," he crossed himself, "but I have often thought it is not such a mystery after all that God should have embodied himself in human form. Otherwise he would have remained to us unknown, imageless, a vague voice in the winds, mystery in the landscape, the theory of some teacher, or the beautiful dream of an artist in some idol ugly or beautiful as sin. In Christ he became a body, the way, and the life. I believe; I know that." He wiped his brow with his sleeve.

"What is the man saying?" asked Captain Jorham, a little alarmed at being left out so long.

"He is talking about the image of God," said Anthony with secret enjoyment.

"Holy smoke, resti-too-shia commercia, let's be gettin' on!" snapped the captain.

"I see that your friend does not fully understand," said Stefano.

"What I was trying to tell you, signore," he hurried on in a lower voice, "is that in all my images here I have, for reasons that you can now surmise, tried to embody nothing but the most perfect attitudes and gestures. I have studied the works of the old artists in the days of great faith, and have chosen for each saint or bambino or madonna, even for Christ himself, those features which have been found to have the most appeal. Each one of these images is a lasting and a silent preacher. Come, let me show you something wonderful now."

He took out the key for the door before which they now stood. "These are too precious to be worked on except under supervision. The model here is of great value. It is part of the French spoil from Milan. Not now, not of this Buonaparte, but of the French kings many generations ago." He threw open the door.

"Only I and my assistant work here," he said. "All of these models are from my hands. See, here is the original." He pulled a cloth off an almost life-sized figure in the centre of the room where the light fell upon it from the door.

It was a Virgin and Child carved in some soft grained stone. Just the head and bust of a peasant woman wrapped in an ample medieval garment. The stone had been coloured and gilded and a great blue fold of the virgin's cloak swept down over her breast. In the folds of the deep hollow slept the child. It could not be seen from the front. It was completely concealed in the hollow. Only the folds of the cloak and the position of the woman's hands conveyed the fact that something infinitely precious was concealed there.

Stefano pointed to the hands and paid them the compliment of saying nothing at all. Then he turned to the models.

"You see we could not afford to reproduce this in stone," he said. "These are clay replicas. When they are first baked the colour is a little garish but if properly placed in the shadow the effect of the lines and the whole figure is admirable. I think we have caught what those hands are saying . . . and the wonderful sweeping fold!" He ran his hand over the bulge of the blue scarf with satisfaction.

"It is well reproduced, Messer Stefano," said Anthony, "but not so durable as the original I suppose."

"No, signore, but light, even porous, and easy to transport," said Stefano lifting one of the images. "See!"

"The biggest thing we've seen yet," said Captain Jorham. "You might start with one of these, mister." He peered over the edge of the fold. "Just as I thought, she's got a baby, too! The hul thing's complete. Better start in and make your dicker now. This is the kind of thing we want. Nothing small and cheap. How about some o' they life-sized figurines?"

With some censoring of the text Anthony translated.

"If it is large figures," said Stefano, "come this way."

He led them directly across the street and up a few steps into a kind of stone lean-to with its rear wall in the rock itself. Here standing in solemn tiers were twenty or thirty life-sized figures of saints and a large thorn-crowned Christ with the conventional anatomy of the bleeding heart exposed. Its expression of agony was so intense as to make a large St. Lawrence stretched out on his gridiron over terra cotta flames comparatively genial.

"That's the stuff," said Captain Jorham. "Some of them are a little cracked, too. They ought to be knocked down reasonable. Git busy, mister. Why not the hul lot?"

Stefano was surprised at the wholesale gusto of his customer. A little disgusted, too, Anthony could see. For that reason he began by bargaining for one of the fine clay figures of the Virgin they had just seen across the street. The man seemed somewhat mollified by this. After all the young gentleman did understand the pride of an artist.

"As your masterpiece," said Anthony, "we will give you for the model ten crowns less than you ask. And that, as you know, is more than meeting your expectations. For that reason, and because we shall be taking all of this old stock, you must make me, on worn figures at least, a more reasonable rate."

After an hour and a half of chaffering, by which time the captain's hat was shoved clear back on his head and his hands deep in his pockets, an agreement was in sight. Another half hour and it was agreed that Stefano should retouch and repaint where necessary. All of the "old holy ones" were to be made bright and new. It would take two days for the paint and gilding to dry. Anthony would call for them then and take them to the Wampanoag. It was also arranged that they should be transported in carriages. "Every respect must be shown them," explained Stefano. The excitement in the streets at so extensive a flitting of saints would undoubtedly be considerable. After some demur Captain Jorham agreed. He had once seen a religious riot at Lisbon.

"Tell him we'll even put 'em to bed when we get 'em aboard," he said. "I mean it. It won't do to have any of these people breakin' loose in the hold. Besides somethin' might shatter 'em if the cargo shifted. Now how about them marble blocks for ballast?"

But this could not be arranged. It would take weeks to drill the holes.

"Never thought of that," said Captain Elisha. "Ask him about some plain marble slabs. I can batten them down I calalate. We want weight, weight! There ain't profit in water ballast. The crew drinks it."

It was possible to arrange for the slabs. Captain Elisha looked very pleased. The total outlay had not been large and he had obtained more statuary than he had thought possible. They adjourned to Stefano's hut and sealed the bargain over a bottle of bad wine. By sunset they were back on board the brig.

"And a couple of days will just give us time to load stores, water the ship, and do a little calkin' along the water line where that Portegee bumboat rammed her," mouthed the captain through a mouthful of Philadelphia's grub, "and lay in a few kegs of wine," he added looking his wife in the eye. "Say, Jane, don't 'e look solemn about that. Wait till you see who's comin' aboard to keep you company. Taewsday mornin'. Whew!" He paused for a minute with his fork and knife held bolt upright.

"Right on that Putnam sideboard is going to be a heathen idol--with a baby. It's the prize o' the hul lot. It goes to Havaner in the cabin!" He cut a piece of salt pork at one blow. "As for the rest of 'em, there's five empty bunks in the fo'c'sle. I'd like to see the British come aboard now with a press gang. They'd have to prove Jesus Christ was born in Sussex. Still," said he rapping on wood, "some of them post captains could do that all right. It ud take God A'mighty to stop 'em. That it would." He poured some hot water into his rum.

"Mister, you're a macaroni mate and you can't hand, reef, nor steer. But you're goin' to have a hul starboard watch with haloes, and a cargo of tombstones for ballast. There's only one thing I got to say to you as captain of this holy ship. I don't want no miracles occurrin' when I'm below. Do you hear? That goes!" He left the fork quivering in the table.

"Now you get your charts and we'll lay out the course."

The lines about Captain Jorham's mouth began to be a little more drawn as he imbibed a large pitcher of "dog's nose." He gradually became silent and morose as the evening wore away and his wife knitted and knitted.

"More baby clothes?" said the captain at ten o'clock by the chronometer when they prepared to turn in. She nodded and closed the panel. The captain drew off his heavy boots.

"Mister," said he, "you'll do the navigatin'? You kin?" He looked anxious.

Anthony felt sure of it. He took out his new sextant that Mr. Bonnyfeather had given him. The latest London make, he noted. By degrees and by degrees he would soon be slipping over into new latitudes. He went on deck for a while and looked again at the city.

In his room at the Palazzo Brignole, Father Xavier fumbling in his pocket for his pipe found the flower he had picked from the empty basin in the garden that morning. It seemed to him as it lay in his palm that he had also permitted that to wither. His hand shook slightly. But what could one do with wild flowers? Leave them to the winds of God? A sorry argument about predestination failed to comfort his soul. His dreams were sorrowful.

On the Wampanoag next morning they began to bend on a suit of new sails.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE PILLARS OF HERCULES

Captain Jorham had miscalculated. Nearly a week passed before the Wampanoag could put to sea. Much against his better judgment, because he was so short-handed, he was forced to ship some "Spanish riff-raff" and a few "select" British deserters hanging about the docks at Genoa. The latter, after they sobered up, proved willing hands enough. At least they could be counted on to keep a weather-eye peeled for king's ships. And above all else Captain Elisha was anxious to give British cruisers a wide berth.

At last the brig was watered and her cargo stowed. Five saints were lashed in the fo'c'sle bunks and the grumbling men told to swing hammocks. Late one afternoon they hoisted the anchor merrily enough and a few hours later sunk the peaks which gird in the Gulf of Genoa under the northern horizon.

Under a complete suit of new sails the ship bowled along famously. Philadelphia, happy with an ample supply of olive wood, his favourite fuel, sang at the door of his little galley now surrounded by chicken coops. Forward, two pigs, a milch goat and her kids, and a number of ducks and geese swelled a bucolic chorus that sang of good fare to come.

Captain Jorham had reverted to a kind of man-o'-war discipline for his now motley crew, a discipline with which as an ex-privateersman he was familiar. One Jeb Collins, a middle-aged down-easter with iron-grey hair and a rasping voice, had been appointed "quartermaster" with the authority but not the wages of a second mate. Under the press of sail which the brig was carrying, both of the watches were kept pretty constantly on deck. Captain Jorham had not seen fit to appoint Anthony to either. He took one himself and gave the other to Collins. In the strong and continually freshening breeze pouring out of the east he carried sail till the weather shrouds sang a higher note.

Mrs. Jorham was the only member of the crew who persistently kept below. She sat in her cabin and contemplated with an indignation which only she could control the large terra cotta figure of the Virgin Mary that now occupied the place of her copper coffee urn on the Putnam sideboard. A little less than life-sized, the statue seemed to have thrust aside the urn, which was Mrs. Jorham's chief pride, in wanton intrusion. It occurred to Mrs. Jorham that the Virgin kept wrapping the folds of her ample, blue cloak about her with a calm aloofness that amounted to provocative disdain.

It was only an added exasperation to the captain's wife to find that in the deep fold over the statue's right shoulder a baby lay concealed. Aside from sectarian scruples about "idols," she had also certain personal reasons which made even the statue of a woman with a child in her arms, especially when it was snugly ensconced in her own cabin, peculiarly hard to bear. Besides, as she continued to look at it--and she could scarcely avoid doing so--in the atmosphere of her lonely reveries the thing began to take on the elements of a living personality. She caught herself giving it from time to time a caustic piece of her mind.

That her husband had inflicted this reminder upon her seemed a piece of deliberate cruelty and reproach. Her only consolation was, if he had not been drinking he would not have done so. But in the obstinate state which the captain had now reached, and took care to increase from day to day, remonstrance would be useless. His only reply would be to mix himself another dog's nose. Furthermore, with the primary cause of her husband's drinking Mrs. Jorham was to some extent forced to sympathize. Indeed, she reproached herself in a Biblical manner with having been responsible for it.

Up until now the captain had kept the deck. But the delay at Genoa had advanced his potable calendar considerably, and she foreboded his early and complete retirement to the cabin in no very complacent mood. Meanwhile she sat there reduced to silence, minding her knitting, and brushing away an occasional mist of stinging tears. Under these circumstances she felt it would have been some company and no little protection to have had the new mate keep to the cabin more than he did.

Anthony, however, kept the deck early and late. He was anxious to pick up every item of nautical lore that might come his way, and that in as short a time as possible. His position on the ship was, he realized himself, somewhat ridiculous. To the crew as well as to the captain he was already known as the "macaroni mate." Neither the captain nor the men paid much attention to him at first. He was, as Captain Jorham had said, strictly "ex-officio." He had been inclined to accept this position more or less, but during a dog watch at Genoa Collins, the quartermaster, had leaned over the bulwarks with him one evening while they watched the lights of the city coming out one by one, and unburdened his mind.

"Before we git into the trades, Mr. Adverse, you'll find yourself in real charge," said the quartermaster. "I know the skipper, and he ain't d-ue to last tew long as things are going na-ow. Ye're mate on the roster, and ye'll find that mate ye'll have to be. Na-ow I'll clew all I can, but you might keep that in mind. Authority's authority, and ye either are, air ye ain't."

So Anthony kept it in mind. To be lost on the Atlantic with a ship and crew--to be lost there! It haunted his dreams. He could only pray that Captain Jorham would last. But wishes soon became ridiculous. Already it was a miracle how Captain Elisha could keep going as he did.

"He counts on gittin' us through the Straits," said Collins. "And then--"

"Ah, and then!" thought Anthony. He was glad he had spent his life more or less about ships around the docks at Livorno. The nomenclature and the lingo were familiar. He began now to memorize commands. But above all he began to furbish up his navigation. He even wished he had listened to the mad Mr. Williams' theory of lunar longitude. The Wampanoag's chronometer was obviously a joke. He made a few friends among the older members of the crew. Once at sea he went up on the yards to shake out or take in sail. Collins at least was for him. That was one comfort. And he had learned the ship from trucks to keelson at Genoa while she was lading. After a week he felt the men respected him even if they laughed. He laughed with them, and kept the deck. The first noon out he brought up his sextant but the captain would have none of it.

"Lay off that, mister, till I give the word. I don't need that contraption to tell where we're at na-ow."

"The old man's awful techy about shootin' the sun," whispered Collins. "He'll try to go by dead reckonin' when he kin."

So the new sextant went back to the cabin. But the men had seen it, and some of the old hands who had sailed with Captain Jorham before looked pleased.

The captain's method of navigation, since his faith had been shattered some years before in his pet sextant, was, although he did not condescend to explain it, abundantly plain. In the Mediterranean it consisted in coasting from one well-known landfall to another. In wider, ampler oceans of late years his progress had become truly wonderful. Each voyage had rivalled that of Columbus in view of the possible mysteries ahead. One grand fact had consoled him. Sailing east from Amurakee one was bound to reach U-rup. Undoubtedly the converse might also be true. At any rate he was about to put it to a pragmatic test. In the meantime in a comparatively small place like the Mediterranean he felt at home. With two ex-whalers for lookouts he continued to crack on sail unmercifully.

Once the bend in the coast by Genoa was out of sight he took a long southern slant till he raised the peaks of Corsica. A day later the fishing boats making for Ajaccio allowed him to mark himself down as about 42 N. and 8 E. After that it was comparatively easy going for a while. The east wind, which held and continued to freshen a little every day, suited him well. On that tack the Wampanoag was at her best. He merely squared away a little to be sure to pass to leeward of Asinara and then ran down the coast of Sardinia as far as S. Pietro.

"Call it thirty-nine North," said Captain Elisha. "Gib is just thirty-six and away, and away west."

But he frowned a little as he looked at the chart. The bulge in the coast of Africa was somewhat confusing. He wanted to give Port Mahon and the Balearics a wide berth on account of British cruisers. To make, as he put it, "a good southing" before he squared away before the wind for the Straits. Part of Africa, however, appeared to be in the way. And Algiers was an unhealthy neighbourhood. Between the horns of this dilemma, Algiers and Minorca, he lingered over the chart for an hour or two. The application of a third dog's nose he was glad to see had straightened out the coast of Africa. "Well, he would hold on south; take a good plenty south." And he did so.

Next day the wind showed every sign of freshening to a blow. With some difficulty Collins got permission to reduce sail and finally to send down the royal and t'gallant masts. Not only the ship but its new mate now rode much easier. Watching the yards roll against the sky while the spars came down had given Anthony his first serious qualms. Nothing, however, could persuade the captain to follow the example of several other ships and head west. Collins was obviously worried at this obstinacy.

"Git a sight today if ye kin, Mr. Adverse," he managed to say while the men were lashing the lower topmasts to the shrouds with extra precautions. "This here weather looks like a little patch o' clear before a big blow. For God's sake take advantage of it. I'll try to keep the skipper below at noon. Seems like I could smell Afriky."

When Anthony came up with his sextant a few hours later both the deck and the horizon were momentarily clear. Taking advantage of a patch of clear sky just at noon, when the scud which had been driving for some hours luckily opened out overhead, he made his first observation at sea.

When he worked out his position he made it to be much farther south than the captain's longest guess would admit. Africa must be not far over the southern horizon. He said so, but somewhat too diffidently.

Ordinarily Captain Elisha would have given heed and taken the credit to himself. Under influences more potent than the calculations of his merely titular mate he now argued and held on. He was convinced at dawn by a frantic voice from the masthead and a not too distant glimpse of a long beach dead ahead where breakers bared their fangs and endless sand dunes smoked in the gale. For a few hours he was somewhat sobered. The ship was instantly put before the wind which swept her westward. The trend of the coast soon caused them to man the port braces and give the brig a safe northern slant. After that they all breathed easier.

"Drunken man's luck it wasn't a lee shore," muttered Collins to Anthony. "We'll git more wind sure before tonight."

The incident proved a fortunate one for Anthony. In the estimation of all hands he advanced considerably. A certain subdued humorous tolerance with which he had so far been treated now gave way to a more serious acceptance and respect. From that time on his appearance on deck with a sextant was hailed by the older members of the crew in particular with a secret sigh of relief. The vagaries of the captain's navigation even when sober were only too well known. It was not long before Anthony discovered the cause.

The captain's sextant, he found after a little checking, had once been repaired and its angle altered. Evidently it had had a fall some time prior to the American Revolution. Consequently the more accurate the observation the more certain the error. It was only a few seconds--but at the end of a voyage! To amuse himself he worked out a table of compensation.

But of all this he determined for the time being to say nothing. In the captain's present mood it would do no good. And knowledge was power. Excellent seaman as Captain Jorham ordinarily was, should the mixing of dogs' noses continue, Anthony was by no means certain how much responsibility might not yet rest on the inexperienced shoulders of his mate. It would be well to keep safe what little claim to authority he had. With this Mrs. Jorham and the now greatly perturbed Collins agreed.

Indeed, from the time of their brief glimpse of Africa dead ahead Anthony worked out the course daily with the aid of the quartermaster. The captain was already moving in spheres without parallels, a diviner ether and an ampler air. The cabin itself had begun to take on a peculiar air of unreality which Anthony could scarcely account for. In this both the captain and his wife seemed to have an equal share. He took the charts out of this realm of speculation into the more sober and ecclesiastical fo'c'sle.

"Necessity makes strange bedfellows, indeed," Anthony thought as he and Jeb Collins fumbled over the charts, laying out the compass bearings for the day while surrounded by several bunks full of Christian martyrs and saints. The whale-oil lamp overhead swung with the motion of the ship causing murky shadows to chase over the face of the map like little clouds over a miniature landscape. The face of St. Lawrence who was lashed on his gridiron to the forward bulkhead grew alternately dark and pale. Beneath him the terra cotta flames continued to flicker. Someone, Anthony noticed, had put a tarpaulin over Christ. St. Catherine's wheel was hung with oilskins and gear.

"It's a turrible time on this little ship when the skipper begins wallerin' in grog," remarked Collins looking about a little apprehensively. "Luck's usually with him even then, I dew allow, but it don't seem right to tempt it tew far by lashin' all these heathen people in a Christian fo'c'sle. 'Sides, 'tain't shipshape. I kivered that awful bleedin' heart myself. Looked like murder and mutiny on board."

He turned to the chart again with a distinct look of relief.

"Lay it a good deal north of west, Mr. Adverse. Ye'll be wantin' to give them Sallee rovers a wide berth and yet not nose tew near Minorca. Call it nor'west by north, that's about right till tomorrow allowin' fer what you said the variation is. She logs about ten knots in this breeze. Ye can see where that ul git you tomorrow noon. Hope ye can git the sun then. Maybe? But as I've been sayin' all erlong it's comin' on to bla-ow. We're not far enough off the coast yet to suit me."

They went up on deck together. Astern, between the low slate-coloured cloud that covered them like the roof of a cave, and the leaden floor of the sea below, was a long bright streak, green, intensely clear, and apparently gaining on them fast. A flock of gulls streamed past screaming, going downwind. Beyond the clear streak Anthony thought he could see land. A long range of sombre hills wrought with a freedom that only ruthless nature could attain were lifting sullen, tortured peaks above the horizon. Suddenly a hellish glow of sunset flashed redly from peak to peak. As if returning an answer their dark battlements lightened and winked with sheets of internal flame. Their pinnacles started to wither away. From beneath them endless lines of mad cavalry with white tossing manes came galloping down on the ship. The rumble of distant artillery rang around the horizon, a volley of bullet-like hail spattered the sails and deck.

"Land O," roared the lookout.

As if warned by instinct Captain Elisha instantly appeared on the quarter-deck.

"Ready about, take your stations for stays," he roared through his speaking trumpet.

"Stations!" howled Collins. "Git 'em up, Mr. Adverse, don't lose no time. There's no chance to strip her now." His whistle shrilled.

"Put the helm da-own," bellowed the captain.

The Wampanoag shot around into the wind her canvas slatting and thundering. Warned by the pother overhead as much as by Collins' now profane encouragements the men were at their stations before the ship teetered into the eye of the wind. As if she had received a sudden blow from a furious fist the Wampanoag was taken aback.

"Haul taut! Mainsail haul!" bellowed the enormous trumpet. The aft sails moved around together and filled with a loud report. The yards were braced up. "Let go and haul," commanded the trumpet. Anthony saw the foreyards come round and the canvas bellow out. The jibs were sheeted home. With a great bound under the first full impulse of the gale the brig dashed off on the opposite tack. The men went about coiling up ropes as if nothing had happened.

The cause of all this had been a glimpse of Cape Carthage to leeward. The manoeuvre was repeated again several times that night. The captain remained on deck for hours until he had worked well out to the northward into the open sea.

Under the outward buffeting of the elements and the internal refreshment with which Philadelphia constantly supplied him, the captain seemed that night to surpass the usual limits of human personality. He stood behind the steersman with his legs braced far apart in what appeared to Anthony to be seven league sea boots. The foam and spume streamed off his oilskins that fluttered in occasional wild glimpses of moonlight like infernal rags. As the night wore on his voice took on more and more of a brazen quality. He drove his crew and his ship hour by hour clawing off the coast of Africa, thrashing along now on a short, mad stretch to leeward, and now beating up into the teeth of the wind. The rigging shrieked and the bows of the Wampanoag thundered and foamed. In the tireless figure on the quarter-deck at home in the storm, Anthony thought he could glimpse a more colossal emanation of the man who had been at one with the world when he sat in the carriage at Genoa watching the sunset. It was the curious quality of this man that he seemed during the night to grow in stature, to be an antidote for fear. Perhaps it was the immense brazen voice from the trumpet that all obeyed. Perhaps? When the dawn broke Anthony was surprised to see again that Captain Jorham was really not so tall. A rather short figure if you looked closely.

About dawn the brig was put before the wind again. From now on it would be a straight run for the Straits. During the night she had been stripped of canvas and was driving with nothing but a reefed foresail, a spanker, and a jib to keep her from yawing. There were two men at the wheel, for the seas were now coming on so fast from behind as to kick her stern at times almost clear of the water. The drag when she settled back again was terrific. Four arms on the spokes were none too many. They shook out a reef in the foresail but it was not enough--another. She continued to plunge more determinedly.

"It'll never do to broach to na-ow," shouted the captain in Anthony's ear as an unusually large wave rose and combed just aft of the taffrail only to break and go hissing by.

"Na-ow's the time to get a little more drag on her for'd. Do you see, mister?" he roared, pointing to some of the crew busy rigging preventer stays to the foretopmast, "I'm going to give her a double reefed foretops'l."

Presently there was a report as if a small cannon had been fired and streams of ripped canvas whipped about frantically, beating the crew off the yard. Collins drove them back and made them cut it loose. It was snatched to leeward.

"The old sail," said the captain. "Thought we'd try that first. Na-ow watch. Ye might have to do this sometime."

He went forward banging on the scuttle for the other watch who came tumbling up. The new sail was hoisted and bent on slowly with extra lashings. When it opened out they let it blow away clear of the lower yard. For a moment it stood out flat and clear like a horizontal banner streaming forward. At that instant the captain roared and it was sheeted home to the lower yard with an even pull on both tackles.

The brig leaped ahead. The men at the wheel wrestled with the spokes over a brief "S"-shaped course that soon flattened out into a clear wake of bubbles left straight behind. Aft, the waves still rose now as before, followed, but fell astern. Captain Jorham returned to the quarter-deck and spat over the side. He cupped his hands to shout. "Never let 'em slat back on ye. Ye hev to sheet home jes' so. If ye let the blocks whip back and tangle, ye're gorn!"

They stood together a while watching the ship tear through the crests and race down into the hollows beyond as if in mad pursuit of some invisible prey. But she rose now and seemed to be lifted ahead, the sails booming as they came up out of the valleys of water into the full force of the wind.

Under the pressure of her increased canvas the Wampanoag was whipped forward at startling speed. Anthony could feel transferred to his own body her wild desire to twist and lay-to which the men at the wheel constantly checked. It must be certain, he thought, that something would go. In reality it was only a good hearty gale, but to his inexperience it seemed a hurricane. When the gusts came he waited for an ominous crack overhead, having no adequate idea of the relative strength of yards, cordage, and ship's timbers. So he stood for hours, watching, but nothing happened. The ship had been made for this, he had to admit at last.

The bell was struck with the spray and rain streaming off it. The men at the wheel and the watches were relieved regularly. Old Collins heaved the log. The wind keened through the rigging, and the turmoil of waters raced by. As the sun sank at last in a red mist and the horizon narrowed to the ship's dimensions he began to feel confident again. Soon even the ship disappeared except for a few feet of deck and a dim tracery aloft. He was alone in the universe standing on something. A few feet aft the bearded face of a sailor smoking a pipe seemed to be floating without a body over the feeble glow of the binnacle. Only when the ship rolled could you sense the man's body eclipsing a few misty stars. A faint glimmer from the stern windows followed and followed over the tossing wake. The sound of hissing and foaming was muffled by monotony. An endless, meaningless story told in a mad liquid tongue, it was. Its constant narrative was unimportant, only its cessation or a complete change of tone could be significant. It was the same with the sails. They would go on that way and go on--till the wind changed. He turned and went below.

As he slid the scuttle hood over his head and descended into the cabin the piping of the gale and the song of the rigging was suddenly cut off and made infinitely remote. It was a relief to escape it. Then the curious face at the aft end of the cabin was looking at him. He paused half-way on the ladder listening, missing the noise of wind and water, only to become aware gradually of the internal life of the ship.

It was a kind of suspended motion accompanied by muffled cracklings, strainings and squeaks, groans and the hushed swishing of water under the keel. The floor of the cabin tilted always to another angle, poised, tilted again, slid, and climbed. A long gurgle of bilge water bubbled and stopped like a drowned flute at every subsidence. Clothes suspended from hooks pointed to the middle of the floor only to find the ship's sides nuzzling them. They had not moved. And to all of this there was a kind of inexpressible rhythm, a repetition which no one could predict or remember. But it went on.

Yet the main impression of the cabin bathed in its smoky yellow light was that those who sat there were waiting for something inevitable to happen. As Anthony stood on the ladder and looked about him he was instantly aware of it. Yet he could not account for it at all. It was like listening behind a closed door for someone he knew was there but who made no sign. Mrs. Jorham was knitting. She did not even look up. Philadelphia was laying the table, noiselessly. Captain Jorham was nodding with his mouth open. Yet they were waiting--not for him. The shadows slipped slowly from side to side. The lamp hummed as if a moth were in it. The Virgin wrapped her cloak about her and looked in its folds. He came down slowly, peeled off his heavy wet coat and sat in his bunk. The air was not so fresh down here. He was tired and perhaps a little dizzy.

The same impression that he had going to Genoa came over him. He was not moving at all. The sea outside, the shadows, the events in the cabin were all coming out of somewhere and going past him. He, watching this vague panorama, remained still. Yes, the long corridors in Father Xavier's house with all the frescoes in the wall had gone past him. It was all like walking in a treadmill. The convent, the days at the Casa and the streets of Livorno, Faith, Angela, Vincent, Genoa--tonight in the cabin was going by like that. It had all come out of the darkness into the light of his eyes and returned into the darkness again. Dreams of it remained in memory. There was more, more to come. You could not stop it. You walked to the last rung in the treadmill--and then? Travel! He laughed silently as the side of the ship pressed itself against him.

Mrs. Jorham beckoned for him to come and eat but he could not. He felt decidedly dizzy and tired after the long day. He wished the ship would stay still. It kept moving about him as the centre of everything, sickeningly. He began to talk to Mrs. Jorham in a low voice through which now and then over his own monotone he could catch the loud ticks of the clumsy chronometer. It sounded like a treadmill. What she replied he could not remember. After a while he went on deck again. In the darkness--he was glad of the darkness--he was very sick.

The fit passed. For a day or two he was dizzy, then very clear again. The motion of the ship no longer troubled him. He was going with it now. He forgot it although the wind had increased if anything. Captain Jorham had added a storm staysail in the teeth of it and the brig rode steadier.

Anthony often wondered what would have happened to them if Captain Jorham had taken to his bunk before they were clear of the Straits. For days now it had not been possible to get a sight of the sun. The ship had been swept steadily westward in a smother of spume half the time with a pall of rolling, dark clouds driving over her and billowing down so low sometimes as to seem about to touch the masts. Through all this pother of the elements Captain Elisha carried his ship by dead reckoning and sea instinct. To him the currents, the tides, the very colour of the water were guides. They scarcely had a glimpse of the stars. At last there were some signs of a break in the gale. The men in the tops watched eagerly for a landfall.

It came suddenly, and unexpectedly to starboard. One day at noon the pall overhead lightened, the sun struggled through. Before them the wind seemed to be tearing the clouds to rags. Without the least warning, as if a curtain had been raised, long lines of snow-capped mountains were seen marching on their right. Sixty miles inland the wild hills of the Sierra Nevadas rose above the brown plains of Granada with continental fragments of dark cloud-bank breaking against them, clouds rolling up in white mist, filing through the passes, and being driven and harried westward along the slopes. An interplay of swiftly moving titanic shadows turned the long coasts of Spain fading away before them to the southeast into a Satanic country lit inland by infernal gleams.

"That's Cape Gata," said Captain Jorham, indicating a point of land with a few white houses and a fierce surf leaping up about a small, stone battery. "And it's darn lucky if there ain't a British frigate anchored under its lee." He gave the Wampanoag a sharp sheer to the south. "We're too far north this time. Sartin we did miss Algiers all right, by about two hundred miles, and there's a nasty current along here that helps the British right up to Port Mahon. We'll jes' hev to run for it now. Gib is about a day's sail away."

He turned and whistled loudly through his fingers.

"Lord send this wind holds. Mister, do you know what gettin' through the Straits means? Sounds simple na-ow, doesn't it? Wall, sir, in 'ninety-two I was hangin' out at Luff's boarding house at Gib with five other skippers, mostly British, for six 'tarnal weeks while the west wind bla-ew and bla-ew. There's alers a five to six knot current settin' in through the Straits but a long westerly bla-ow makes it worse. There's eddies then that jes' swallers fishers and small craft. Wall, the seventh week I says to myself, ''Lisha, you're gittin' barnacles on the sole o' your trousers,' says I. So I ups anchor and in two days I beats out after p'intin' back and forth between Tarifa and Tangier till I thought I'd wear out the gudgeons. Y' see I knowed all o' them five other skippers was up on O'Hara's Folly with glasses lawfin' like loons. Y' see? Na-ow somethin' happened to the current and one arternoon I jes' sailed up to Trafalgar. Nor that ain't all. I got a cargo at Cadiz and took it round to Lisbon. 'N I filled up with wine and shoes there for the garrison and come back on the same wind, and there was all five o' them Britishers still settin' ra-ound the table at Luff's with corns on their tails. 'Officer, give me one penny for de bread, I say, officer, give me one penny for de bread,' says I, stickin' my knot in over the geraniums. Wall, sir, there was enough crockery come through that winder to furnish an admiral's galley. And that's true, and that's the Straits." He whistled again through his fingers shrilly. Collins laughed.

Next morning Calpe and Abyla, the two immortal pillars, rose superbly before them towering above the surrounding mountains. The gale was blowing itself out. But there was a choppy sea tossing in the Straits. They passed a British ship of the line wallowing drunkenly into Gibraltar with her topmasts housed and only her courses set. The great rollers swept her sides, now exposing her gleaming copper and now leaping to her third line of gun ports, smothering her in spray from time to time. The Wampanoag fled past her and down the narrow gulf with a line of mountains on either side and the strong wind behind. The topmasts were being sent up again. Before the Rock lay behind them the brig was once more a tall ship.

They burst out into the Atlantic with long curtains of rain overtaking them as the gale finally blew itself out in a succession of dying squalls. A rare display of rainbows grew and withered, arching away into the hills toward Tangier. Land birds came and perched on the masts. Gulls cried peevishly behind till a fierce lanner came and drove them away.

"Golondrina, señor," said a Spanish sailor to Anthony, scooping up a tired bird from the deck and warming him in his hands. "From my country, over there." The man had a young, ardent face and sensitive fingers that trembled over the bird. Anthony felt sorry for him. The sailor stood leaning over the bulwarks gazing at the white villages among the mountains. Suddenly he pointed toward a lighthouse with a small, red-roofed town clustered about it; orange trees, and barren hills behind. He took off his red, tasselled cap and his eyes shone.

"My town," he cried, "Tarifa! Pardon, señor. Ah, the girls of my town! They have the true gracia. Have you seen the Andalusian women yet? No! Your eyes have not yet then been completed!" He leaned over the bird in his hand. "See, its head is small but it has true wisdom there, señor. It knows enough to fly home. El saber nunca ocupa lugar. Fly, golondrina, to the little house under the tower," he whispered. Anthony could not hear the rest. The man smiled and cast it into the air. It circled and made off for Spain. "The last point of Europe!" the sailor cried stretching out his arms, "my town! You return, swallow, and I, I, Juan Garcia, I go to Cuba and there are no graciosas there. Ah, adiós, hermosa, bendita sea la tierra que tu pesas."

"It is a beautiful place," said Anthony looking after the departing bird, "Europe, old and noble."

"Sí, sí, señor, sí, sí!" The young sailor's face glowed.

"Pipe down, onion," shouted Collins from the wheel, glaring with his cold, blue eyes.

The man's face darkened. He turned with a magnificent gesture to Anthony. "Señor mío, le beso a usted la mano; y sí hay algo en que le puedo servir tiene usted--aquí!"

"Belay that," thundered the voice. But the youth stalked forward ignoring the quartermaster.

"Don't let 'em hornswaggle ye, Mr. Adverse," warned Collins. "I'm tellin' ye. A louse like him has enough garlic on his breath to start a kippered herring fer home let alone a bird. For a peso he'd stick a knife in your back."

"It's a beautiful morning, isn't it, Collins?" said Anthony suddenly, and looking him in the eye. "I'm proud to be the first officer of a ship on such a day. Did you ever hear this, Collins?

'Loud uttering satire, day and night, on each
Succeeding race and little pompous work
Of man.'

That you, Collins?"

"Not egg-zactly, sir, not day and night, sir. I wouldn't say that." The man shifted his quid. "Sartainly not to the first officer on a beautiful mornin'."

He twisted his lock. They looked at each other and laughed. "All right, then," said Anthony, "all right!"--and went below. Collins gave a slight whistle, but not for more wind. They were in the Atlantic now and the only man on board who could use a sextant was to be respected. A little later Captain Jorham came up with his glasses and swept the horizon. His legs were behaving independently and that was a bad sign.

Another bad sign was the topsails of a great English convoy coming down from the direction of Cadiz. Captain Jorham had no desire to bring down some fast sloops of war to investigate his intentions. He soon lost the convoy by cracking on every yard of canvas the Wampanoag could carry.

The little brig bloomed out sail after sail till she towered from deck to royalmasts with everything that would draw. The stu'nsail booms were got up and rigged. The jibs were guyed out. Above the royals were skysails. A balloon sail was the skipper's especial pet. It fluttered now and then when she luffed a little. The skipper sat on the bulwarks and kept his eye on it and, "Ease her, ease her," and "now a rap full," he would say to the man at the wheel, "and hold her there."

"Aye, aye," muttered the hand, nervously turning his quid.

"Yankee skipper, comin' down the river," hummed the captain to himself, unconsciously patting the ship's rail.

"Now you're walking out like a flea onto the belly of the world, old gel.

"There's nothin' but blue water between here and Bermudy. Mister, it's clearin' fine," he said, turning suddenly to Anthony. "You can take all the sights you want to na-ow. That there promontory to the south is Cape Spartel, and yonder north over the convoy is Barbate. We're just about the middle o' the entrance to the Straits and that's so nigh exactly thirty-six North and six East that you can mark that off on the chart and take it as your jumpin' off place for the v'y'ge. Na-ow lay a course for jes' west o' the Azores, say, thirty-two--forty. You might sight Corva. Keep nor'west of it if you do. You'll pick up the Northeast Trade thereaba-outs this time of year, and from then on it's plain dumb-fool sailin' to the Indies. You jes' let the wind push you. Run from any sail ye see and don't borrow no trouble. Me--I've got a good deal of trouble on my mind. Na-ow I'm goin' below, and don't you call me unless you're chased or it comes on to bla-ow. Short of suthin', call it nothin', and leave me with God!"

He collapsed his telescope with a final snap, and hitching a little sideways scuttled below like a crab.

"Sounds to me like Old Stormalong's resignin'," said Collins as the captain's shoulders disappeared into the cabin followed soon after by Philadelphia with a steaming pot of coffee. "But it'll take more than coffee and a dog's nose to sniff us safe past the Azores unless we want to fetch up on one o' them palmy isles. I remember oncet in the Pacific, when the skipper went off on a long spell like this. We jes' drifted round like the ark for a month, and no doves never came back neither. What do you Noah about that?" chuckled the quartermaster closing one eye solemnly. "Wall, he finally sobered up and brought her round the Horn.

"Mr. Adverse, if I know the signs of the skipper's weather, 'n I ort to, arter sailin' with him since 'eighty-two," continued Collins hemming and hawing a little at having to discuss his captain's vagaries, "it's goin' to be right wet from here to Havaner. And that leaves it pretty well up to you and me." He took a turn or two considering.

"Na-ow," he took another turn and hitched his trousers.

"Na-ow, how would it be if you left the deck to me and I left the navigatin' to you, 'cept fer heavin' the log and markin' up the slate and sich like. I'm askin' you since you're mate now o-fficially."

"Is it orders you want?" asked Anthony admiring the wise little bantam of a man with a black silk handkerchief knotted dapperly about his tanned neck and a silver whistle thrust in his pocket.

The quartermaster nodded.

"Very well then, take charge of the deck," said Anthony. "I think I can find out where we are. I have my own sextant, you know."

"That's one blessin'," said Collins. He tugged at his forelock. "I'm glad you realize the sitooation, Mr. Adverse. But I wonder if you dew? Let's git rid of ears yonder and I'll partikilarize."

He went to the wheel, and sending the man there forward, began to con the ship himself, running his eyes over the sails constantly and taking advantage of every puff and slant to get the most out of her. Presently he had Anthony in his place, directing him with one hand on the wheel himself.

"Ye have to develop a feel for the thing and that comes slowly. Steady na-ow, bear da-own, sir. Ye keep a kind o' constant balance against the pull. It would never do to be taken aback carryin' everything as we are now. It might yank all the sticks out of her. Ye have to watch like a hawk for squalls, tew. A small cloud on the horizon and white water comin' down fast, that's trouble! I'm going to strip some of the canvas off soon as we're sure the skipper and the Almighty are tetertate like he indicated they would be soon. Less hurry the more speed when ye're short-handed like we are. The old hooker's a fast one though!"

Feeling the ship as it were in his grasp, Anthony stood fascinated but with every sense alive, watching her sway over the long grey seas; hearing the wash and gurgle about the rudder behind. To the quiet voice of Collins which continued in his ears the sea was providing a half-musical accompaniment.

"Na-ow as I was sayin', when I sent the man for'd--every sailor has ears and eyes in the back of his head, ye know--as I was sayin', our sitooation ain't comical. It's like this. The skipper's off again. He usually goes on till he has the squeegees. That may take two weeks, or yet a month. 'Tain't snakes. It's his dead baby what comes back. He hears her. Na-ow it won't do to let the crew get wind o' that, cause they'd see her. Ye see I know. This here is my 'steenth v'y'ge with the cap'n.

"He's a kind o' curious one. There ain't a better skipper afloat. He made a fortune or two on some Canton runs. Then he married him a wife--below now--and built a fa-ine house at Scituate, lookout and all. Meant to settle down. Wall, they lost their only little gal. About three years old, she was. And after that he started to go to pot on land. They dew say his house was baby-haunted. Nobody won't live there since. But I dunno. Anyway him and his wife up and cleared out. He left her to home for one v'y'ge and it was then I heard tell her baby came back. Anyway the Missus wouldn't stay on, and he'd drunk up his money or lost it on some venture or other. The Wampanoag is all he's got, for the house can't be sold or rented. There's lots of skippers laughs at him for havin' his Missus aboard, but believe me, he needs her, and I'll say she dew look after him wonderful. Besides, she never said it, but I'm sure she's scairt to stay behind.

"Wall, you see how it is. I said fer ye to look after the sun and the charts, but you'll have the cabin on yer hands too, Mr. Adverse. That won't be easy. Ye got to keep the old man below. Give him liquor and humour him. Git him over it. If he gits on deck there'll be hell to pay. Wait till he begins to hear that baby walkin'. Paddlin' footsteps on the deck, Mr. Adverse! Mrs. Jorham'll do the rest. She knows how to peter off after the horrors. A little less every day. As fer me na-ow, I'll get the ship to Havaner if ye can give me some notion where we are every day or so. Na-ow then I'll take her over, I expect."

He resumed the wheel and squared his shoulders as if he felt the mantle of authority settling on them.

"Coil that loose end up, you swab," he roared at one of the Britishers who was sitting on a pail near the galley. "And git for'd. Step lively. Ye're dead from yer ankles up and yer feet are asleep. Do you think ye can put yer bum on a bucket and let it draw barnacles on this ship? Send that man aft to the wheel again."

The sailor slunk off shuffling his bare feet uncomfortably. Anthony went below. Already the cabin seemed more eery. Now he knew what they were waiting for.

When he came on deck some hours later to take the sun Collins had already reduced sail considerably. The skysail and royals were gone and the balloon sail had vanished. It was a clear day and he managed to get a good sight.

"I forgot to tell ye that the nigger knows about things in the cabin," said Collins looking on over the figures. "He's been with 'em fer ten years. They own him. I don't want yer to mistake me, Mr. Adverse, in sayin' what I did about the skipper. Ye won't, will ye? I'm no sea-lawyer, ye know." The man looked at him with some doubt and anxiety in his honest eyes.

"You can depend on it I understand, Collins," said Anthony.

"Then we'll say no more unless we have tew. Na-ow where do ye make it today?" They fell to over the chart with perfect understanding of each other.

The seriousness and sheer necessity of the work they were doing and the manifest trust and regard of the seasoned old sailor caused Anthony to ponder a little as he went below to check over his figures again and again. This was the first bit of work he had ever done which seemed vitally important, for a moment an end in itself as well as a means. Over that little sheaf of figures he had completely forgotten everything else. There was not anywhere even a little rainbow of play lurking about it. On that basis, then, he and Collins had met. Here was a platform that he could stand on with many an honest man. "With many another honest man," he corrected himself.

He was a man. "By God," he thought, "I've grown up! What a lucky thing Mr. Bonnyfeather put that sextant in the chest. What a gift!" Suddenly he saw that old gentleman from an entirely new angle. He had worked. "I am his heir." He made sundry good resolutions. On the chart of the Atlantic Ocean he marked down the exact spot where he had overtaken his majority.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE SEED OF A MIRACLE

The passing of time on a long voyage Anthony soon discovered was not announced to the inner-self by bells, chronometers, or even by days and nights. He could apprehend its duration only as a succession of varying moods superinduced by the weather and the latitude. And in these moods, he also noticed, the ship herself, as a positive personality with a certain will of her own, one to be humoured rather than baldly controlled, seemed to participate.

The mood on starting from Genoa, for instance, had been a briskly busy one gradually relaxing into routine and habit until the gale had overtaken them. Then from somewhere off the coast of Tripoli to a spot in the Atlantic southwest of Gibraltar they had been harried by the storm. It was true they had profited in distance by that harrying but the sky had been leaden and down-billowing, the ship had been plunging and wallowing; rain, spray, and green water had delayed them. No one could be comfortable for a moment. A kind of business-like melancholy and glum endurance punctuated by anxiety had gripped all alike.

But as they turned northward for the region of the trades, an entirely new mood held the whole ship. The wind piped only a little, and quite merrily. The brig still swept along but paused now and then to dance a bit and to dash a capful of spray back playfully. The air was cool and the sun was bright. Melancholy had vanished. A certain active ease and happy relief could have been noted in the Wampanoag's log. This, as they pressed west, and the air became gradually hotter, lost its mercurial quality and threatened to end in a vague feeling of sloth. The wind faltered. Off the Azores in late July one moved like the ship--reluctantly. As yet they were not in the refreshing track of the trades. A sticky south wind came in puffs over the port bow.

Meanwhile--the time consisted mostly of meanwhiles--with no direct responsibility for the ship, and with the course for the day agreed upon, Anthony found time to ransack his chest from top to bottom and to improvise a splendid, solitary mode of existence which was so pleasing to his natural soul that it eventually caused him alarm. He left the madonna swaddled just as Faith had packed it. Under the great-coat where Mr. Bonnyfeather had asked him to look was a tight canvas roll containing one hundred guineas. There was also a large box of beautiful calfskin quartos which Mr. Bonnyfeather had had newly bound for him. These he proceeded to devour from Addison to Zeno.

Now he was able to read what, when, and as long as he wanted to, and to think things out even if it took half the day. With an almost complete cessation of events, and with no new people to meet and adjust himself to, he had opportunity to think over his whole existence; to arrange and to classify; to trace cause and effect; and to evaluate.

His entire past now lay behind him in a distant perspective out of which he could pick and choose. In it he thought he saw himself as he actually was. Out of it he began to reconstruct himself as he thought he would like to be. Hence resolutions and resolves, heart burnings and yearnings, regrets, hopes, a few tears and not a little laughter as he lay in the shadow of a boat; lulled by the slow motion of the ship, the sound of the wind and water, and the disappearance of time. All the sorrows and delights of comparative solitude had become his.

Of a few things in his own nature he became acutely aware. He no longer merely accepted them as unchangeable. Some things he would change. There was, for instance, his difficulty in seeing clearly the difference between his own visions and the outside world. Was this because his senses laid hold of things so fiercely and yet so delicately that the images of them were burned into and transformed by his own nature into something else? If so, how did that world, that something else always becoming within him, correspond to events without? On what basis of reality could he proceed? Which world should he accept? Was there a working compromise that he could find?

So far there seemed only one place where the two worlds met. It was in that ideal, or state of being, which was represented to him by the madonna. He could see now that it was a personal accident that she, his particular image of her, had become his visualization of the being in which both inner and outer worlds met and by which they were controlled. Something must control both life and reality, he saw, vision and fact, man and nature. To that something he felt akin as if some portion of it were in him. Yet he was also in nature; yet the material world lay without! It was not only the motion of the ship which now caused him to reel as he tried to understand all this.

He would not worry himself any more over the fact that his private image of that in which his own nature and the world met was wrapped up in a rag in his chest. That might be absurd, or it might not. It was convenient to have some image of this necessity. He did not have to be literal about it; he could accept it as his habit, as an aid--and, as Father Xavier had suggested, the image might hold in its arms further developments.

It was a very ancient image that men had found pregnant for millenniums. If he tried to make a new one it might become mathematical, he felt, and he feared that. Why? he wondered. Figures represented thoughts only. There was more to life than thought. Feelings! A figure of a figure--zero was that! So a mathematical madonna would be more ridiculous than a clay madonna. He could not apply even a pronoun to a mathematical image. A word?

Could he make it a word? Perhaps the Thing was a word. "In the Beginning was the Word." Ah! he had almost forgotten that. The Word, eh? But a man had written that? Had God written it? Suppose he had, what would be the difference in understanding it? A man would have to understand it. And a word must stand for something. This word then had no Image. The Word had no Image! Why had it been said that way? "In the Beginning was the Word and the word was light." What did, what could light have to do with it? In the shadow of the boat he stood up and prayed to be able to see. He groped, drawn by a great necessity to try to know all things; all things in one.

All things in one! In that idea there was some glimmering of hope, he thought. In his mind he marshalled what he had already thought. He tried to put it together and go on. Suddenly in his intensity of feeling he felt that he had ceased to think by stages, logically, one thing after another. All of this process was collapsing; telescoping as it were into one, a toneless, colourless state of apprehension in which he understood without making sentences for himself why the Word had no image. In it objects and what reflects them meet. "IT IS" is alive, it is "I AM."

An intense feeling of exaltation accompanied the process of this discovery and then a flashing shock. He stood leaning against the boat, tired, with his eyes closed. Dazzling fire images chased themselves over his darkened eyeballs as if he had been looking at the sun. "Some minute copy of this force that resolved both the inner and the outer world into one must be inside myself. Or I am indeed undone," his lips moved. The fire streaks on his retina began to arrange themselves into a pattern like that of the sunburst behind the madonna's head. "That image again, always that!" He opened his eyes and looked at the sea to rest them.

"If the light hurts yer eyes ye ought to wear a sunshade," said Mrs. Jorham, who, he now discovered, was sitting near and watching him. He had been absorbed in himself, he knew, but she must have brought her rocking chair on deck almost noiselessly. She must have been sitting there a good while. He resented it.

"It's not the sun," he said.

"Oh!" She stopped rocking a minute to look at him. "Jes' seein' things, eh? Didn't know ye was troubled that way."

"Well, I am, Mrs. Jorham," he replied a little tartly.

"Um!" she mumbled.

He hated to be questioned this way. "Good Lord!"

"Wait till ye hear 'em," she said suddenly, dropping her knitting.

Oh, yes, she heard things. The woman had her troubles. He remembered now. She took up her knitting again.

"I find a lot of comfort in this." She held up the big socks with the needles in it. "It's kind o' like makin' the sheep go over the stile, ye know. Ye jes' keep countin'. I'm sorry for ye, Mr. Adverse, 'deed I am."

"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Jorham," said Anthony. But she would not be repulsed.

"Want to come and hold the yarn?" she said. He shook his head.

"It's real bad then? But sakes alive, I know something better than this. Come on down and I'll show ye my sewing."

At first he thought he could not, but she turned and looked at him expectantly. He laughed at himself and went. After all why should he, Anthony Adverse, be so superior? Wasn't it only last night that he had seen himself climbing into a bed with Miss Florence Udney? She had been there perfectly plainly. Florence! He had touched her on the hips. Round and smooth. He could still feel her by him today. Very soft, well-- Perhaps he could afford after all to look at Mrs. Jorham's sewing. Anyway she was getting it out of the basket.

"How wonderful women were!" The basket was full of beautiful things: A quilt cover all puzzled together out of little triangles of silk stitched microscopically; baby clothes; a fragment of lace work on pins, showing a spider spinning its web. What a design, very delicate, quite spidery! "Made with rows of single Brussels' stitches," said Mrs. Jorham. More baby clothes, a small cap embroidered with tiny violets; that must be for a doll. You could hardly say. Some babies were very small. Table things worked with blood-red roses and tawny leaves. Doll clothes, undoubtedly doll clothes, hemmed. They must have been hemmed in Lilliput. And Captain Jorham's shirts having buttonholes worked in them and a big "E. J." on the neck,

"Marvellous!" What a good way this was to forget God. "In the beginning was the Word . . ." his mind seemed to echo. Oh, bother! Look at the sewing.

Mrs. Jorham put a worn, silver thimble on her finger and began to select various needles and coloured threads out of her neat little basket where ribbons and the eyes of four pairs of scissors stared at one from the lid. She laid out some square patches and began a sort of monologue to herself about the art of sewing which Anthony was allowed to overhear. A man could be interested in it if he wanted to be. . . .

"And the Word was God." Ah, yes, he had forgotten that! "The Word was God." That was where a personality, an image for the Word, came in. It was God said, "Let there be light. And there was light." What did light have to do with it? For goodness' sake, Anthony, can't you listen to the poor woman? She's talking. Listen you . . . you . . .

"Sewin' is kinda like playin' on the harpsichord. Ye got to get yer fingers used to it jes' by plain practice. There's the needle and there's the thread. Some of the stitches ye make look like notes. After a while ye can run 'em together without thinkin' about it, and that's when ye begin to enjoy it. That's when ye begin to play whole tunes. Looks like a melody, doesn't it?" She held up a pillow cover. "Larned that out Canton way. Them butterflies are the same both sides. This here vine's done on linen with flax flourishin' thread. Land, ye'd think that vine was growin' there, wouldn't ye? I used to do samplers, but that's too easy. Straight-stitch embroidery on tammy-cloth's nice. But it's appliqué work I like, flat stitch and outlining with back-stitch. A few corded outlines and fancy stitches, or the ground with back-stitch settin' in. Some uses a goose or a weighted cushion but I jes' hold my hands like this. See!" She made the needle fly and the flower began to grow. . . .

"But what did light have to do with it?" the obstinate voice demanded. "Hell's fire, wait and find out," he answered himself. "Mrs. Jorham is doing the talking."

"Did ye ever think how many kinds of stitches there are? Look here, I'll show ye some on these patches. Here's a plain running-stitch. Everybody tries that, even children. Next is back-stitchin'. You take up six threads, draw it out, then you go three threads back and pull it through six beyond. Real fast! This way!" Her needle seemed to devour the cloth. "Right to left, of course, only crazy people and Chinee go contrary. Then there's hemming. You have to know how to fold the cloth. There's plain hems, and ornamental hems what runs along the edges and in and out zigzagging over the sides, and then stitches with a loop. And you ought to know how to fasten threads off-and-on. That patch is done for. Now give me two more. This is sewing.

"An antique seam, and an open work seam, and you can make an open-hemmed-double-seam. Now let me have a big patch. Gathering is what I like." She wrinkled the cloth and flashed the needle through the little waves on the patch so fast he could see only a darting point of light with the thread following. "Na-ow ye pull it together. Ain't that nice? Whee! Now if ye want ye can just pick out yer crinkles into couples or fours and start smockin' 'em. I used to make curtains for doll houses that a way; made some for . . ." She stopped. "Land sakes, I've bruk the needle! Give me another, the big one. I'll show ye how to galloon, but first here's whipping. . . ."

"Whipping?" said the voice of Captain Elisha who raised his head from the table where he had apparently been asleep. "Whipping is what ye ought to have. It's ye that's temptin' her aboard this ship na-ow with all yer makin' of doll clothes. I know! She'd never have followed us if ye hadn't come along. It's her mother she wants. Y're turnin' this cabin into a nursery. Can't fool me. I know y' aren't makin' them baby clothes for Abner's brats. It's for her. Where's that doll?"

He got up and began to hunt around peevishly.

"Elisha, ye go and lay da-own. It's bad enough without havin' ye on my hands, tew. Ye know very well ye asked and begged me to come. And I told ye what would happen. I told ye. Didn't I?"

"Yes, woman, I ain't blamin' ye for losin' her. But ye oughtn't to be temptin' her on with that doll. It's waitin' for her to come fer it that does me in. Give me a drink.

"God!" said he freezing to the spot where he stood. "What's that on deck now?"

"Only a rope end, Captain Jorham," said Anthony. There was a stir up above. They heard the sheet and its tackle drag across the stern bar.

"Sounds as if the wind's shiftin'," said Captain Elisha. He started for the door and then shrank back. "Ye go up and take charge, mister. Get on with ye. Ye're in the trades now. I got real trouble da-own here." He collapsed into his chair. In a great hurry Mrs. Jorham began to mix him a drink. Anthony left the atmosphere of terror which had momentarily gripped him too and gladly ran on deck. It was true. The ship had already come about and was headed due west with a steady, sweeping breeze behind her. The trade winds at last!

"There's nothing ahead of us now but blue water for days and days," said Collins coming up looking relieved. "We can sort of settle da-own now. It's wonderful how different jes' a few minutes of these breezes makes a man feel! A few minutes ago my shirt was stickin' to my back, now look--" he let it billow out behind as he stood looking astern with satisfaction. "The old slant jes' petered out. I saw the jibs flap, and the next minute she was all a-flutter. Just had enough way on her to pay off. Wall, the skipper was about right. We picked 'em up south a bit o' where he said. I'll lay her dead west till ye get yer sight tomorrow and we can set the new course then. If this wind holds, Mr. Adverse, we won't have to start a rope till we git nigh to Barbados." He lowered his voice. "How's things in the cabin?"

Anthony told him.

"'Pears to me like it's comin' on sooner that I expected. So she's givin' him liquor, eh! Only does that when he's right nigh the wust. Ye can expect that baby aboard almost any day now I'd say. Don't let it wear ye da-own. Las' time I got so I was listenin' for her myself. Near the Andamans that was. And a crack of lightnin', tew. Oh, the skipper told ye, did he? Wall, ye can stay on deck most of the time and jes' keep an eye down the companion. He's about paralysed na-ow I s'pose. Na-ow I'll go and git all sail set. We can crack it on right."

Under the urge of Collins' voice the Wampanoag began to burgeon again with stu'nsails and royals. The jet before the cutwater leaped high and higher as each new sail was flung out. The brig swept forward with a swift even motion. All noises blent to an even monotone. They had entered upon the long, stable mood of the western passage.

----------

Collins had been too sanguine. The captain showed few signs of having reached a crisis. He slept, awoke, grumbled; pretended to turn a few pages of a large Bible laid open before him; drank again, and laid his head on his arms. A low sound like a saw in difficulties drifted up the cabin ladder all day long. Mrs. Jorham knitted her sixth pair of socks and waited with a fixed, blue fear in her eyes. Before the heels of the next pair were woven she expected a visitor. When no one was looking she went to a drawer in the sideboard, unlocked it, and took out a diaphanous doll. On its clothes she had lavished the last scintilla of her skill as a needlewoman. She hid it in her bunk and resumed knitting slowly.

To escape the tenseness of the cabin Anthony now spent most of his time on deck. He had a mattress brought up and slept by the cabin door. A good deal of the time he took the wheel.

It was a joy to con the ship over the smooth tables of sea towards the dark line that receded ever before her. There was scarcely any perceptible motion to the water. He became aware of the movement of the ocean now as a rhythm felt rather than movement seen. The earth itself might have been breathing and the ship rising and falling on her breast. A mile ahead a long field of weed would slowly rise and then sink again. Many minutes later the ship would answer in her turn as the horizon like a vast disk tilted slightly. For days a great, white bird, whose name Anthony did not know, followed them on motionless pinions hour after hour, as if it knew the future and were waiting for something momentous to happen to the ship. One evening with a strange cry it departed swiftly over the edge of the world in answer to a call.

As they drove westward the patches of weed increased. Then there would be great lakes of clear, blue water twinkling with a cobalt light across which the ship seemed to hurry faster. Out of one of these virgin spaces, like motes out of an eye of space, a school of porpoises suddenly rose one morning and began leaping in a succession of infinite arches before the bow. Jolly fellows with mottled bellies, they preceded the vessel like heralds of her happy royal progress across the depths.

When Anthony looked at the weed-patches with the small-glass he saw crabs and strange urchins gesticulating there like fiddlers of the ship's transit through their unknown realms. All seemed calm and happy in these latitudes. A tunny that one of the men gaffed from the chains, as though he had speared the spirit of these seas, died in spasms of rainbow colours as if its fishy ghost could only manifest itself exquisitely even in departure. All day the flying-fish scudded before them. At night he heard them flop in the water or fall with a bony clatter on the deck. When someone with a boathook fished up a branch of tree with nuts on it, it seemed to be the herbage of another planet. So far behind them now, so infinitely remote before them was even the dream of land.

But if the ocean was beautiful beyond Anthony's utmost capacity to feel, it yet furnished only half the mood of that super-equatorial aisle of the earth-star. Above them and above rose and towered the unthinkable limpid and liquid with its lights appointed; glowing; darkening; ever shifting against sameness, the impalpable womb of clouds. Islands of shadow, glittering groves of slanting rain shot with rainbows appeared and vanished; shifted and melted on the level, molten plains around about. Once a waterspout trailed its smoking skirts uncomfortably near, only to go spinning away to leeward like some cosmic dervish weaving its wasp-like waist up into the dark funnel of the pall above it. Then there would be days of intolerable blue with only wisps of cloud at dawn and nothing but the noise of the sails and the whisper of the sea punctuated startlingly by the clang of the ship's bell.

The men sat about the decks picking oakum or spinning rope yarn, washing damp bundles of old clothes and hanging them up to dry, singing now and then brief snatches, and talking in subdued lazy tones. Even Collins could not find enough for them to do. All the old sails were patched. All the boats and bulwarks were painted, the brasses polished, and the anchor chain made rustless. The standing rigging was slushed down. And still they were only a little over half-way across.

A small fiddle was permitted to squall away in the fo'c'sle and even to come on deck. But after a week it gave up. The presence of the vast silence through which the ship was moving made it too absurd to be tolerated. A game of banker began under the lee of the galley and went on. To Anthony at the wheel eddied back now and then a whiff of burning olive wood from the galley fire, bringing mornings in the cart with Angela vividly to mind. Indeed, the plains about Pisa sometimes seemed to mirage themselves before him when the smoke was strong. Mixed with it were vivid whiffs of tobacco from the sailors' pipes. In that weed he now began to find a solitary solace himself. Tobacco made his body content to be still.

The intolerable vastness of things was now eating itself into his mind. At first it had been oppressive but now he began to feel as if there were a window in the top of his skull that gave on irreducible nothing. A certain element of terror accompanied this. In the vision of the universe which it opened up there was a gaunt possibility of madness, a terror of space, that had drawn a little too near. He could not quite close it off. He had once made the mistake of climbing into the maintop and looking up too long at the stars. Suddenly direction had vanished and he found himself clutching the mast. The circles and circles beyond circles of his geometry had for a while been a comfort. But now he could no longer bound nothing with a compass. Always there was the maw of more and more. No compass opened wide enough.

The constant taking of observations and the necessity to think in terms of arcs and spheres gave him, as he watched the horizon before him, a palpable sense of the huge ball across which the ship was slowly crawling. That was tremendous enough. But to recollect that this frightful sphere was hurtling eastward, and that he was going with it at a speed really beyond thought, made him feel like clinging at times to the wheel, waiting as it were to be thrown off into space like a drop of water from a grindstone. Once under the rising full moon as he looked astern he thought he saw the long, silver streak of water racing; streaming steadily east into the very mouth of the dead planet. Slowly it rose above the line of ocean, serene, but terrible. And then he was being hurled along under it going around again toward the sun.

That night he took a lunar for longitude. Despite all he could do he could not divest himself of a sense of horror as the disk of the moon swept down over the fixed star he had chosen. Through the glass he saw the edge of the moon was sawtoothed. There was something about the motion of all these bodies in the sky, especially at night, that was a little mentally sickening. Strive as he would he could not divest himself of an emotion about them even when, as he had to assure himself, it was merely mathematics he was practising. Even to take a shy look at the infinite seemed to cut him off from the entire ship's company. To glimpse the mood of it even for a few hours had, he felt, changed him somehow permanently. Something within him that he had not known was imprisoned there had been fed with the raw meat of heaven. It was now aroused and clamouring for more. Along with this went a sudden increase in his apprehension of geometrical problems. Theorems which he had once been forced to prove to himself ponderously now suddenly became axiomatic. He became ambitious as a navigator and determined to check his longitude by an observation of Jupiter's satellites. This was a matter of some little difficulty as it was necessary to rig an improvised tripod for the captain's little telescope and to wait for a perfectly calm night.

Collins accomplished the tripod. But it was harder to persuade the captain to let him have the glass, a good one once taken from a prize. He did so only after considerable cajoling. Captain Jorham had not been sleeping lately. He was now very restless. From time to time that day Anthony had heard him and his wife talking. When he came into the cabin they always stopped. There was an air of great tension about both of them, Anthony noticed. But he was now so engrossed in his own little experiment on deck that he paid no particular attention to it. Matters had gone on so long in the cabin he had come at last to take them for granted. Besides--tonight it was calm! And tonight he was going to observe the immersion of Jupiter's inner satellite. How grand that sounded! As he began to focus the glass the nice intricate reasoning behind the observation and the way to use the tables kept running through his head.

The planet hung like a distant lamp half-way to the zenith. In the glass at first he saw nothing but black, then a few sparks of stars. Now he was on it! It was a great, grey, moon-shaped thing. Out of focus of course! He twisted the eye-piece toward him. Now! There it was, the whole beautiful system! An intensely shining, little disk with three bright sparks arranged in a line to the right. If the ship would only stay perfectly still! That was a little better now, clearer. There was the other spark on the left. Much farther out than he had thought. God! How beautiful they were, silver, but silver that was alive. Calm, orderly, perpetually reordering themselves in repetition endlessly repeated and shining that way forever, glorious, lovely--calm! He could never drink in enough of that light. Let it keep sliding into his eyes and become part of him. This was mental drink.

He let Collins look. "Four of 'em, eh! Four moons! That doesn't seem right, does it?" He went back and unlashed the wheel again.

It would take almost an hour yet before that little moon would touch the planet's disk, if his calculations were anywhere near right. He began to walk up and down the deck stopping once in a while to refocus. "Why not hurry it up and be done with it?" something prompted him. "You fool," someone else replied. He laughed. Yet his little moon evidently was moving. And the sea was very, very calm. Almost no wind tonight. The sails flapped. She was just keeping way on her. That was lucky. They had had only a few really calm nights. This was one. Very silent too. He rearranged the screened light near the chronometer so that he could see the hands better.

Philadelphia went by carrying some hot water to the cabin, spilling a little as he passed. Anthony saw him return to the galley later. He was sitting there with his hands on his knees, shaking a little as if with a chill. A big fire was going. Two lanterns were burning. He was sorry for the darky. The captain was wicked enough in speech these days. The man looked positively yellow, Anthony thought. As he passed the cabin door he heard Mrs. Jorham crying monotonously; subdued. She had not done that before. Perhaps he had better take a look. But he would try not to disturb them. He went around and looked through the starboard light. No sounds came to him there, only movement below in the clear lamplight, a picture in a glow. There was something cosmic about this one, too.

The old man seemed to be up to some mischief. He was going about looking for something. Evidently he could not find it. Mrs. Jorham slid into her bunk and closed the panel as if she were afraid. What was it all about? Mere drunken folly? Now he was rearranging the things in the cabin meticulously. All the plates on the rail. Exactly, just so. He stood back to admire the effect. Now he put the tea canister on the sideboard in front of the Virgin and bowed. "Was the drunken ass saying his prayers to her or making fun of her?" You could hardly tell which. He made sacerdotal gestures. It was funny and horrible at the same time. Now he was peeping over the Virgin's cloak. He was talking to the baby! Somehow he had recaptured the very look of a proud young father. His face had gone smooth. He snapped his fingers and bent down tenderly. It seemed terrible enough now, poor old devil! Better not spy on him. But just then the whole implication of the scene below shifted. Captain Jorham had lifted his face out of the big fold of the clay cloak with a look of preternatural cunning. This was the man who could sell Spaniards their own tombstones at a profit.

He looked about him like a cat about to jump on the table and lap cream.

Then with an elaborate drunken cunning that would have defeated itself if Mrs. Jorham had been peeping out of instead of crying in her bunk, he tiptoed over to "Elisha" and took out of that chest a long, narrow bottle of red wine. He grinned knowingly at its ruby flash as he crossed the cabin, reeling. Good Lord, he was going to smash the statue with it! No, he was going to give it to the baby! He slid the bottle down into the deep fold of the Virgin's cloak. It was completely concealed. Once again that evening Captain Jorham stepped back with his head on one side to admire his nice arrangements. Then his real motive emerged. With a look of grim triumph he turned and shook his fist at the closed panel of his wife's bunk.

Anthony could only laugh now. He wondered if Captain Jorham would remember that bottle when his wife began to cut down on his liquor after the spree. Hardly. Perhaps it was just drunken cunning? Then his grin suddenly faded. The observation!

He ran to the telescope and began to readjust it frantically. But it was too late. While he had been watching Captain Jorham hide a bottle in the bosom of the Virgin another equally important event in the cosmos had taken place. The inner satellite of Jupiter had immersed.

"You'll make a good first mate yet," said Collins with a touch of admiration in his voice as he listened to Anthony's remarks. "What was that last language, Portegee?"

Anthony closed up the telescope and reduced his meticulous preparations to debris. He did not deign to reply.

"As for immersion," Collins went on, conning the ship elaborately as a brief puff bellied out the sails, "I never did hold by it nohow. Nor feet washin' neither. My family was Antipoedabaptists and I sucked the milk o' pure doctrine from my mother's knee. Better not kick the chronometer, sir."

A loud crackling sound came from the cabin. The captain was evidently demolishing something brittle. They listened forebodingly.

"I expect tonight's the night," whispered Collins. "Na-ow I'll send the watch for'd and ye hold the cabin da-own, Mr. Adverse. Tain't helpful to discipline fer the crew to see the skipper bein' chased. Yep, I'll keep the wheel. Philly can help if he has to."

Anthony gathered his paraphernalia and went below. How important it had seemed, and how serious about it he had been! He could chuckle now.

Fragments of a chair were scattered about the cabin but the captain had disappeared. Anthony stood looking about him. The cabin was absolutely silent. The ship was just drifting before the lightest of airs. He heard the ripple along her keel as she picked up for a moment. Then it died away in subterranean gurgles. Suddenly his heart almost stopped. A growling beast was trying to bite his leg.

From between the legs of the table the captain's head projected and he was now barking like a dog. It was an eerily perfect performance. Captain Jorham was a dog. It went on for a while and ended in three long death howls.

Despite himself Anthony's flesh crept. With some ado he finally enticed the captain to his feet again. The commander of the Wampanoag now began to walk about shuffling and reeling, doing a nervous, spasmodic little clog each time he turned the corner of the table. He was trying to catch Anthony to see who he was. His face twitched and his limbs jerked. An endless stream of talk flowed from his mouth, now drawn to one side, as if all he said were an aside to someone invisible. Finally he captured his mate and insisted on shaking hands. The ugly gleam in his pupils vanished.

"Swan ef it ain't Captain Jorham's macaroni mate! Ye're a ri, ye a-a-a-ri." Anthony dodged the gargantuan fluke which was about to descend on his back. The captain staggered and reeled over into his bunk.

"Thank God for that," thought Anthony.

"Polly wants a cracker, polly wants, wants, polly--1'olly, dolly. Janie wants a dolly. Little Jane wants her dolly. Mrs. Jorham, do ye hear, do ye hear? Little Jane wants her dolly. She's comin' fer it, comin' abooord! Janie, baba!" He waved and then began to whisper. The hulk of him quivered and twitched.

"Listen!"

Something gurgled under the keel. The man's scalp crinkled up into a point pulling his forehead smooth.

Mrs. Jorham opened her panel. "Give him drink and get it over with tonight. Philly, Philly, some hot water!"

The darky descended warily. He took in the situation at one glance and scrambled out of the cabin as soon as he could.

"Give me that doll," said the captain making a sudden drunken dash at his wife. She closed the panel in his face. With some difficulty Anthony got him back to his bunk where he sat sweating. He mixed him some hot grog and got him to lie down. After a while he seemed to sleep uneasily. Anthony dimmed the light and crawled into his own bunk. He meant to stay awake. The light flickered and went out soon but he did not know it.

When he opened his eyes again it was absolutely dark and he was instantly aware of being bathed in an atmosphere of inexplicable terror. Someone had called Philly again, he thought. But no, it was Captain Jorham talking.

"Listen, do ye hear that?" he whispered.

"Hush!" said his wife's voice. "Ssh!"

The captain's voice was pleading now. "Give it to her, Jane. Let her have it."

A swift horrible scream tore the darkness. It was impossible to hear it and not to partake of a fear that went like cold to the marrow.

"Listen!"

No one did anything else.

Now for the first time Anthony began to understand that Mrs. Jorham might believe her child really was there. It was her breathing. He lay with eyes wide open in the dark, listening. He could hear now as he had never heard before. Furthermore, he gradually became sure himself that there was something at the door. Despite all he could do to reassure himself, he broke out in a sweat. Something was there. He could hear it.

"God!" said the captain.

They were evidently sitting together over there in the captain's bunk. Presently he heard one of them moving. It was Mrs. Jorham. She crept past him slowly on her hands and knees in her white night-dress. Now she was going up the little ladder. He heard her gasp. Something was tossed out onto the deck. Mrs. Jorham was lying prone there at the top of the cabin ladder.

Then Anthony had the shock of his life. In the darkness overhead he heard bare feet stirring very softly on the cabin roof. Immediately afterwards Mrs. Jorham fled back to her bunk and closed herself in.

This was more than he could stand. Jumping up he wrapped a blanket around him and went on deck. No one was there except Collins looking grim over the binnacle.

"Did you see anything?" asked Anthony.

Collins quietly pointed to the galley. In there a bright fire was still going. He went forward and looked through the door. The stove was glowing cherry-red under one lid. He lifted the grate and saw the remains of Mrs. Jorham's doll twisting in the flames. A smell of burning cloth and hair pervaded the place. Philadelphia was not there. As he came out again Anthony saw the outline of the darky's figure against the stars in the shrouds forward as far away from the galley as he could get. He sauntered forward and looked up at him a while. The cook was cowering there all hunched up. They kept looking at each other.

"Lil missee gone?" the man finally whispered.

"All gone," said Anthony.

Even then the negro came down slowly and sat on the bulwark for a while.

"Why did you burn it, Philly?" asked Anthony.

"She go way den." He ran his sleeve over his forehead. "Tell you I allus knows troubles comin', Mr. Adverse, when I see dat ooman gwine fer to dress a doll. She start 'bout a month ago now. Wish I didn't b'long to folks wid a baby hant. It jes' about done ruin my kidneys." He hitched himself uneasily.

"This is not the first time then?"

"No, suh. I done burn foh dollies!"

Anthony went aft and got the man a drink. It must have taken great courage, he thought, to creep up and get the doll. So it was real to them all. Not until long after the fire had completely burned out in the galley did Philadelphia return.

"I wouldn't mind a little myself, Mr. Adverse," said Collins. He looked at Anthony over the pannikin. "Well, what do ye think of it na-ow?" he asked.

"What do you stick by the ship for, Collins?" countered Anthony.

"Ye don't know the skipper, sir. He's a grand man," replied Collins wiping his lips. "He'll be himself na-ow, ye see if he ain't. Everybody has their own funny places ye know, in here." He tapped his head. "Ye can't tell how real they are neither. Na-ow . . ."

But Anthony did not care to listen, any more than he cared to return to the cabin. He flopped down on some spare canvas; smoked.

One thing--he was not going to be dressing any more dolls himself! The madonna could stay in the chest. And he was glad he had taken the stand he had with Father Xavier. Toussaint had once laughed at him for being superstitious. And these people on board were Protestants, too. "Heretics." But what was he? A reasonable man, a man of facts and figures, a navigator! No more nonsense from now on--by God!--his pipe went out and he failed to relight it--no more childish nonsense! He would strangle his dreams, his dolls. A philosopher-scientist. Write Toussaint and tell him. These new ideas he had from looking at the stars, sailing the wide earth under the sky had opened up his mind. But mystery was there. Of course it was. Something to do with time--or was it space? He couldn't remember now. It was hard to think about that. You seemed to touch the bottom of things there--or the top. Oh, yes, that time on the masthead looking up, he had lost all sense of direction. What was that idea he had had then? Other things besides men, things. Yes, supposing I was a thing, or supposing a thing knew itself as "I." Oh, this is it. The "I" of a thing could have no sense of direction. Say, the sun. It would not know east or west or up or down. "I" felt that on the masthead looking at the stars. What of it? This is an essential thought I am certain of it. It might lead to something--something, but not now, not now. I must rest. How long, how long life is! The end far-off and I am sleepy now. Alone. Here . . . He saw the moon's disk again sweeping down dragon-toothed over a star. Alone here in this terrible vast desert of stars. This cold-and- fiery endless place! Where are you, living one? I am lost here. I cannot find you. I am cold.

He moved uneasily and began to murmur something on the verge of sleep. Philadelphia came out of the cabin and threw a blanket on him, seeing the dew on his face.

"Ah, warm again! In bed at last! Good night, then. Good night to you." From the wall above him her face was looking down. "Of course she was always there. I am glad. Now she is talking to me."

"What have you been doing all day, little boy?"

"Climbing the big tree. I am tired."

"Did you reach the top?"

"Yes."

"What did you see there?"

"The stars, Mother I-am, the stars."

"What of them, child?"

"I looked among them and dreamed I had lost you. I lost myself."

"But now that you are awake again you see I am here . . ."

What has become of the ship, the Atlantic Ocean and the stars above it? They, he, have vanished into something without space and time. What is it breathing under the blanket? . . .

The man in the lookout thought he saw some stars setting in the "west." They touched the water like lights and went under; disappeared. He was quite sure of it. In the "east" several more came up. He saw them with his own eyes. Presently they were followed by a great light. The man now saw a cloud before him on the horizon. It looked far away, very silvery and stood up from the sea like a cone. Suddenly he saw a forest and three little white houses in the middle of it. The cloud rent opened up and the land turned into a mountain with long scarves of mist trailing away from it. It certainly was a mountain.

"Land O," he roared.

"Belay that bellerin'," Collins roared back at him. "That's Nevis, and I seen it a half hour ago from the deck. Get a pillow, ye lubber, and turn over on yer other side. Come da-own out o' that. Philly, pass the word to the captain."

"Yes, suh," said that worthy delighted at the discomfiture of the lookout. "An' I'll jes' tote him a basin o' gruel." He winked.

A considerable stir now went on and Anthony woke up.

"Landfall sooner than we expected, Mr. Adverse," said Collins pointing. "Yer latitude was exact but ye're way out on your longitude. I've been expectin' it watchin' the landbirds for three days now. And I'm right glad, for I'm nigh tuckered out with double tricks at the wheel. The skipper ul carry on na-ow. He comes back marvellous."

Anthony climbed the shrouds and sat feasting his eyes on his first glimpse of tropical foliage. A beautiful mountain, gleaming, dark-green, strung with savannas and forests with here and there a bright flash from a waterfall lay some miles ahead off the port bow. A long scarf of mist perpetually dissolving to leeward trailed from the top. He could see a cluster of white houses in a town at its foot. The crew stood about or lined the bulwarks in small groups looking at it, too. Suddenly they scattered. Captain Jorham had come on deck.

He had a chair brought for him and sat on the quarter-deck with a blanket around his knees and a speaking trumpet in his hand. Philadelphia kept bringing him hot coffee every few minutes.

Mrs. Jorham emerged once from the cabin with her curl-papers still on, and going to the stern threw a lot of bottles into the sea. Captain Jorham did not turn his head. Anthony saw the bottles go bobbing astern. A large shark turned lazily on one side and swallowed one. Anthony laughed. He knew of another bottle in safe keeping. Forgotten, he felt sure. "On the knees of the gods!"

Nevis began to sink into the ocean astern. Only a few days now and they would be in Havana. The new world at last. He raised his right hand holding the palm open in expectation.

END OF BOOK FOUR

BOOK FIVE

In Which the Necessary Alloy is Added

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE HOUSE OF SILENUS

Down the long, blue coasts of Cuba sailed the Wampanoag with her mate in the shrouds gazing inland as often and as long as the August sun on the Tropic of Cancer would permit.

In the mornings, when he first heard the men begin to holystone the decks and swish water about, he would go aloft with the small-glass sticking out of his coat pocket. Then crooking a knee about one of the stays and steadying himself, he took deep lungfuls of the rich land-breeze which lulled through the sails at that hour.

It was full of a thousand lush and exotic odours from the beaches, lagoons, and high plateaus; Sargossa weed, juniper and lantana; the fragrant quiebrahacha, tamarind, and rotting mastic leaves. A rank, musty sweetness rolled out from the sugar plantations and fermenting lowlands. His land-hungry nose seemed to taste rather than to smell it. In his mouth his tongue moved and became moister as if in anticipation of a feast.

By the last hours of starlight the brig would always have drifted close to the land. The sea-breeze lasted all night, but as the airs grew lighter she would make more and more leeway, until at last the distant whisper of beaches was audible on deck. It sounded as though the tropical night were about to reveal its secret; a softly sinister one. Then suddenly the sails would flutter, the yards would be braced around, and the land-breeze would fatten the canvas out on the starboard tack.

It was at this moment that the fish bit most frantically. A ferocious barracuda or two, or a young shark would always be slapping and slamming themselves on the wet deck. But after the first few mornings in the West Indies Anthony paid small attention to that, for by the miracle of dawn in those regions smell, hearing, and sight were in turn assaulted and overcome.

As soon as the warm odours of the land-breeze began to fan over the deck the wind also brought with it a distant and mysterious cry from the dark island beyond. It was continuous; strangely sustained. It seemed to come in waves out of the east and to scatter itself like spiritual rumours of good news discussed and re-echoed here and there faintly and more faintly down into the west. To Anthony hanging in the rigging, rapt, looking out over the dark ruffling water, it expressed perfectly his own deep and eery joy at being alive on this star.

The first time he heard this half-harmonic chorus he was nonplussed. No other song was like it. With a constant lyric stream, in which no individual notes could be distinguished, all the roosters in Cuba were blending their voices. The king-cock of them, he thought, with a million jubilant minions must be chanting somewhere in the as yet invisible island hills. This then was the characteristic sound of land--of all habitable land. He remembered it on those mornings in Italy in the cart with Angela. But this was a more magnificent chorus. It had the quality of laughter transposed into some unknown scale, musical, but non-human. At the first hint of grey the paean rose to a kind of harmonized scream of joy.

Then the parrots began, "chat-chat, chat-chat, chatter-chatter." They seemed to wake an applause to accompany the cock-crow as if they had been started somewhere by a single handclap. The half-heard thunder of billions of insects tuned in. The morning voice of Cuba swept into a crescendo. It reached a climax that maintained itself, a distant pandemonium that rapidly grew fainter as the ship drew out to sea.

Meanwhile his eyes must also be at work. The stars paled. The planets burned out like melting globes. In a white, furnace-glow astern the morning star disappeared moltenly. At one leap the light climbed half-way to the zenith. The inevitable bank of low clouds along the eastern horizon, as if they were in rapid combustion, turned from black to dull red; to crimson; to transparent, white gold. Hot pencils of light thrust rods through them and they suddenly sublimed. A bright track of sea could be seen racing eastward toward an incandescent spot.

Then the incredible forehead of the sun lifted itself out of the water. Red globules of mist ran down his fat cheeks. The world glared from rim to rim. It was turning over. For an instant, as the sun's squat globe swam up from the water, the sea seemed to be drawn after him into a huge bloody bead. Then the black line of the horizon cut through it. It fell back, and you could no longer look that way. Already waves of heat were beating up into Anthony's face. After a while he would open his eyes again, after the blindness passed, and look at the long coasts marching either way into the intolerable, blue distance.

It was a mighty view. He was never tired of sweeping his little glass over it; now at some palm fronded headland or long reaching cayo; now at a purple shadowed vale in the mountains, or a little sunny patch with a peon's hut. He felt like some poor sailor standing in the rigging of the Niña or the Pinta, shading his eyes for a glimpse of gold-roofed temples on that first, memorable voyage.

They passed a hundred little, palm-lined rivers each with its savannaed delta and a bar creaming at its blue mouth. Where the bluffs came down to the sea these streams cut back into the hills mysteriously. A light mist hung over them in the morning till the sun looked directly at it. He could even see, with a very clear focus, a wilderness of ferns lining their gorges. Once there was a waterfall and a canoe under it fishing. From the woods near by rose a long feather of smoke. And this was the new world!

To him it was his new world. He had discovered it for himself. And he knew now how vast the earth was; how wide its oceans. Had he not crossed a sea of space to get here? Why must the ship always go creeping out to sea as soon as the sun rose? How long would it be till he was walking the groves of this island? "Use the glass, Anthony, use the glass--Cuba, gloria del mundi!"

One step inland beyond the beaches salt-pans flashing like mirrors. Then a wide, low plain, sandy, grassy; then trees; then a glorious burst of palms and pines, plumed and festooned forest that swept up over the hills into the blue mountains, gentle, rolling from peak to peak with cloud shadows, feathered with giant royal palms standing in groves or lonely, perpendicular, looking down on everything else. Cuba and the royal palm, the tall, wide-blowing royal palm--he could imagine them rustling coolly in the trade wind. The sun burned his already brown face to black olive as he stood thus in the rigging, sweeping his glass inland a hundred and a thousand times to be rewarded at every trial by glows and glooms and vistas of what had once rightly been taken to be Paradise. The sun bleached the ends of his hairs and the roots where they rose out of his forehead until he looked like a grizzled, gilded youth with a bronze body.

"Although," said a book of travels he had in his chest, "Europeans have now pre-empted the soil of Cuba for three centuries, much of the interior of the island has never been mapped and its precise geography is vague." Looking day after day at the wilderness of hills and coastal islands that marched with the Wampanoag, he could believe that. Reluctantly, as the sun grew intolerable, he would climb down at last.

At noon the sails drooped. They ate under the shadow of a tarpaulin in a sweat-provoking calm. Mrs. Jorham groaned and began to talk about iced root-beer, and frost on cranberry bogs. The captain said nothing. He was doing penance now. An hour later the cool breeze came from the sea. Then they would begin to tack out. For Captain Jorham had no desire to be boarded at night by human caymans from some boca, or Cayo del Coco. The number of "wrecks" even in calm weather along these coasts was remarkable. It had already engaged the unfavourable attention of the British Admiralty for many years.

"Expulsis piratus, restitutio commercia," said Captain Elisha to himself, taking out his lucky pocket-piece and surreptitiously spitting on it. So by evening they would be ten miles out, and the coast a long, undulating dream of blue. Then they would slowly drift in again. Thus in long diagonal slants the Wampanoag lazed along. One morning two breast-shaped hills hove in sight.

"Do ye see them there, Mr. Adverse?" said Collins twiddling the wheel a quarter over and back to nurse every cupful of the fitful land airs, "them's the Tits of Havana, and ye'll see the Morro before night."

A tower with a banner on it rose out of the sea as they lay in the noon calm. Then the wind came shoreward and by evening they were near enough to see the sulphur puff of the sunset gun from El Morro. An incredibly ragged pilot with a bouquet of flowers in hand for the captain, and his mouth full of Spanish lies when he was not chewing a fat, black cigar, rowed out and boarded them. He offered Anthony a cigar for which he accepted one dollar.

"From the vuelta abojo, señor, the very darkest leaf. Now we have exchanged gifts, bueno!"

Anthony lit the black torpedo expectantly. He had heard of Havana tobacco. In a few minutes a light sweat burst out on his forehead and the soles of his feet felt cold. He pressed adventure no further then, but tossed the thing overboard. After a little he felt calm and soothed; in rather an enviable state of mind. It was equivalent to strong wine but unique.

In the calmest of all lights, between a setting sun and a rising moon, they slipped into the great sack-shaped bay between the frowning batteries of La Punta and El Morro. He had never seen so many fortifications. The walled city lay to starboard, and the little Gibraltar of San Carlos, tier above tier of batteries with a vicious-looking bristling parapet, along the water front to port. Soon they were gliding along the bay front of the flat-roofed city that thrust out its long peninsula between them and the sunset. He could hear the horses now trotting along the Paseo Alameda de Paula and the noise of wheels.

What a welcome familiar sound was that, the striking of horseshoes on good solid earth! All these land noises were welcome. How he had missed them without knowing it! How silent the open sea really was! Its tones were variations of only one voice. The bay seemed to be full of different voices all calling to him; cries, laughter, carriages passing and repassing, the rumble of a town! The tremendous sour-sweet stench of a tropical city and a festering harbour overwhelmed him as the pilot dropped anchor in the Bay of Antares and demanded one hundred and twenty-five Mexican dollars for the astounding feat.

The twang of Captain Elisha's "God A'mighties," and other Biblical remarks to the pilot rolled up from the cabin to mix with curious hails from passing boats and the thudding of hard fists on canvas as the crew furled the sails and gossiped on the yards. Tomorrow, tomorrow they would be ashore, "Muchacha, muchacha" . . . An hour later the pilot left with ten dollars and buenas noches.

Mrs. Jorham came on deck to rock in the marvellous moonlight. She might have knitted, but the mosquitoes would not agree. Anthony climbed into the maintop above the pests and gazed inland at a circle of unearthly hills.

A few hundred yards across the water at Regla, a thriving little suburb with crowded docks and low, whitewashed houses, a lot of banjos and guitars were going strong. Some of the men started to clog on the deck till Mrs. Jorham snorted. They ceased. She gave a few vicious slaps at her wrists and went below. He was left alone with the banjos, guitars, and the moonlight.

And such mad, soft moonlight! God, what a rhythm was that on shore! The feet in the dance hall at Regla stamped it through an entire vacant interval of the rumba . . . now, now the frog-voiced guitars chimed in again. He waved his heels in the empty air and his throat swelled. "Habana, Llare del Nuevo Mundo y Ante Mural de los Indios Occidentales," tunky, tunk tunk, plunk plunk-plunk, the music went on.

The dew began to soak through his clothes. He jumped to a stay and slid down.

"Wall, ye wouldn't have come da-own that air way when ye come aboard at Leghorn," said Collins with a hint of pride in his voice as if he were responsible. He lowered his voice. "And na-ow she has her hook safe in the mud at Havaner. And I'll tell ye what, Mr. Adverse, we kna-ow who brought her acrost ta pond, eh?" He finally succeeded in closing only one eye and held the wink at last attained for some time. His eye opened. "Wall, ye'll be leavin' us na-ow I expect."

They were silent for a minute. A wave of homesickness at leaving the ship swept over Anthony. Collins looked grave. "I know," he said, "but barrin' the yellow jack and the stinks it's a fa-ine ta-own tew-w-w." The last syllable twanged and twinged like a taut preventer stay in a gale. It lingered musically, a sad nasal farewell. Anthony went into the cabin and began to pack. Captain Jorham, who was just drawing off his socks, watched him thoughtfully. So far he had never alluded to any of the events of the voyage. Anthony took his sextant, oiled it, and put it away.

"Ye done right well with that, mister," said the captain picking his toes. He cleared his throat. "We're all obleeged to ye." He went over to "Elisha" and taking out a bag counted out audibly seventy silver dollars. At the clink of coin Mrs. Jorham's night-cap appeared through the slide. She watched attentively. The captain arranged the coins in seven piles and stopped.

"There's five more comin'," said his wife.

He made another half pile a little regretfully.

"Them's yer wages, mister," he said. "No argument, ye've arned 'em . . . from all I hear tell. Na-ow there's only one thing more I'm askin'. Even if ye're paid off, I'd like ye to try and help dispose o' these holy figures and figurines ra-ound to some o' the churches. Ye've got the hang o' the priestly lingo. You tell 'em for me, will yer?"

"Indeed, I will, sir," said Anthony. "You can count on me for anything as long as you lie in port. And I'll remember the marble, too."

"Na-ow that's right pert of ye," replied the captain. Mrs. Jorham nodded.

It was on the tip of Anthony's tongue to warn the captain about the hidden bottle. He wondered if the Virgin on the sideboard still had it. He strolled over that way. It was still there. But he did not want to bring up any embarrassing memories and refrained from mentioning it.

The captain leaned back in his bunk and lit a pipe. The mosquitoes hummed. He put the light out. The captain dozed and slapped automatically. A patch of moonlight flooded the floor. Presently Mrs. Jorham emerged in her night-cap and a long gown with a small vial in her hand. A strong aromatic odour filled the cabin. She came over and spilled some drops on Anthony's pillow.

"It's penny-riyal," she said. "Keeps the critters away." Then half hesitatingly she rubbed some on his forehead.

He was surprised to feel how soft and smooth her old fingers were. They lingered. She put some on his hair.

"Land sakes!" she sighed, "I ain't rubbed penny-riyal on sence Jane died." Her eyes glistened. He took her old fingers and kissed them.

"Good-bye," he said.

"We'll both hate to see ye go," she whispered. "Take yer pay. It's the old man's conscience money. He's turrible ashamed. Not that ye didn't arn it."

"Mrs. Jorham, how would you like to have me take you around to some of the churches and cemeteries here and translate the inscriptions for you some day?" he said impulsively.

"Na-ow that ud jes' be lovely," she sighed. "And we'll have a keeriage." She giggled. Then she spilled some of the penner oil on the captain's covers and went to bed.

Anthony got up and put the silver dollars into his chest. When he turned he saw the captain was looking on with satisfaction. He waved his hand generously in the moonlight.

"Sonny," said he, "let me tell ye suthin' about this ta-own. Don't ye patronize none of them places with stone benches they call latrinas here. Ye'll catch suthin' ul make ye think ye've been spanked with a curry comb. The muchachas air worse. Na-ow in 'ninety-three . . ." He lay back embarrassed.

Anthony waved his hand appreciatively and climbed back into his bunk. The penner oil was still cool on his forehead and the homely odour of it permeated his dreams. He felt very safe in the new world. Captain Jorham snored; Mrs. Jorham coughed softly. It was like having parents.

Very early next morning Collins came with a couple of sailors and loaded Anthony's dunnage in the whaleboat. Collins was taking the first liberty party ashore. The men were to be paid a quarter of their wages and lined up eagerly.

Mrs. Jorham came to the rail with her knitting to say good-bye. She and the captain looked down into the boat as it was lading, talking with Anthony.

"You'll find me through Carlo Cibo, the factor at Regla, sir," said Anthony. "He's Mr. Bonnyfeather's agent here--just across the bay. That pink house behind the stone dock, they say. You see?"

"Aye, aye," said Captain Jorham. "I've got my cabin supplies and groceries from him many's the time. Look out! He's a bit of a shark if he's not yer friend. Keeps a fa-ine house for officers boardin' on shore, or used to. Ye won't forget the stat-oo-airy, mister. I'll be seein' ye soon I calalate."

"I won't forget, sir," Anthony replied looking up and smiling, "and I have an appointment to keep with your wife, too. All the churches and graveyards."

"Oh-ho," chuckled the captain, "so ye have, have yer?" Both he and Mrs. Jorham looked pleased. "Wall, git along then."

"Shove off," roared Collins, "let fall! Give way together."

The boat slid over the oily water of the bay that still seemed to retain in its depths at that early hour the deep purple stain of night. A school of silver minnows rose and fell back like a shower of raindrops before it. Philadelphia stood in the shrouds waving his apron, his face shining with a warmth superinduced by the glow of five dollars in his pocket. "Bes' luck, suh, bes' luck in de world!"

Anthony stood up in the stern sheets and looked back at the Wampanoag, a delicate tracery of spars and rigging against the rosy city beyond. The jolt and rumble of huge, solid-wheeled carts drawn by oxen began to come to them from the alleys of Regla. The boat nosed into the stone jetty by the pink house and Anthony jumped out onto terra firma with a little cold shiver up his spine as his heels ground into the pebbles of the new world.

"I am going to collect what is owed to John Bonnyfeather," he said to himself, standing still for a minute. "Whatever comes, I am going to get that money." That he felt would constitute his success. His own eventual interest in the matter did not enter in, he told himself. It would all be for Mr. Bonnyfeather.

It pleased him to see that the men who piled his chests on the dock were merely casually respectful as they would be to any other mate going ashore. Sorry that he was leaving the ship? He wondered. The young Spaniard who had released the swallow offered to stay and watch his stuff on the dock. Collins raised his eyebrows but Anthony nodded. Collins touched his hat and the boat made off for Havana smartly. Suddenly it stopped. "Toss!" The oars all flashed into the air and stood upright. Collins was standing up waving his hat. It was a nice compliment. Anthony could have asked nothing more. The man on the chests grinned.

"You know Havana?" asked Anthony, turning to him as the boat sped away again.

"Sí, sí, señor, like a Rodriguez," the man replied grinning. "Like you I leave the curséd ship of the heretics here. Sí, sí, it is a fine town. I am your servant, señor. I kiss your hands and feet."

Anthony laughed. There was something about the man that he liked. A lean, thin-faced young fellow, smooth-olive, and black-eyed, with an orange neckcloth running down his chest like a flame.

"Very well then," said he. "I will try you for a week at ship's wages. After that we shall see."

"Bueno!" cried the youth, "I am your hombre. By the swallow I swear it!" He cast an invisible bird loose with his hands, kicked his heels in the air, and lay back laughing. To be on land again!

----------

Leaving him with the chests, Anthony turned and began to walk toward the rambling, shell-pink edifice before him. Mr. Bonnyfeather's letter crinkled in his pocket. He swung his cane and beat a lively tattoo on the wide double doors. A stark naked, young negro boy, not at all embarrassed by a hearty morning erection, opened the gate. Beyond was a wide patio full of other naked children, mules, yellow curs, and a number of negro women moving about in bright-coloured turbans. An astonishing number of pouter pigeons ran cooing about their feet, fluttered, and lit on the shafts and spokes of several empty carts. He beckoned to one of the women and held up his letter with a small coin.

"For Il Signore Carlo Cibo," he said.

"The señor speaks Italian! The master will see him then. Wait." She rolled up a barrel for him to sit on.

"Go long, you dirty devil!" she cried, catching the young porter across the buttocks with a switch. "Madre de Dios!" and she was gone.

Anthony waited for half an hour. Several shameless cherubs of both sexes surrounded his barrel, looking at him with wide, brown eyes while gnawing sugar cane. He was finally offered some. A little girl swiftly swallowed the tiny coin he gave her in return. She was followed by the others regretfully.

"Doubtless," he reflected, "she will find it later on in safety."

A bull-like voice could now be heard bellowing from time to time in some distant part of the buildings. The women hustled and the pigeons fluttered at each throaty note. But they always settled down again. A last his messenger returned.

"This way, señor," she said, and led him out to the street again and around the corner of an alley to a small yellow door with a grille in it. She unlocked this and took him upstairs onto a veranda that overlooked another patio full of banana trees and palms. A huge man sat there in a hammock trying to comb out a mass of tightly curled black hair. A long, sweating, red clay jar swung from the rafters beside him. The woman drew up a cane chair and vanished. Presently the man in the hammock completed his toilet and came forward holding out two fat, white hands.

"I am Carlo Cibo, Signore Adverse. It is a pleasure indeed," said he in excellent Tuscan, "to be able to speak to a compatriot."

"I have written you letters several times, signore, about Brazilian coffee. So our acquaintance is already one of old standing, I believe," Anthony replied in his best professional manner.

"And will ripen into friendship I am sure," added Cibo.

They both laughed at the preciseness of it.

"Come, come," said the factor, "we are getting positively Castilian. 'I kiss your hands and feet.' But, aside from that, have you had breakfast yet? No?"

He did not wait for an answer but gave a roar that somehow included the word "almorzar." A parrot with a cloth thrown over it on a stand near by took its head out from under its wing and began to caw and cackle. Eventually it clawed off the cloth and began to cock its eye at Anthony. It was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen.

"Almorzar solo, maestro?" said a soft feminine voice from the patio below.

"Por dos," roared the man.

"Dos, dos, dos," cawed the parrot, preening itself.

Some children, evidently half-castes, peeped out of a room across the veranda. A little boy stepped out.

"Put your clothes on for the gentleman, you bastard," said Cibo affectionately. The boy returned, but a baby girl also in a state of nature dashed out of the door and climbed onto the man's knees.

"Kiss my dolly, papa," she cried thrusting a costly doll dressed like a lady of the French court into her father's teeth. "Kiss her."

"Ah, ha, Chiquilla!" he chuckled, tossing her up and making a loud smack at the face of the doll. He danced off with the doll on one arm and the naked child on the other. She shrieked with joy, pulling his black curls awry and crooning over his shoulder at every fat skip.

"Daddy Carlo," she cried looking at Anthony. "Nice, bad daddy!" The little boy ran out now in a shirt.

Suddenly Anthony remembered where he had seen Carlo Cibo before. It was on an oval plaque over what had once been the door to the old wine cellar at the Casa da Bonnyfeather. Plump urchins were capering after a good-natured, fat god. A procession of them staggered after him bearing a huge bunch of grapes. And Carlo Cibo was the man. A naked child was laughing in his arm, too. And that fringed sash swishing over Cibo's fat buttocks cased in tight nankeen, the gross calibre of the white linen socks ending in small, black, varnished shoes that clicked on the veranda like hoofs--yes, he had seen him before.

"Ha, ha," screamed the parrot, "ha, ha, wheee-ooooo." It dragged itself up the cane chair by its beak and perching on the back of the settee looked into Anthony's face with a most knowing eye, making conversational noises and clicking its beak.

Cibo came back and sat down breathless. A purple cast slowly faded from his face. "Ah," he wheezed. "I am getting a little older, avejentado, avejentado! It is very sad." He fanned himself with one hand. The little girl still clung to him looking at Anthony. Finally he was rewarded by her with a glittering smile.

"Ah," said Cibo kissing her. "I like them this age. I have many. When they grow up I have more. Always I have my babies to dance with me on the veranda. In the grocery business I can afford it." He put the little girl down and told her to run along.

"Cuba, it is a good place. I have done well here." He leaned forward and clapped Anthony on the knee. "You should set up here and try it, signore. Do you know?" He squirmed in his chair and managed to point with his entire body to a tall mulatto girl who was coming down the veranda with the breakfast. "See I am already giving you good advice."

Anthony looked up at the girl. Under his gaze her gait altered slightly. A ghost of a smile was born on the lips of both of them. He looked away telling himself it was nothing. But Carlo Cibo's "advice" had thrilled him. The nights on the Wampanoag had been lonely, he remembered. Those dreams--about "Miss Udney." That was strange. Florence, and not Angela had come to him. Yet he had made up his mind to be true to Angela, to remember her always. His eyes grew misty looking into green shadows of the banana leaves. Cibo smiled to himself.

Breakfast had come on a little mahogany wagon. There were two identical trays. On each was a brown jug of clear, black coffee, the heart of a ripe pineapple, white loaf-sugar, which Anthony had never seen before, and the saddle meat of some flaky, boneless fish fried in olive oil with green peppers. They took the trays upon their laps and ate comfortably, Cibo with a delicacy which Anthony could not help but notice. His fingers played with the bright, steel knife and the long, oval spoons skilfully. His hands were immaculate and white; ringless. They would have been dainty if the fingers had not been a little too stubby and luxurious. The pineapple was a dream of sunny flavour. They lay back in their chairs and lit mild, panetela cigars.

The sense of enjoying a delicious delusion overpowered Anthony. He seemed a thousand miles away from the Wampanoag and the blinding, blistering bay. Where was he? How had he come here? Cibo began to talk in a far-off, reminiscent voice while the wreaths of blue smoke drifted up to the ceiling from their cigars. He fingered Mr. Bonnyfeather's letter on the table beside him.

"You will pardon me, Signore Adverse, if I seem to have assumed too much intimacy in what I have just said. Your patron in this and other letters has been very explicit and full. He has explained to me that you are, as it were, the junior member of his firm. And I--for fifteen years now, I have been the honoured agent en Habana for the Casa da Bonnyfeather. In vain I have tried to collect this debt from the House of Gallego, for which I am responsible--in a way." He drummed on the table and faltered a little. "Perhaps I should begin at the beginning.

"We are both, as I understand it, under a peculiar debt to John Bonnyfeather. Of yours I have been told a little," he touched the letter, "and I can guess more. Many years ago I came here from Livorno a ruined man. I had been dismissed from the House of Franchetti there in disgrace. The chief clerk of that ancient establishment had engaged in peculations to a great sum. To cover his tracks he involved some of the minor employees under him, of whom I was but one. I was innocent, but I could not be convincing. With five others I was let go. I sold a little house that had come to me from my mother at Rosignano. I came to Havana where in a rash venture I soon involved what little I had. In desperation I wrote to Mr. Bonnyfeather, who had known me, and at whose memorable table I had sometimes sat. I told him my situation exactly, and that unless I could prevail on someone to consign me a cargo on commission I should soon perish of yellow fever in a Spanish prison. Signore, it was like a scene in a play. The corchete in his cocked hat had come for me when the news was brought that a ship consigned to me by Mr. Bonnyfeather was lying in the bay. I do not believe in miracles, but that one occurred. I disposed of the cargo to the House of Gallego at great profit. From that day to this I have greatly prospered." He knocked the long ash off his cigar and continued even more earnestly.

"As the agent for the Casa da Bonnyfeather my reputation was made. Other merchants from various places were also soon dealing with me. I was cautious, and careful to remember the authorities in other things than prayers. After some years I became a Spanish subject and went into the slave trade with old Señor Gallego. Five years of that made me richer than I have allowed anyone in Havana to suspect. But slaving is at best a risky business, and I have gradually ceased to have anything to do with it. I have cut down all merchandising also and have gone in for nothing but the importation of wines, table luxuries, and cabin groceries. It gives me a little something to do. For some years captains and ships' officers used to come and stay in this house, but even that grew to be a nuisance, and I have had none here now for a long time. In fact, except for the luxury trade in fine groceries and rare comestibles, the details of which a few trusted clerks manage, I have, as you see, practically retired. The only exception to this has been when our good patron in Livorno consigned me a cargo. That I have, of course, always disposed of as much to his advantage as possible, mostly to my former partners the Gallegos. The profit, as you know, on merchandise for the slave trade is large, although payment is sometimes delayed. For various reasons, which I shall explain to you later, the account with Gallego has become involved. But do not let us talk about that now. I would say something else.

"From what I have already said you will understand why it is that you will have every assistance that I can offer in collecting the sums due Mr. Bonnyfeather. Also," he added smiling, "why it is that you will stay here in my house in Regla as an honoured guest even if you remain in Cuba a lifetime. I should consider it as an implication that I am destitute of gratitude should you go any place else. A slur on my honour! Signore, we should have to meet! My benefactor, I see from his letter, regards you with affection. That is enough for me. Besides, do not mistake me--but I believe in first impressions--and I am disposed to be candid with you. I like you. Come, come, Signore Toni," he laughed. "Where are your things? Have you a servant? Have them sent up. Old Carlo does not often beg."

Anthony would have replied sooner, but he was somewhat overwhelmed. But no one could refuse to melt under the enthusiastic candour of Cibo. "It would be ungracious of me, signore--" "Carlo," insisted the man. Anthony gulped a little. "Carlo," said he, "to pretend to refuse. I am sure I am more lucky than I know. I understand you. I also have a debt to Mr. Bonnyfeather--not only to collect but to repay. I am sure he would smile in his kindly way to know what you have just said. I shall write him that in Regla near Havana is to be found what he once told me was very rare, gratitude. Carlo, I accept your hospitality with the same rarity."

"Bravo," cried Cibo leaning back in his chair. "You are an orator, friend Toni. And a heartfelt one! You should get along well. I prophesy it this lucky morning which brought you."

"Cheecha," he roared, throwing his cigar into the patio. A quarrel over the stump began below.

"Come, do you want to see my establishment?" He rose suddenly from his chair with a grunt. "I have only one complaint with life you see. I am getting too fat. It is a little difficult for me to move one leg past the other. I chafe. Cheecha!" He took off his sash and hung it over the railing.

The girl made her appearance.

"Get me a dry sash and take these breakfast things away. You know they draw flies. Tell 'Fonso to send for the gentleman's things. From now on he lives here. By the way, Signore Toni, where are your chests?"

"On the dock where I landed them."

"Not unwatched, I hope. Caramba, they will be rifled by this time!"

"I have a man with them, a Spaniard off the ship whom I took on for a week, perhaps rashly."

"No, no, you did well. He can sleep below and look after you. I will have a look at him though. Hurry, girl, my sash!"

When it came he draped it once or twice around his waist, and then tucking a smooth fold of it between his legs he tied the end into his belt. "Now I can walk in comfort," said he, "the silk is smooth and lets one fat chop pass the other." He swished slightly at every step as they walked down the long veranda. "Yes, it is a sweaty climate. One perspires. Come, come, after all it is much too hot already to go over the establishment. See, we have been talking longer than I thought. The sun is coming into the patio." He leaned over the rail and began to unroll a split-cane awning that fell like a curtain leaving them in a kind of cool, green gloom.

"Cheecha!"

"Sí, sí, señor," replied the woman from below now a little breathlessly.

"Take the cigar-end away from little Juan, and bring me limes and sugar, and . . ." he collapsed into his chair again. A roar from the child below followed the woman's departure. Presently the two babies came up and began to play with the parrot. The boy had taken off his shirt again.

"Ah, it is best so," said his father peering down at him. "August in Havana, my friend! Do you know what that means? But, Dios, take off your own coat! You must forget that you have one. You must get linens. A dozen suits. You shall be measured immediately, mañana. No, you will not need a sash as I do--yet."

"I hope the debt will not take that long to collect, Carlo." Already the name came easily to Anthony.--"Before I wear out twelve linen suits . . ."

"Por Dios, you will use three suits a day or more. Today--today in that costume you will do nothing! I shall do nothing. We shall sit here and talk, and drink, and smoke. We shall eat and sleep. What will be accomplished? Much! We shall have lived another day comfortably. No one can do more. Have you ever spent a day like that? I bet you, not. Try it."

"I remember doing so when I was very little," said Anthony.

"Do not remember, it requires an effort," cried Cibo, "do not remember anything except that it is now. Here is my recipe for preserving the present."

By this time the girl had returned with the ingredients. He mixed some clear rum, sugar, and lime juice, and removing a small peg from the hanging jar drew water. "Here in the veranda the water keeps always cold," he said, and dropped into the pitcher a bowl of crushed fruit giving it a peculiar spiral shaking. A delicate barm appeared on the top, half effervescent. Pomegranate juice had tinged it red. In each waiting glass was a coil of orange peel. He covered this, and handing a glass to Anthony, poured a gobletful down his own throat.

He poured it. His throat responded rippling. It was a drinker's throat pliable clear down to the chest and with a good bulge to it. Silenus, indeed, lacked only a few leaves in his hair.

Anthony sat turning over in his mouth small lumps of pineapple reminiscent of rum. When the breeze breathed through the veranda now even from the street beyond it felt cool. Safe behind the green blinds in the cool enclave of the porch, the fierce light and heat surrounded them, as the hours wore on, with a distinct menace. Action of any kind became more and more impossible. They dozed a little, awoke, talked quietly but eagerly, and dozed again. They were both at home.

For Cibo had about him a gift, a physical and mental quality of being that put you at your ease. It was not exercised, it existed. When it was exercised you grew merry, even hilarious. In his house it was impossible to be nervous or to worry about anything. All about you everything was quite obviously going well. The springs of abundance and fecundity seemed to have been tapped at some mysterious source. Nor did his abundance, or even a certain careless prodigality that accompanied Carlo like a rich music played with gusto, worry you. It was natural and instinctive. It was right and spontaneous.

Cibo was not only interested in himself but in what others had to say. He was the prince of listeners, and therefore bore the reputation of being a wit. When you related an anecdote to him a new quality was lent to memory. The events of the past seemed to have taken place in a halcyon glow of which, certainly up until the time you had met Cibo, you had not been aware. But now, as you were talking with him, you became fully conscious of their extraordinary significance and fine flavour. You felt that you had at last found the reflector of your own charming personality that you had long been in search of; one who enhanced your experiences without forcing you to exaggerate; one who could sympathize with you in your own delightful and hitherto unappreciated ironies. Yet, when you thought about it afterward, as you did when you stepped into the now banal and garish street, you wondered.

For if you looked at Cibo casually there was only a pleasant, curly-headed, middle-aged man with a sizable paunch seated in a comfortable chair, a man who wore a bright silk scarf like an alguacil. Was it in the smooth eccentricity of the brilliant sash that the charm was concealed? Hardly. Yet every person from the Captain-General of Cuba to Cibo's latest slave just in from the Rio Pongo and having his horny feet fitted with sandals to keep them from blistering on the griddle stones of the patio, felt it and expanded under it.

Despite Carlo's toast to "the present," it was the past, Italy, Livorno, and Genoa, that they talked about after all. With the long pent-up eagerness of an exile there were a million things, a thousand people, and a hundred places that Cibo wanted to know about. Anthony found himself, under the keen and amusing probe of Cibo's questions, reconstructing the life of the community that he had lived in.

Indeed, it was under such a searching that Anthony talked best. He had lately become aware of a certain reticence in himself that frequently evoked confidences which he was not inclined to reciprocate. Perhaps it was the essential mystery of his own origin which impressed him with the fact that in the final analysis he could not convey who he was in any usual terms. So, for the most part, he listened and thought. Yet he loved to talk, too. And with Cibo he felt to the full the melody of his own favourite keys. It was--it was amusing.

Before the morning had passed he had found time to tell in full the curious story of Captain Elisha's purchase of holy statuary at Genoa and the queer events of the voyage out. Cibo's belly moved up and down at the thought of the big Madonna in the cabin clasping to her heart a bottle of red wine. The eery expression of a faun laughing lengthened his jaws. He sat up.

"Do you know," said he, "I shall have to help that skipper of yours in disposing of his holy wares. Between you and me, Toni, I am a sad skeptic. It is fortunate for me that since the occupation of Havana by the English the Palace of the Inquisition is closed. There are books on my shelves which even now I would not desire to have advertised. Did you know I was a great reader, a student even in a desultory way, and of course a philosopher? From what you say of him, I agree with your friend Toussaint, though we should differ sadly on politics.

"There is a Spanish priest in Regla who is a great friend of mine. We have many an argument. You must meet him. Tonight! It is only upon food that we agree. Like all Spaniards he is a provincial heretic himself when it comes to wine--but on food, oh, on food"--he smacked his lips--"we are both exquisitely orthodox. So we meet often in sweet agreement at the table. During the past five years we have buried our minor differences about the nature of the spiritual world under mountains of dishes. We understand each other, Father Juan and I. I call him Father Trajan. Do you happen to remember the busts of the Caesars, Toni? When you see Father Trajan you will understand. It is that gallant old rascal of a Spaniard come to life again. A case of metempsychosis I insist. It has even worried--Father Trajan. Do you know the Catholic doctrine of the soul? No? Well, it is too hot to go into it now," he took a long pull at the pitcher, "but it is essential. And Father Trajan comes from Segovia. It is a very ancient, an old Roman town. Take one good look at his head when he comes. But don't let him see you do it. And now where am I?--oh, yes--I will tell you. I shall buy that statue of the Madonna del Vino and present it to Father Trajan's chapel, bottle and all. It would be an excellent jest a few years from now to ask him to look behind her robe. Did you say it was port? All that time then he would have been incensing a wine which he particularly dislikes. Ha, by the shade of Voltaire, I shall do it! Let us ask your Yankee captain to dinner tonight with Father Trajan. All parties to the deal will then be present. What! Ask the captain's lady, too? Not so, my boy. Why not? A cause de la scandale, mon ami. No, I do not care if her face is hopeless. In Havana gossip deals with more basic considerations." With the prospect of some excitement ahead he burned up a full half inch on his fourth cigar. After that they slept.

Lunch came on the little wagon and was rolled away. They did not move much after eating it. Carlo mixed some more planter's punch. Outside the fierce heat threatened to sap its way into their shady retreat. Lime-white splotches of sunlight percolated through the blinds.

Anthony looked down once into the patio and saw his sailor asleep in a hammock under the dense shade of a palm. A pickaninny was fanning off the flies. The only sound in the patio was the hum of insects in the sun. His chests had been brought up, he saw.

It was curious to think of his madonna being in this house. In the light of Carlo Cibo's proposed gift, for the first time in his life he thought of her humorously. How Cibo would laugh. The parrot gave him a wink and went on cracking seeds regularly. Like too long separated ticks of a clock they seemed to mark the passing of a more ample kind of time; to accentuate the somnolent leisure of the place. His eyes lost themselves in the cool green of the date and cocoa palms in the patio. The lizards streaked and flicked across the veranda. Carlo's two little bastards got up and went into a far corner and urinated. They came back again, curled up and went to sleep, the little girl with her head on her brother's stomach. Anthony lay back in his chair overpowered. Somewhere far away the huge carts were still jolting . . . somewhere . . .

At half past five the shadow of the patio wall suddenly seemed to engulf it. Almost instantly it was cool. They got up; bathed.

In a high-ceilinged room furnished with bamboo furniture and a mosquito net hanging ghostly from a suspended ring, Anthony dressed himself in a spotless linen suit that some former guest of Cibo's had left behind him. The very touch of it was refreshing, exhilarating. After the long sleep and floods of orange juice he felt light, very clear and cool, with a certain devil-may-care air and a penchant for the macabre in his mood. Downstairs the voice of Captain Elisha could be heard rumbling true to form. A sonorous, clean Spanish that he took to be Father Trajan's rang through the halls. He heard Cibo laugh and hurried down.

They were already gathering about the table. In this place you seemed to do nothing but eat and sleep, and yet he was hungry. He found himself talking to, and at the same time half enthralled by Father Trajan. It was about fish. Father Trajan would take him fishing, mañana. Mariana the Virgin was to be installed in Father Trajan's chapel at Regla, the Chapel of St. Paul. Most of Father Trajan's parishioners were the wives of fishermen. "Quite early Christian in atmosphere," said Carlo, and sniffed. Captain Elisha did not see the point. But it was a question whether he or the priest was the more pleased over the affair of the Madonna.

"A good bargain for a heretic and a pious gift to the church by a pagan--was there ever such a combination of circumstances before!" laughed Cibo as his guests left late with everything arranged.

"Tomorrow you must certainly go fishing with the father," said Cibo yawning. "It will be an experience--for you. And we can take up that matter of the debt again. Mañana, mañana," he stretched himself and smiled.

"Good heavens," thought Anthony, "is the man going to sleep again?" They both were!

"Well, how did you like your first day in Cuba?" queried Cibo?" A fine life, eh?"

"J'en suis ravi, monsieur," said Anthony, and meant it.

He climbed into bed and looked through his mosquito netting that caught the broad moonlight in a silver gauze. Outside, the guitars and banjos were still going here and there. A strange, sickly, sweet odour of some blossom opening in the moonlight outside his window in the patio drifted in to him. He wished that Florence . . . that Angela were with him now. How it would be--both of them!

What had done this? Was it Havana? Or was it Carlo Cibo's wine? Mañana, mañana! Oh, rare new world!

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE MIRACLE IN THE CHAPEL OF ST. PAUL, REGLA

Wrapped in one of Mrs. Jorham's patchwork quilts the Madonna del Vino, as Carlo persisted in calling her when Father Trajan was not around, was delivered early in the morning at the side door of the bare Chapel of St. Paul in the suburb of Regla.

Collins and some of his crew brought her and took the crazy quilt away again. Carlo, Father Trajan, and Anthony were on hand, each with a very different thought in his heart, as the Virgin was set on the stone floor and unveiled by the rough sailors.

A mason had already slung his scaffold and was preparing to install the statue in the niche behind the altar, where a poor little plaster figure without either beauty or prestige had long been the despair of Father Trajan.

Carlo was surprised by the serene beauty of the figure. In the shadows of the chapel the bright blue of her cloak was toned down until it fell in folds about her like memories of evening. He kept taking Father Trajan back a little distance "to give perspective"--and to prevent any chance of the priest's peering accidentally into the deep folds of the mantle.

The truth was, Cibo would have been ashamed to have had the wine bottle discovered now. It would look as if he had put it there.

Father Trajan was much touched by the gift; secretly mollified for many a remark of his table companion and sly dig at "the superstitions of the age." Now he would be able to obtain a grand indulgence from the bishop for Cibo. His friend's sins should be forgiven him. And there would be great joy amid the simple parishioners when their new Virgin was consecrated.

Perhaps it was a little irregular to have the mason put her in the niche this morning without notifying his superiors. But after all this was his parish. What possible objection could there be? And he would be able to beg a new cassock now for his acolyte. The present one was almost scandalous. Hey-ho! there would not be a more beautiful Madonna in Havana. He knelt down before her on the pavement and made a little prayer silently.

"Mother of God, we are very simple and poor people who come to the Chapel of the blessed apostle. We must serve thee with our hearts rather than with our gifts. Forgive, and be merciful, gracious Mary. The candles are not of the best. But thou livest in the light of the Father. Reflect his radiance upon us. Fill the nets of those who kneel before thee here with fish. And remember thy servant who is a fisher of men, and Brother François, who is digging roots now in my garden. Reward him for his merciful heart, as thou art merciful, santa Madre de Dios."

He crossed himself and rose.

"Come, come, Carlo," whispered Anthony. "You must never say a word about that wine. Did you see the father's face as he prayed? You must promise me. It would be cruel. I should feel I had compounded at a sacrilege."

"Perhaps you are right," said Cibo.

"Perhaps!" said Anthony.

"Well, well, rest easy," retorted Cibo. "I shall not try to be funny by being cruel. The priest is my friend, you know. We are really fond of each other. My gift was kindly meant, too. We shall just forget that the bottle is there. After all that is nothing but a silly accident. We are not responsible for it. I might get the mason to remove it."

They were standing outside the little door by now talking in low voices.

"Let it go," said Anthony. "There would be awkward questions. Let well enough alone." Cibo nodded but a little whimsically.

"A hundred years from now some curious verger will find some remarkable port. I would like to come back and be that man." He smacked his lips.

Inside the chapel Father Trajan and the workman lifted the Madonna into her niche reverently.

"And mind you," said the priest, "I want the new stucco, where you have had to remove the old, smooth, and coloured like the rest of the walls. You can decorate the panel below, can't you--a little? I should like that."

"Sí, sí, padre, for two years now I have been working at the decorations in the cathedral." With the point of his heavy trowel he began to indent rapidly a deft little intaglio design of vines and flowers along the base. He leaned back, looking down from the scaffold for approval.

"You may go on," said the priest. "But stop--the cost!"

"I have been well paid by the generous señor grocer," the man admitted a little reluctantly. "A few more adobe flowers--" he shrugged his shoulders. "For a few prayers for my mother I will add the whole vine."

"One for each leaf," said the padre. "An acanthus. You know?"

"Sí," muttered the man. He began to mix.

"Do not forget to drop something in the box for the poor, my friend," said the father as he left to rejoin Carlo and Anthony.

"Ah! It is difficult to bargain with the clergy," muttered the mason to himself. "But I shall have the best of this bargain yet. Grow, vine! Burgeon my mother out of purgatory!" The point of his trowel and one finger flew. A delicate acanthus tendril with a thousand leaves began to unroll itself across the smooth face of the panel at the Virgin's feet. Outside, the voices of Father Trajan and his companions died away. The chapel was very close and still.

The mason worked diligently and fast. From time to time he laid down his trowel and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. At ten o'clock he got down from the scaffold and quenched his thirst at a cantina near by. He returned a little unsteady and went on. The tendril of leaves was almost done now.

He modelled the last fine spray of closed buds with his thumbnail and fingers. The scaffold shook slightly. The trowel which he had laid aside crept nearer the edge. Now--all but the last bud! He indented it in the stucco. Suddenly there was a clink, a tinkle, and the sound of gurgling fluid. The man looked about him uneasily, but he could see nothing amiss. Well, he would scrape up now and go. Caramba! His trowel was gone!

He hunted for it for some time. It was not on the floor. It was not on the altar, under it or beside it. It was not on the scaffold. He took that down. It had not fallen into the mortar bucket. He removed his dripping hand and sloshed it off in disgust.

"Madre de Dios!" And a nice, new, little trowel well balanced with lead he had let into the handle himself! One would think those little sneak-thieves and naked gamins would stay out of a church. He had had a pious mother, thank God! A fine generation it was getting to be with the Inquisition suppressed!

He left, staggering away under a pile of buckets and scaffolding on his back.

----------

In the meanwhile Father Trajan's little party had threaded their way through the fishing quarter of Regla to his house on the water front. A small coral point projected into the bay, and there amid feathery trees at all angles, for the place was swept by winds at certain seasons, lay the priest's house bowered in green and surrounded by flowers and shrubs. Over the wall across the neck of land Anthony could see another priest hoeing vegetables in the garden, a spare, distinguished looking man in the robes and sandals of a Franciscan who evidently belonged to the Pauvres.

They walked into an alley of hibiscus mad with morning bloom, where the scarlet flowers seemed to hiss at them with their protruding, yellow-tipped tongues. They tramped through the gloom of the house and out of a blue square of doorway on the other side of it into Father Trajan's dooryard. Few who visited the priest were prepared for the pure loveliness of that little spot. It occupied the last few hundred yards, the very tip of the point of land. The house which lay directly across the narrow promontory screened it effectively from the town.

Here through the long years of undisturbed administration of his little parish Father Trajan had gradually brought back from his inland rambles every species of palm, fern, flowering bush, and vine that had pleased his vernal fancy as his eye had ranged over the estates and jungles of the Pearl of the Antilles. The gift of a rare flowering plant was to him more welcome than alms. Then too, his fishermen had brought him living shells for his beach and curious sponges and sea ferns for his coral caves. He had the gift of planting. Nearly everything he put down in either earth or water was soon at home.

Viewed from his bayside doorway, the result was what seemed to be a natural garden. The eye flattered itself and fell back tired with delight from the purple mass of a royal piñon to rest in a cool bed of ferns. Satiny lilies of plain and mottled colours looked at one from unexpected spots. There were smouldering clumps of anemones sprouting from cavities in the coral rock. Hanging from palms of unexpected shapes were orchids no one could have imagined, and against the faded coral-pink of the house itself bloomed four lusty trees of yellow, Moorish roses.

Yet, although every one of these things, except a few giant trees, had been planted by the padre, the place was still enchantingly wild. The glow of colour gradually ceased as the glance swept out to the point. Here was nothing but shadowy-green open spaces under wide-stretching date palms, waving ferns, and finally, grass; grass cut off clean and suddenly by the white circle of a tiny, moon-shaped cove.

"El paradiso del padre," said Cibo waving his hand.

"Ah, friend Carlo, you must let me praise this myself," cried Father Trajan, nevertheless colouring a little with pleasure at the compliment. "It is my one vanity.

"Come, señor," he continued, turning to Anthony, "I can see by your face that you will listen to me while I talk of my flowers. You have eyes to see, and you see! And there are some other things I must show you. We have an agreement to go fishing this morning, too. Carlo, will you join us?"

"What, broil myself for a basket of stupid fish I can buy for a peso!" exclaimed Cibo with genuine horror. "You know me better. I am for the veranda and my patio. But go along, my boy, do not let me prevent you. You had best take my palm leaf hat. Adiós then," he cried, doffing his hat with a wry face and exchanging it for Anthony's Leghorn which was too small for him. "And good luck. There will be turtle for luncheon," he called back. "Plenty for both of you. Never mind bringing the fish!"

"A heart of gold goes there," said the padre looking wistfully after Cibo. "What a pity that he injures his soul by the poor thoughts of his head. One should leave such matters to the church. But pardon, señor, you are of the true faith, I trust."

"I was raised in a convent, padre," said Anthony, secretly dodging the issue. What faith had he now? He wondered. He felt the key to his chest in his pocket--locked away there--safely?

"Oh, well then," said Father Trajan, as if there were a logical connection, "come, let me show you my fish ponds."

They walked down a narrow, wandering path toward the point.

"But look," cried the padre stopping suddenly at the top of a small knoll, "look! You can just see it from here."

A low cloud seemed to be spreading itself along and below the tidal bench that hid the beach from their eyes on the far side of the point. It looked as if a purple-tinged wisp of dawn mist had been blown loose from its cloud-bank and had caught on the tip of the little promontory that morning.

"I cannot imagine what it is," confessed Anthony. Father Trajan looked pleased.

"Hurry. It is really worth seeing," he said. "The most wonderful thing in the island, I believe."

Their path led through a reach of tropical bracken and suddenly emerged on the beach where a fishing boat was drawn up. Here along a low cliff for a surprising distance either way flaunted and burned a giant Bougainvillea vine. Where it had not climbed over the wind-carved pillars of coral rock and pre-empted the neighbouring trees and bushes, it was supported by the deck beams and ribs of an old hulk. This, stripped of its planks and half buried in the sand, had become a gorgeous pergola. There were seats here and there beneath it; even a low cairn on which nets were spread to be dried and mended. From the smooth, bleached sand of the natural floor below, the tremendous organ note of the vine's resounding mass of colour was reverberated back again in a deep imperial glow that harmonized ethereally with the body of bloom above.

Farther under the pergola were stained glooms of purple and magenta that shaded off near the front, where the glare of the beach penetrated, into dim violet shimmers to be seen only when you looked into the place directly. Sidewise they lost themselves beyond the range of vision into the colourless substance of the air. Yet even there Anthony felt them to be still going on. They might be faintly electric and account for something having raised his goose-flesh. Or they might have been transmuted into a rolling sound. For it was impossible to stand before this Bougainvillea and think of it as a purely silent experience. It had about it the quality of a muffled kettle drum; of continuous, distant, tropical thunder.

It was some moments before Anthony became aware of the fact that Father Trajan seemed to be looking at the vine through his own eyes. For the priest was gazing at Anthony as if lost in the expression of the young man who had gone a little pale under his tan. He stood wrapped in the vision.

"But who wouldn't be?" he thought. "It is all I have felt and dreamed about Cuba spoken in one word," he cried aloud.

"There are many ineffable thoughts like that in the forest, señor," said the padre quietly, "but none more beautiful. To think of it! I have been permitted to plant and tend this one with my own hands!" He held them up as if they did not belong to him but were mere tools that had been lent him. "Come under the leafy roof and look up. It makes even heaven more wonderful. Indeed, I cannot begin to say what I think about it. You will understand that."

They went under the pergola and immediately transfigured themselves. Anthony began to look about him half unbelieving. It was then, and in that place, that for the first time he saw Brother François face to face.

----------

Seated, leaning back against a pile of old fish nets in a far corner of the place, where he had at first escaped their notice, was a barefooted monk in the brown garb of a Franciscan. The robe was brown in the sunlight, but in the light that filtered through the pergola it had about it the tinge of old blood. The man rose as soon as he saw himself discovered and came forward courteously. There was something distinguished and a little aloof about his carriage and walk, even an austerity. But no one could imagine being repulsed by him after a single glance at his face. On it was stamped hauntingly the rare expression of one whose strong sweetness of character had turned the indubitable marks of great sorrow into a kind of holy joy. Sympathy with him was evidently both a wise and a strong passion.

"I would like to know how one can look like that," thought Anthony. "He is not happy like a fool."

"Ah, Brother François, we have disturbed you I fear," said the priest. "We have found you out."

"Neither, I assure you, padre," said Brother François smiling. "When I saw you were having visitors I slipped back here to my favourite retreat. It was my hour of contemplation, but that is over now. It is time again to commune with human friends. May I introduce myself?"

He stepped forward and did so with a charm that put even the padre, who was somewhat awkward about such things, at his ease. It was the "monsieur" instead of the "señor" which gave Anthony his cue, and he replied in French.

At the sound of that tongue a sombre delight smouldered in the monk's eyes . . . "and so it will be pleasant to chat a little in French, if you will," said Anthony. "The Spanish comes as yet only practically. The other world must be left out for me in that language as yet."

"This one?" asked the monk half seriously, touching his forehead.

Anthony nodded. "I am afraid so." He noticed Brother François continued to look at him keenly. It was a little embarrassing, for his eyes seemed full of a banked fire that might break into flame.

"You learned your French at Blois, didn't you? It is an excellent kind they speak there. At Blois, I am sure. Perhaps I have seen you before? Just now I felt certain of it."

"I have never been to France," said Anthony greatly pleased. "My master was, I believe, from some place on the Loire. I am from Livorno. At least I was born there."

"Then I could never have known you. Ah! I remember now what it is. Yes, that is curious! But, your pardon, monsieur, it is nothing but a remembrance I will not trouble you with. And so you are going fishing with the padre, I see. I envy you. He and I are both fishers."

The padre was indeed already beginning to gather together his tackle but several articles seemed missing. With some annoyance visible on his face he excused himself to return to the house for the missing things.

Anthony and Brother François sat down under the arbour.

Evidently the opportunity to converse in French was a precious one to the monk. In the familiar accents of his own tongue he became ardent and even confidential. They exchanged news. Anthony was soon comparing notes with Brother François while mentally composing a long pondered letter to Toussaint on the subject of the French Revolution. And here he found to his fascination was a man who had been in the thick of it, one who had actually seen Robespierre.

There was something almost occult about this monk. He stirred you strangely. He removed your reticences for he seemed to have none himself. It would be possible, very easy--there seemed to be a spiritual compulsion upon one to succumb to his spell. . . .

"So you see, monsieur, I am after all not an émigré in the usual meaning of the word. To preach the gospel and really to live like Christ--it was not more dangerous in Paris during the Terror than it is here and now. All of us who do that are exiles. We are merely passing through the strange countries of the world going home to our Father. In our souls is all of his kingdom that will ever be here. Yet just for that reason it might be everywhere and now.

"I am not making you a homily, monsieur, or talking about myself. You will pardon my excitement. It is the remembrance of the past few years in Paris that comes across my view. One cannot, if one knows, speak of them merely with the kitchen voice, 'Thérèse, a little more gumbo in the soup!'--no, no,--that will not do. That is worse than being exquisite or gay about it. Also I do not speak to crowds or in them, whether in the plaza or dans l'eglise. Always it is to the man, or to the woman or the child that I come, and not always with words. Man, mankind, the state, virtue, the people, justice, fraternity--what are they? Words that do not correspond to anything but philosophers' dreams. They are the worn out table-talk of Greece and Rome. Liberty?

"Monsieur Antoine, for two years I followed the tumbrils and I stood on the scaffold. I saw the keen knife of liberty fall and rise to fall again, and each time on an individual's neck. That is the way of the state. And those hundreds of eyes! They looked down into the basket at the eyes there that looked back. It was unthinkable that what lay in the basket was the end. Those who thought so died there, indeed. For those who turned to me for some confirmation of hope, I then shared what I had given me, the Comforter. Robespierre himself could not prevent it.

"Do you know I went to see that man. Mais oui! At the little house of the cabinet-maker in the Rue St. Honoré--in April only two years ago. It seems a century ago. It was the day after Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and the others had passed under his window in the carts.

"The two ruffians who guarded the tyrant came to the door when I knocked. I asked for Duplay, the furniture-maker, and got him to carry my name to the little man upstairs. Robespierre knew me. We both came from Arras. My family was a very great one. Monsieur would know its name. Robespierre knew that I might have been a bishop but that I went into the country instead as a parish priest. You see we had both read Rousseau together. I remembered when de Robespierre was a provincial dandy who read bad verses before the 'Rosati' at Arras. He had a sweet voice then, and he had resigned a criminal judgeship to avoid pronouncing a death sentence. Think of it! It was the same voice that I afterwards heard raised in the Convention, 'It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth, Louis must die that the country may live!' Ah, he was full of regrets like that. But anyway I was shown upstairs.

"He and Fleuriot-Lescaut were seated together. Robespierre looked very white. The great voice of Camille Desmoulins shouting the prophecy of his death under his window the day before had shaken him. I saw that he was afraid. He was still the little dandy in knee-breeches, silk socks, and powdered hair. He turned down a paper with a list of names on it that he and Lescaut were talking over and looked up.

"'Well, citizen?' he said, 'what is it? Ah! I remember you now.' He tried to smile. That was terrible.

"'I have a very simple proposition to make to you,' I replied. 'You must be very sick of all this blood-letting and of being the god of Catherine Théot. Is it not so? See where your philosophic virtue has led you! You will have to kill us all. You alone will remain, for soon you will be the only one who knows how to practise virtue. Another plan is needed. I speak to you, for you, not for France or any other dream, but for your own soul. You believe that is immortal?'

"'What do you propose, citizen?' Robespierre said. He leaned forward and looked at me with hungry eyes and a thin smile.

"'Simply that you leave this room now and come with me into the country. You can change your name and disappear. Then we can go about the world just as Christ would have done, doing good. We need nothing. We need make no speeches or sermons. Let us just go out and let things happen to us as they will, and try to help and comfort any man, woman or child who needs it. Let us be kind, a brother to this man and that. Let us persuade no one, but pass on taking whatever road lies before us and leaving a good deed done in Christ's name wherever and whenever we can. That is all. It is an old and simple plan, to do good to men with the spirit of God upon one. Do you not see by this time that it is the only plan that will work? Leave everything and follow me. You remember that?'

"'Why do you come here to me, and today, with a suggestion like this?' he asked. 'Do you not know that France is pressed down upon my shoulders, the hope of saving France, of the world!' He got up and moved about with Fleuriot-Lescaut gaping at him.

"'But you are mad,' he flung at me. 'You have lost relatives. You are an aristocrat, a ci-devant count.'

"'That is not so, citizen. You know that even before the Revolution I became a parish priest. No, no, it is not I that am mad. I come to you because you are an idealist of sincerity. I can see that. And you are wrong, you have chosen the wrong way to help the world. You are working through the state and through institutions. You have made reason your divinity. See what it is doing to make men divine. You know. Still within you, you know!'

"He made a furious gesture but I kept on.

"'You can disembarrass yourself of all this, citizen. There is a way to do good and to save yourself by forgetting yourself. I have found it. I am living it, and it is in me. Come! Let the Republic flourish as it may. The Kingdom of God is just beyond the door. Leave Robespierre here, my brother, and come with me.'

"Many that I have spoken to thus, monsieur, have been greatly surprised. Under all that they pretend to be and through all their bafflements I talk to them. They see the way opening before them. In truth most men have thought of it. But the world is too much for them. They keep their loss. Prudence insists on just a few chains to hold them fast to something tangible. So they remain anchored on their reef to be pounded to pieces on it when the tide of life ebbs. It was so with Robespierre. For a minute he saw, he remembered, he dared hope again. Then his face worked, and I thought he would spring at me.

"Monsieur, if Fleuriot-Lescaut had not given a great laugh just then I should have been guillotined. I believe in my heart he was a merciful man. His laugh saved me.

"'Come, citizen,' he said, 'have this simple fool thrown out. Disembarrass yourself, as he says. We have not time here to argue with a mad parish saint. A cabbage head,' he roared, 'a green cabbage!' He pretended to kick me downstairs. I saw the tyrant standing at the top with the list still in his hand. It was the first time he had laughed in weeks, I suppose. I did make an unfortunate noise falling down the stairs. But do you know I still think--almost I won. 'Almost thou persuadest me,' his eyes seemed to say, and his hands shook. But God had another way. I only offered myself as an instrument. Did you see the padre when he held up his hands and said they had been permitted to tend this glorious vine? I heard that, too. Ah! the padre is a poet. A thought of God he called his vine. Well, it is best to think of all of yourself as the padre thinks of his hands. You will see then how thoughts of God flourish."

He looked up so that the violet tinge of the light filtering through the vine fell full on his face.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the impression which this narrative had made on Anthony. It seemed as if Brother François had been pleading with him. It was not so much what the monk had said as how he said it. Here was a man with an obviously complicated knowledge and experience who was living by and pleading for a great simplicity. The manner of an aristocrat and a courtier had been transmuted in him into a noble directness, a wise humility that was without fear. There was an ease about him that sprang from an assurance which did not annoy you. You simply understood that he was at one with himself and the world. Here was passion at rest and yet potential.

"Follow me!" Yes, follow along the way that child which the madonna held in her arms had followed into manhood, into something beyond, into the glory like the violet light on Brother Fraçois's face. Ah! what a way! That was what the madonna was holding out to you always in her arms--the child and his way. The most simple and direct one after all. Why had he never realized that before? What the monk had said had brought it home to him as a possible experience. Father Xavier had told him to think of the child. He saw what he meant now, he thought. To take up your cross and . . . That was not clear. Anthony had no cross. Life was delightful. Like the light under this arbour, beautiful, and colourful, and clear. Was not his private communion with the madonna enough for him? And yet she was holding forth something else to him, something that was very precious to her. Yet she would share it. It was a gift she seemed to hope you would take.

Yes, it meant that. Religion was not merely to refrain, and to worship, "to talk at night," as he used to call it. He smiled and he sighed too. No, it was a way. Had he really been travelling that way? Brother François had. By his overtones he seemed to make the music of that road clear. The road was life along which he went doing good. Had he been pleading for a companion? Why not join him, Anthony? It would all be simple and all very clear. The responsibility would be God's.

Simple things appeal sometimes even to complicated young men. Anthony sat with his head on his hand looking at Brother François.

"Thou knowest," said the priest very quietly, "to whom I have been talking. Hast thou heard me?"

"Yes, I have understood," said Anthony. But he could go no further.

Brother François waited a while. "Well, then--you have understood," he said. "That is the beginning. You must wait until you also feel. It is experience I mean. Then you will know, and then . . . then the answer will be yours to make and the road yours to take. But I see that it is not now. Only remember what I have said, if you can, when the time comes.

"Ma foi!" he looked up suddenly breaking the tension between them, "the sun is already overhead. You will not be going fishing this morning. This morning is no more. What can have detained the padre? He is--well, he is a fisherman, and there must have been a reason. Let us go and see."

They rose and sauntered down the path toward the house. It was very hot now. Even under Cibo's palm leaf hat Anthony could feel the exact spot of the sun. The little suburb of Regla that lay before them seemed extraordinarily quiet. It was already absorbed in its siesta. Not even a cart jolted. Suddenly with a startling clangour the bell in the chapel began to ring.

"What can it be?" said Brother François wonderingly, as the excited clangour continued. "It is like an alarm." They quickened their pace and entered the house. Father Trajan was leaning against the jamb of his street door listening in a puzzled way. He looked up when they came in.

"Pardon, señor, for my not returning. I will explain it shortly. I was detained. Mariana! What I cannot explain now is the ringing of my chapel bell. Possibly someone has been drowned."

Already they could hear the sound of running feet in the alleys beyond the hedge. "Ah, I am afraid that is what it is. See, here they come now to fetch me." A look of sadness overspread his features. "I had best get the oil, I suppose. Who can it be this time?" He sighed.

Two women made their appearance at the gate breathless, and calling, "Padre, padre!"

"Ah, what is it, Juana, my poor soul?" said the padre from the next room with apprehensive sadness.

"Padre, padre," clamoured the two fisherwomen now at the door, "a miracle has occurred!"

"A what?" said the padre.

"A miracle," clamoured the woman.

"Yes, yes, by the blood of God it is true!" bawled the other.

"What is all this silly excitement about?" said the priest coming out of the room indignantly with the viaticum still in his hand. "What are they ringing the bell of my chapel for?"

"A miracle," shouted both of the women. "There is a new Madonna in the chapel and . . ."

"Foolish women, I know it," countered the priest. "Did I not see her brought there this morning myself? It is the pious gift of . . ."

"But she is bleeding! Her merciful heart is bleeding red blood drop by drop on the altar! We have seen it! A great crowd is already there watching. It is a blessed miracle from God!"

"Sí, sí, padre! Sí, sí, it is true! Come and see for yourself. Juana and I, we alone have remembered to come and tell you." They stood crossing themselves and trembling.

"Come, padre, let us see what this is all about," said Brother François. "I thank you, my friends." But the women had gone.

They hurried after them as fast as they could. The town was already alarmed by the bell. People dashed past them toward the chapel. A good deal of confused shouting could be heard here and there as the winds of rumour blew.

When they arrived at the door of the building it was already full and a crowd was seething about the entrance. With great difficulty a way was made for the padre and his friends. Inside the place was silent. Only the heavy breathing of the crowd and the clamour of the bell above was audible. Anthony could see that those near the altar were on their knees while those further back were craning their heads and staring as if fascinated. All were looking in one direction.

He became separated from the others and finally found himself pressed back against the side wall. Only after some difficulty could he manage to get a glimpse of the front of the church. Father Trajan was already before the altar kneeling. Anthony saw there was a red stain upon it. The bell had stopped now. You could have heard a pin drop. Suddenly there was a plop, a distinct drip like falling water. The stain on the altar ran over and dripped onto the floor. A universal sigh went up from the whole place. He raised his eyes to the statue in the niche above. Some time passed. Then he saw it himself. Something trickled out of the cloak of the virgin and splashed onto the altar. In the candlelight it was red, and it did look like blood. The bell began to clamour again madly.

Father Trajan turned to face his chapel, now jammed from wall to wall. Here everybody who could was kneeling. He burst into the "Magnificat."

A great thrill of joy ran through the crowd. The simple faces of fishermen, labourers, and negroes looked up at the miraculous statue, filled with ecstasy and awe. The face of Father Trajan was glorified. It shone with a proud benignity and utter conviction.

"In his own chapel!" Anthony thought. "Poor man! I should have let Carlo take it away. I did not think this would happen."

He assured himself he was innocent, but his heart smote him sorely. There was not one unbelieving face present. "Now," he told himself, "no one must ever know. I will see to that. What a seed Captain Jorham planted that night! A miracle!"

Then, terrible as it was, he wanted to laugh. Struggling with himself in the intense excitement and the stifling atmosphere, for the first and last time in his life he felt hysterical. He wanted to laugh and cry as the women were already doing.

The bell burst forth again into a mad peal. Outside there was a renewed shouting. The whole town would soon be there. How could he get out? The side door! He looked across the chapel. Standing wedged helplessly against a pillar so that he seemed to tower above those who knelt around him was the tall frame of Brother François. He was looking with an expression of intense pity and sympathy at the hundreds of faces staring ecstatically at the magical clay breast of the Madonna del Vino.

An hour later Anthony finally gained the door. The "miracle" was still going on.

Wine seeps slowly through terra cotta.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A DECENT MAMMALIAN PHILOSOPHY

It was about three o'clock when Anthony finally succeeded in returning to Carlo Cibo's. He had won his way out of the chapel literally inch by inch, and he was tired and exhausted. Whether the heat or the excitement were the more intense would be hard to say. Already the news had spread far and wide. Boats, carriages, and caballeros were coming in from Havana. The cantinas of Regla, he observed, were doing a roaring business. But in the patio all was shade and quiet. Carlo was asleep on the veranda in his chair, his short legs dangling.

"Wake up, Carlo," said Anthony. "A miracle has occurred. Aren't you ashamed, you old heathen, to be asleep while such things are going on?" It was some time before Carlo could be made to comprehend. When he did his belly moved up and down so fast as finally to stop his laughing from sheer physical discomfort. He lay back in his chair and continued to snort with his hands on his sash.

"Miracles should not be permitted to occur in the summer," he said at last. "They are dangerous to people like myself. It is hard on the heart. I shall take it up with the ecclesiastical authorities. Unfortunately the archbishop, who is a friend of mine, lives at Santiago.

"But," continued he sitting up and laying his hand on his lips, "seriously, let me tell you, my boy, you and I must keep a close mouth about this. If we are questioned we must know nothing. Nothing--do you understand?

"There will be a tremendous to-do over the affair. The bishop in Havana may even be annoyed with Father Trajan for being a little too up and coming. Or he may suspect me when he hears I am the donor of the miraculous image. He is no fool I can tell you, that old man. So mum's the word. There will undoubtedly be an official inquiry, depositions before notaries, and all that kind of thing. The whole town is a witness. But they won't press it too far I feel sure. It falls too pat into their hands. With the population on both sides of the bay stirred up it will be impossible, silly to deny it. There would be riots. No, no, it will be confirmed. As you say--'A miracle has occurred!'" He lay back again breathless.

"Cheecha!"

"Sí, sí."

"More limes and rum, mucha, mucha! Turtle soup for the señor. Hurry, delay not, haste! The soup hot, with much fat, and sliced limes. Go!

"Ah, Madre de Dios, what a day! Did I not say you were lucky, Señor Toni? See--you reek with luck!" He spread out his fat hands over the pitcher with utter conviction. Even the lime peel dangled from his fingers convincingly.

"And the curious thing about it is that this time all the depositions and witnesses will be honest. The poor bishop will really be confused by that. The miracle should have taken place at the cathedral in Havana which they are just now redecorating. The bones of Columbus were brought there only last January. But the Madonna bleeds at Regla, in 'the suburb across the bay'! All the rules for miracles are disregarded."

A leer came into his eye. "The future of Regla is made. Peons from Moron to Guanes will be making pilgrimages. My house is already twice as valuable as when you arrived . . . Signore, I thank you! You are a public benefactor. Por Dios, the rest of the holy cargo of El Capitan Jor-ham will now sell for ransoms! Even the black robes who are now lying low at Belén will scramble for it. A plain padre will have beaten them. It is--it is simply magnificent! I drink your illustrious health." He tilted an entire pitcher of drink down his throat. His voice came out of the deep receptacle like an echo from a cave.

"Are you sure," said he, "your friend the captain does not remember about his bottle?"

"I am certain," Anthony assured him.

The pitcher gurgled with a satisfied note. Its angle became more acute. "How do you suppose," continued its sepulchral tones, "that the bottle was broken?"

"A jar when the statue was put in place, perhaps," mused Anthony, "or possibly some carelessness on the part of the mason. But I really don't know. Do you?" cried he, suddenly suspicious.

"No, no," replied Carlo coming out of his eclipse with genuine solicitude--and the mark of the pitcher on his face. "I tell you I had nothing to do with it. I suspect it was the mason. I had already thought of that. But it must have been an accident as you say. He would not tell. I'll tell you what. To make this miracle beyond cavil you must again make sure of Captain Jorham. Leave the fragments of the bottle and the mason to me. Tonight, late, I will make sure of both. I know a way. They will examine the statue, of course, and within a day or two. Father Trajan--we are both thinking of him, I know--dear man, he shall have his miracle without a cloud. When the confirmation comes from the archbishop I shall give the finest dinner that Cuba has ever seen. It too will be a miracle. You are the first invited."

"An invitation is the best way to make a witness remember. I noticed that at Mr. Bonnyfeather's table. Invited guests never forget," said Anthony. He wondered if all events for Cibo inevitably resulted in more and better food.

"I have known even uninvited guests to remember my dinners," smiled Cibo. "But that is really one of the greatest compliments a host can receive. I'll tell you what! We shall have you, and Captain Jorham, and Father Trajan--and myself . . ."

"And Brother François?" added Anthony impulsively.

"Ah, yes, the Frenchman! He is interesting. Did you know he is already in hot water with the authorities here for being a little too literal in his ideas of what Christ would have one do for slaves? He goes about nursing poor people with yellow fever and soothing the dying whether they are white or black. It is over the black that the trouble comes in, of course. It scarcely does, you know, after what has just happened in Santo Domingo, to have a man like that loose. The niggers might get the idea that God is sorry for them. Not in Cuba with a Spanish governor and garrison! Did you know the captain-general sent his aide to ask me to look the man up? Well, I did. He has an interesting story I can tell you! A little too interesting, and not regular enough. I don't think he'll be here long," said Cibo drawling a little. He began to mix more punch.

"Carlo, he is harmlessly extraordinary, isn't he? Brother François is a holy man if there ever was one," exclaimed Anthony. "What harm has he done?"

"Oh, he has been talking with you, I see," said Cibo. His face suddenly became quite serious.

"Yes, I agree with you, Toni. Brother François is a holy man. That is the trouble. He is not merely content to perform in the ritual of the church. He is one of your complicated primitives, a man who has penetrated behind the scenery of religion, one who intends to live the story which the ritual is supposed to illustrate. You see, he does not attack or interfere with the drama. That makes it a little difficult for his superiors. He does not provide them with an excuse to abolish him or thrust him out. On the contrary, as far as I can find out, he merely proposes to carry out their own precepts. That is, of course, profoundly embarrassing--to them."

Anthony tried to say something but Cibo went on.

"Brother François and his kind are the men who have always made Christianity a dangerous religion. Just when the church is about to be taken for a decorative and snugly-woven cocoon on a dead branch of the sacred tree, a place for a few fat slugs to hibernate where they have softly spun themselves in, pouf!--that cocoon bursts and the beautiful, living psyche of Christianity emerges. There is always a great running around then and waving of fine-meshed theological and political nets. The state is particularly anxious about such lepidoptera getting loose. Property! When the state can't kill a specimen quietly in a corner before its wings are dry, the church captures it and pins it on a card marked 'Saint Somebody.' Then the faithful come and see the body in a glass case, usually the glass is coloured. But there it is, catalogued, and belonging to its proper order. Now and then it may be permitted to work a few harmless miracles. A pile of crutches accumulates, or the story of the poor butterfly edifies the piously sentimental. They imitate its flutterings. Meanwhile the hard-working caterpillars keep making more Gothic or Romanesque cocoons for the slugs, always on the same closed pattern. They, of course, do not know yet what a Christian cocoon is really for." Cibo took another draw on the pitcher and ran on even a little more incoherently. "Now look at Jeanne d'Arc!

"The state is so frightfully careless and stupid about its executions. Executions, particularly the expunging of patriots or moral reformers, should be conducted in profound secrecy. To dramatize, or to allow news about such takings-off to circulate, whether the man is a criminal or a saint, is the best way for sovereigns to commit suicide. Yes, I often wonder at the politicos. They never seem to learn anything. Just about the time the world is getting bored by being asked by an enthusiast to adopt some kind of a life that no mammals could survive--Ha! the police descend! A great trial with all the implications of a Greek tragedy is staged. Soldiers parade, judges pontificate, women weep, priests snivel. After which the hero is then boiled in oil, or has his bowels let out, or is permitted to caper naked in the flames, or is hanged--or what you will. How can anybody forget him then?

"For saints I myself favour a dangerous foreign mission, transportation provided free. I have already suggested that to the captain-general. For people are already beginning to follow this Brother François about. His dramatic disappearance into the Morro would be embarrassing. He has friends. Whispers about him have already passed over the hills from plantation to plantation."

"How can you talk so, Carlo? It seemed to me just now that you spoke of him with affection. Don't you care? You are asking him to eat with you, too!" Anthony was now much in earnest and sitting up very straight.

"You do not understand me, Toni. I view all these matters from the outside, calmly. I am an unromantic Italian, a real Roman. I am purely practical. I am really the best friend Brother François has. Ah, you smile, but listen. If he stays here his end is certain. He is, I must tell you, of a great French noble family. He might have been a bishop under the old régime. He left all that and went into the country to be a parish priest. Then during the Revolution he drifted to Paris. He took a minor part as a peasant deputy in the beginning of the troubles there. I think he believed for a while that the state might help the people. Then he saw through all that and was horrified by the Terror. The last pink tinge of St. Jean-Jacques faded from his mind. He then became a literal follower of Christ. How? By joining the Franciscans, a Pauvre. He wandered begging into Spain. A troop ship brought him here. The men were dying on board of the plague, they say, and he swam out to nurse them at Cadiz. So you see even the garrison knows him. That worries the authorities. It is all frightfully irregular, of course, and could only happen in times like these. Now he is helping the slaves. No, he doesn't preach. He says nothing. But very shortly it will end in a tragedy for Brother François.

"Now I know all this. For years I have dealt among the natives and foreigners here and I have played carefully with the authorities, too. Always I play to avoid great trouble. The authorities have come to trust me. Yes, it has been profitable, but that is not all. You see, I like brave men. I don't want to see them die. I prevent it when I can. With Brother François it has gone like this: He has been ill. I prevailed on the good padre to take him in and nurse him in his garden. During that time his dangerous ministrations have ceased. In the meanwhile the captain-general has spoken to the bishop. Our good brother will soon be recognized for his work among the poor, and it will be arranged with the proper local authorities of his order that he shall go to Africa, to the field for which he has shown such aptitude! Even now they only await certain papers from Santiago. I have by just a few hints brought this about. If I had not, my friend, your holy man would have died before this of the yellow jack in a cell in the Morro waiting for instructions from Spain. They never come for people like him. Tell me now, am I so cruel? Or would you rather I should let him compose his own epitaph in some more romantic and heroic way?"

It was difficult for Anthony to reply. He found a large part of his emotions ready to applaud Brother François and yet he could not protest entirely what Cibo had said. He saw, too, that behind Carlo's somewhat cynical outline of policy there lay a well-meant human kindness.

"You do not intend to consult Brother François himself, I suppose?" he said at last.

"By no means," replied Cibo emphatically. "Your enthusiast who has a complete solution for everything on tap is always the last man to know what is good for himself. Indeed, with the millennium always just around the corner it is seldom that they take the trouble either to support or to protect themselves. They hook their chins on a cloud and then walk bare foot over all the broken bottles and old nails which those with a less lofty gaze easily avoid. A suggestion of shoes is hotly resented. In this case I am merely guiding the cloud-hooked gentleman out of a path, where a pit with a sharp stake is just around the next turn, into a road with perhaps a longer vista. Eventually, no doubt, he will find his own painful way to heaven. Several people will doubtless be impressed. Yes, speaking even as a disinterested pagan who wants all calvaries at a distance, I think I can see the stigmata on Brother François's hands."

Anthony's heart leaped strangely. Against all the assurances of Carlo there looked up at him as if out of a vision the face of Brother François as he had seen it under the violet light of the vine. "I think you are right about the stigmata, Carlo," he said after a while. "Perhaps I am romantic, but it did seem to me this morning that there was something about the man that was--well--shall I call it divine? I mean that the quality which saves men from being just animals has a greater share in him than in me. It seemed to dominate his body entirely. I am not sure they can kill that. Are you?"

Cibo passed his hand over his eyes. "No, I am not sure. But I do not want to watch anyone trying. Well, you touch me there, Toni, I will confess. In speaking of executions I should have added that ordinarily they get little attention, and for the most part do not deserve it. Men seem to have an instinct about them. There is seldom any vigorous protest over the mere slaying of so much meat. It is only when someone gets into the toils who possesses notably the quality of which you speak that the wrench is felt."

"It seems to me then you are not so pagan after all, Carlo."

The man stretched himself and laughed. "We are talking a great deal and it is getting late. Also I have now had my third pitcher today and that makes me voluble and illogical. But what does it matter what makes men talk if they convey their essential feeling? Brother François seems to have succeeded in doing that this morning to you. Confess--you are disturbed by him more than you would like to admit."

"Yes," said Anthony. "He stirred something in me of which I had not been aware."

"Exactly," said Cibo. "You have grown quite heated about him while we talked. You really care, and you are even ready to accuse me of being callous. But I repeat it is not so. Let me try to unfold my own philosophy a little. I think I see the basis of your feeling under all this. It is not merely a French priest we are discussing, is it? His unique personality, even briefly glimpsed this morning, touched you mysteriously. Didn't he?"

"I have already told you so. Why do you . . ." But Carlo was not to be interrupted.

"You should ask yourself, Toni mio--'is he really so unique?' You are young!" Cibo pointed his finger at him scornfully.

"When we are still young we think a great many people whom we meet are extraordinary. There is no one else in the world like them, we feel sure. Also our own precious selves are without parallel. We tell ourselves and each other, 'Neither we nor our friends, who are so unusual, are understood.' The world, we think, is not subtle enough to understand us. But we are wrong.

"The adult world is far too subtle to waste much time on us. It understands us instinctively by just remembering itself. It has thought through all our thoughts and is tired of our violent emotions. It does not need to care about youth because it knows youth will get older. Besides, it is too busy about the essentials of existence to go in for theories and feelings about them. Good old world! It is the young who do not understand it or themselves.

"From fifteen to twenty-five youth is busy talking about itself and trying to hatch doorknobs by brooding over them in a fever. Eggs--I mean events. They hatch themselves. Fate laid them pregnant on a warm beach. Everything that survives the process grows up according to the plan of its own egg. You can't do much about it. Not nearly as much as you think. No, really you can't!

"Fate is a wise old turtle. Imitate and accept her. Otherwise you will become feverish over the eggs you think you have hatched and go clucking and scratching about in the dust for chickens only to find that ducks must swim, and like it. When you learn that you are beginning to grow up. Grow up as soon as you can. It pays. The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty, provided of course you are healthy and don't die. No, the young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits. I," said he, helping himself again to the pitcher, "am middle-aged; absolutely in my prime."

Anthony felt momentarily overpowered, almost an infant again. Then he saw how much Cibo was enjoying himself.

"My God!" continued Cibo lustily, taking another sustaining swig, "did you ever think what a terrible mess a young man really is? I mean a youth. That is--a kind of portable apparatus or attachment to three troublesome globes, one who has just stopped being a mad boy and has not yet been scared into being a decent man. One feels profoundly sorry for him. The only peace he can get is for a few hours after a girl has nearly killed him. The rest of the time he goes drifting about making a lot of noise like a ship upon which a perpetual mutiny is going on. He is always steered in the direction which his bowsprit indicates.

"Young men think life is a game, you know, an adventure. You hear them say so. Life is a mystery, not a game or an adventure. Birth and death are the only certain events in it. Eggs, eggs both of them! Maybe life is an egg? You can't tell what you're hatching. I'm getting drunk but never mind. (It's a wise man that knows how foolish he is when he's sober.) I'll tell you what wisdom is." He sat up earnestly and ponderously now.

"You now hear the most profound of all human oracles speaking. It alone holds the past and the future. Hearken to it, Toni."

Anthony had winced. It took him a few minutes to think of any reply to this unexpected and outrageous attack upon him.

"Your tongue and your oracle both sound alike to me," he said at last in desperation.

He was surprised and delighted to see that he had got home. "I always did think life was a mystery but not to be explained by a blast from the bowels," he continued making the most of his brief moment of victory.

"You underrate the guts," said Cibo at last. "What is even a wise book but a blast from the lungs made visible to the eyes? Man only makes foolish noises and smells in the face of mystery. No, Toni, do not get angry," he went on. "Forgive me for being a man . . ."

"Forgive me for being a young man then," said Anthony.

"I do, I do! Believe me, I like you for it in spite of all I have said," cried Carlo. "I shall even pretend now to be sober.

"Toni, I have been watching you. You interest me. You see and feel things so vividly it is a pleasure. Why then don't you let it go at that? Enjoy the fascination life has for you. What more do you want? Why ask 'why'? Why let your mind always be demanding of you, 'Give me an understandable and valuable goal; explain to me why I am here'? That is dangerous. That will eventually spoil the fascination for you. That is why Brother François interested you this morning. You thought he could provide answers for those questions. Is not that so?"

"Yes," said Anthony, "I thought this morning when he was talking to me I saw a way open up to live by."

"The way to Calvary! Come, come, Toni mio, you are not going to try that way?" He laughed. "Nonsense, of course not! You are only dallying with a romantic idea. I know. You are going to live life, all of it, for the sake of living. It is worth while. Besides, you can't avoid it, being what you are. Listen, let us not devote more time to our Brother François. I want to talk to you about the most interesting thing in the world, with perhaps one exception. Yes, despite all I have said, a young man. One whom I know better than he supposes. For you see, as I was about to say some time ago, as one gets older with a much broader basis for judgment"--he patted his paunch--"every new person is no longer a surprise. Men and women fall into types.

"Now you are a type. You are very practical, and yet, you are always aware of the mystery of things. You have not yet made up your mind what the world is like or what you are. You are not quite sure what you would be, a mysterious or a practical man, and you therefore cannot foretell how you are going to act. Things happen to you, and then you are always surprised by your own possibilities and limitations. Now am I right so far?"

"Very much so," murmured Anthony. "I have sometimes thought so myself."

"Very well then, it will help you to have someone else say so who is not yourself. Here, have another drink. That is the least that a host who likes an audience can provide. I would like to hear you talk more. But, no, I know you will not. You would rather listen and think. Very well then. Now is your chance.

"What I meant to tell you is that unless you come to some conclusion about yourself and the world you will be a mere wanderer. Not finding any surety within, you will unconsciously go about the planet looking for yourself everywhere. You will get bored, or you will produce your own expelling explosions, and you will go on saying, 'In the next place, over there, I shall be happy. There I shall be myself. There I shall find the true Anthony.' But it will only be another small part of you in another small place, not the whole man. Or, worse than that, you will grow desperate and become extreme. You will try to pretend to yourself that you are all spirit and the world is only a dream, or that you are an animal only and the world is all real. Both are possible with you, for you will only believe things after you experience them. Ah! that is your trouble, a young man's trouble, the experiences of others do not persuade you. Nevertheless--take another drink, for I am going to give you some advice. If this talk were not all about you, you would be bored, wouldn't you?"

Anthony laughed and drank deep.

"For so much I can go on then," said Carlo, measuring the tumbler at the level of his eyes as he resumed.

"Practise then what I call a decent mammalian philosophy. Go in for the body, my boy, but remember you are a man. At one end of your spine is a brain and at the other end something that needs constant companionship. The two extremities are utterly dependent upon what is put into the vacancy. About one half of the time the brain is busy devising means to fill that hollow. The other half of the time is taken up with the matter of companionship--and the complications which result. The remainder of the time"--Cibo paused--"is given over to intellectual and spiritual affairs. Other minor manifestations of man I need scarcely mention. They are merely notorious.

"Now my ideal philosophy is one which admits what I have just briefly sketched to be the basis of human nature. I practise it constructively. For instance, my business is to distribute fine groceries and minor edible luxuries in and about Havana. But I do not regard this as an end. It simply provides me the means of filling my own cavity by filling others, with sufficient overplus to provide some amusement for my brain--and companionship for the other extreme--also the means of travelling a little, comfortably--but I don't want to. It is impossible to get more out of life. How can you? Add to this that I have the respect and fear of my fellow men in this vicinity, and you will see that my cup runs over. I do not interfere with them but I make trouble for them if they interfere with me. My code of honour consists of a few things that I will not do. There do not seem to be very many of them. Pagan you say? No! For you see I really love my neighbours as I love myself." He finished the last of the newly mixed tumbler, wiped his mouth with his hand, and went on.

"As for the peccadillo of the soul I leave that to the church; heroics to the military. I am fortunate, for I have no desire for fame. It appears to me to be a form of egoistic insanity. I prefer the mellow good-fellowship of the moment. It is much more real and infinitely more satisfactory. It exists when and where you are. What will anything matter fifty years from now to Carlo Cibo? I do not care to see through the bottom of my last pitcher," he chuckled, "and for those who would make the world over by using either religion or the state as an engine I have no use. No theories are sufficient to include life, and it is life and not theories that I want to see get on. It is difficult to live where any one idea has it all its own way. I don't want to see the priests, the politicos, the merchants, or the slaves completely on top. Any one of them would make it hard for a man--for me. I play them off one against the other and go my own way.

"Well, you can draw your own conclusions about me and some for yourself. My suggestion to you is that you drop all of these minor matters that have been troubling you and go in for being a decent, thinking mammal--a man. Thus you will avoid trying to live either as a pure spirit or a dirty, stupid animal. So you will get the most out of life. I do not know what your prospects are, but no matter! Take up some line of livelihood that will let you live, and settle down to it where you can live by it and not for it. Everything else you will find will eventually drop into its just place." Unconsciously he patted his paunch again.

There did not seem to be any ready reply to make to this. Anthony was surprised to find that while they were speaking both Brother François and Carlo sounded equally convincing.

"You seem very sure of yourself, Carlo," he said half aloud at last.

"I am," said Carlo, "you see I have tried it out."

On the basis of experience Anthony felt at a disadvantage.

"At least I am engaged in one very practical thing," he said finally. "I am determined whatever comes to collect that debt from Gallego. It is not only the money, but . . ."

"Good! And it may take you far," interrupted Cibo. "While you have been performing miracles today, I have found out the latest disposition of your own affairs. They might take you to Africa. How would you like that?"

"Carlo, are you trying to ship me off like Brother François?" asked Anthony half anxiously and half in fun. "I am no missionary."

"No, no," laughed Cibo, "but you may find it easier to convert your bills in Africa than in Havana. Most of Gallego's assets are now on the Rio Pongo. That is the only kind of conversion I had in mind. In any event we shall have to see the captain-general--tomorrow, perhaps. I will tell you about it then. It is, to be frank, a difficult mess. But no more of it now.

"It is late. Have your supper in your own room tonight. I have drunk enough to continue to talk you to death. But," said he, reaching up anxiously and laying hold of Anthony's arm, "do not think I did not mean what I have said. Think it over.

"Wait! Is there anything you want? Are you lonely? Sometimes the best way is to bury your trouble deep. It leaves you then--pleasantly." He smiled reminiscently still holding Anthony's arm. "There is for example--Cheecha."

"Not tonight I think, Carlo," said Anthony. He had hesitated a little.

"Ha, not tonight, not tonight! Adiós then, señor, at least I may wish you pleasant dreams." It was hard to tell whether Carlo's tone was mocking or really as regretful as it seemed.

Anthony went to his room, bathed, and lay down. Cheecha brought the supper. After he had eaten she rolled the little wagon into the corridor. Then she came back again.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, señor?" she asked.

He looked at her. She stood huddled back against the wall a little, but her intonation had been both submissive and hopeful. He looked at her for a long while. She giggled. Finally he shook his head.

"Adiós, Cheecha."

"Adiós, señor," she replied, her shoulders drooping disconsolately as she wheeled the empty dishes down the hall.

It was very hot. The mosquitoes droned outside the net. The day had excited him more than he thought. Although he was tired it was hard to relax. In what seemed to be a state of wakefulness rather than sleep he had a silly dream.

Captain Jorham's bottle of wine had fallen on his own madonna and smashed it. He felt unreasonably sorrowful. It seemed irreparable. He thought he got up and went to his chest to make sure. It was very hard to get the covers off the statue. Faith had put them on. They were tied up in intricate knots. Finally he came to the madonna herself. Yes, there she was. She was holding the child out to him, extending it through the folds of the cloth.

The child emerged alive and came toward him out of the chest. There was a violet light about it. But suddenly it was not the child. It was just Brother François with the light of the vine on his face. He was trying to say something and was pointing out a road they were both to travel together. Just then Father Trajan rushed in and bawled out, "A miracle, a miracle has occurred!" Father Trajan thrust his hands into the chest and pulled out the madonna proudly. It was broken and streaming with wine. The statue could never be put together again. It was full of pieces of Captain Jorham's wine bottle.

"It is your miracle that has done this," shouted Anthony. He was furious at Father Trajan.

Brother François was standing by looking very sad at all this. His face was full of pity. Then Anthony saw that Carlo Cibo was sitting on the chest laughing. "What difference does it make?" he asked. He was smoking a cigar.

"Brother François will mend it," Anthony heard himself exclaim, and started up to give him the madonna.

"I cannot help you," said the monk and pointed to Cibo. "He is sending me away."

Nevertheless, Cibo and the monk began to struggle for the madonna. She began to come apart in fragments. An overwhelming sorrow seized Anthony and he began to weep like a child.

Then, as is the way with dreams, the whole nature of the affair changed without apparent cause while remaining to itself perfectly rational.

The fragments of the madonna now scattered on the floor coalesced and became Mrs. Jorham's doll. Cibo and Brother François now seemed to be fighting over nothing important at all. A feeling of great relief swept over Anthony. The room appeared to be flooded suddenly with sunshine. Cibo and he and the monk were now on the deck of the Wampanoag. It was dawn and he could hear the noise of cock-crow, a joyous sound. "It is only a doll," he shouted. "Give it to Philadelphia and let him burn it." Brother François disappeared and left Cibo standing there whiffing his cigar.

"Only a doll?" said Cibo. "You are mistaken!"

Instantly darkness returned. The cock-crow was nearer now but frightfully ominous. Anthony was plunged into the full terror of a nightmare.

He struggled to his feet to get away. But he was back in the room again. Cibo and the terrible doll were there, too. "Look," said Cibo pointing with the glowing end of his cigar. He could not help but look.

The doll had become much larger. She was towering against the wall, growing. In the deep gloom of the place she became gigantic. Only the end of Cibo's cigar showed now. It was going out. Complete darkness descended except where the doll stood in a kind of foul light. The doll was turning into Cheecha, huge, naked, with legs spread apart and rolling her stomach. "Bury your trouble," shouted Cibo, "bury it deep!" He pushed Anthony by the arm toward the black emanation in the corner. His grasp hurt. Anthony could smell her sweat now. He gave a stifled cry and struggled. It was too much to stand. It was loathing and terror unmitigated. He writhed, and awoke suddenly to find himself kneeling on his own sea-chest and leaning half-way out of the barred window into the patio.

All the roosters of Regla were crowing. It was the hour of false dawn. Under the window some shrub in the patio emitted a sickeningly sweet, musky scent. His arm was caught in the iron grille work. If it had not been for that he would have plunged out in his sleep into the garden below. Even that fall he thought would have been a relief from the dream. But he drew back at last cold and shuddering.

He cursed himself, and all the rest of them. The dream had been so vivid that he felt sure he had seen the actors in it as they really were. It was some time before he could shake it off. He lit a candle, drank a whole pitcher of water, and walked about.

Finally the mosquitoes drove him back to bed again, this time to an exhausted and dreamless slumber.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

HONOUR AMONG THIEVES

With any important business in view the man Cibo shook off his lethargy completely and exhibited a native energy against which no climate could prevail. While it took several bowls of black coffee to clear Anthony's head of the wraiths of the night before, Carlo rattled on gayly at breakfast and exhibited triumphantly a mason's trowel and some pieces of a broken bottle.

"How did you get them?" exclaimed Anthony. The shards of broken glass seemed to have been retrieved from his dream.

"A few piastres in the right place also work miracles," replied Cibo, "as you will soon find, my boy, when you come to do business in Havana. But in your case it may take more than a few. By the way, we go to the intendant's this morning and perhaps to the Gallegos' later. You should call first for the clothes for which you were measured. You look hot and worn already. Let's be off while it's still early and cool. No business is done here after eleven o'clock."

They crossed the harbour swiftly. Cibo kept a smart cutter rowed by four blacks dressed in bright, cotton drawers. There was a polished copper strake around the boat under its brass gunwale. They both lolled back in cane seats in the stern in considerable style.

"This kind of thing pays here," explained Cibo. "Appearances count as much with Spaniards as with the Chinese. Even when I board a foreign man-o'-war I get attention. Mere bumboats are always told to sheer off by the officer of the deck. But all this, and my sash, look official. I have even been piped up the side. Why not have your man outfitted as an officer's servant? I see you have brought him along. Juan," said Cibo sharply, "sit up! Stop dragging your hands over the side. Your master is a rich man and we call upon exalted persons today. You must do him credit. It is the face we want."

The man dropped his handful of trailing gulf weed, squared his shoulders and looked pleased. "Sí, señor, I have noble blood. My mother . . ."

"Was a clever woman," said Cibo. "Act like her son." At the dock Juan leaped out and made fast with a flourish.

"You see," said Cibo quietly, as they mounted the broad steps to the Paseo. "Now keep him coming along that way."

The old city wall rose before them. Along it swept a broad, paved avenue skirting the palm-fringed contours of the bay. A number of pony-drawn hacks driven by black Jehus dashed up avid for fares. But Carlo would have none of them. He dispatched one of his own men on the run through the water gate near by. While they were waiting one of the disappointed ponies reached over and ripped Anthony's sleeve from elbow to shoulder.

"They are carnivorous," said Cibo and laughed heartily. "Do not laugh, Juan, it is not permitted."

In a few minutes an upholstered carriage with a fair-looking team rolled up.

"What do you mean, you rascal, by coming for me with rope traces?" said Cibo scowling at the black driver. "Go and return on your master's time. Pompons, buckles, and straw hats! Do you want to carry home a note with 'Six' in the corner?"

The man wheeled off to return in no time with his steeds in another set of harness and with sunbonnets. It gave them a smartly indecent aspect as if the two mares were disguised streetwalkers. Cibo motioned Juan onto the box and they drove off.

"There is a habit here when you are annoyed by a slave of simply writing his name on your card with the number of lashes in the corner and sending him home with it," remarked Carlo complacently. "The card is usually returned later with thanks. The custom imparts a certain tone and discipline to a tropical community. Remember it. You do not have to know the master. It is simply a local form of noblesse oblige." Cibo pointed to the now positively decorous coachman in a clean, white jacket, and grinned. A red ribbon had been added to the whip.

"Already we have assumed nobility," said Cibo and leaned back. "Voyez-vous, monseigneur!"

They rattled on through a labyrinth of narrow streets with endless, heavy, flat-roofed parapets, whitewashed fronts and heavily grilled windows; the inevitable patio. Most of the gates were still closed.

Havana discovered the same monotonous expression everywhere. It was a frown with a straight line over its eyebrows as if it had acquired it from staring at the sun. Behind the closed shutters one sensed the sombreness of high, toneless chambers nursing the shade. A few slaves carrying baskets on their heads and balancing from the hips passed each other miraculously on the narrow sidewalks. Women in black lace mantillas were still coming home from mass. Here and there a water carrier laid the dust before some more pretentious mansion boasting a wrought-iron gate. Yet every languid activity was merely a prophecy of the certain coming of the midday heat.

Suddenly they drew up before the tailor's. It was a kind of cavern in the street wall of a house. Huge wooden shutters, now propped up as awnings, closed it in at night. A small, brown man who had measured Anthony at Regla came out bowing.

"All is ready, señor, we have only delayed for your choice of buttons. That will take but a moment." He produced a case of wood and coral samples. "But the English cloth button, or plain silver, is now all the rage."

In this little spider-of-a-man Anthony thought he understood the word "obsequious" for the first time. He seemed to secrete thread from his mouth, and his shiny lapels flashed with needles as he bowed. Against the rear wall of the place on a long table six little men sat cross-legged, sewing valiantly. On every head was a black skull-cap. They were memorable. In all his stay in Havana they were the only men not slaves that Anthony saw doing any manual work. Almost alone these tailors clothed the fashionable Catholic town. Thus even in Havana Abraham flourished as usual on his natural monopoly of work.

The fitting took some time. Cibo was particular.

Anthony remembered afterwards that it was here he finally became a sans-culotte. The knee breeches and long silk stockings of the eighteenth century were done up in a bundle. Except upon a few formal and artificial occasions he never wore them again. He emerged from this hole in the wall in long, close-moulded, narrow-waisted trousers cut with a wide Spanish flare from the calves down. There was a V-shaped slit over each ankle through which peeped a crimson sock with a clock. There was a short round jacket with a high, rolled collar. In Cuba there were no tails. Your caballero there haunted the saddle. Underneath the coat was a tight, white shirt with an open breast and pleated ruffles. They must be starched and stand up. A wide, silk sash with fringed tassels hung just to the left knee. The tassels were a reminder of the sword. But even in Spanish America that was going out for street wear.

The sensation of new clothes, which eludes final analysis, metamorphosed Anthony. For him the nineteenth century really began four years ahead of the calendar in that hole in the wall in Havana where the six Jews sat sewing. He had literally shed his old skin. He stood up light, and trim, and airy in the new suit of white drill. His loins were girded with the grateful clasp of the slippery sash and his feet thrust into light pumps with silver buckles which his buttons matched. The sweaty and always bedraggled lace of the old cuff was gone. The new sleeve ended in a clean line. There were no garters at the knees. His calves felt protected. His trousers flapped a little when he walked and they pulled evenly. It gave him a physical feel of confidence in his lower extremities. They were no longer ornamental. This was a costume in which one could do things. No ribbons!

In all these details Cibo stood by taking a keen and sympathetic interest. It was pleasant to know someone who could understand how he felt, Anthony thought. It would take the profound simplicity of an Italian to do that. Here was an hour and a place where you adapted yourself and made visible a shift in time. Another mode and mood of things had fallen upon the world. You put it on and then you lived it, henceforth another man. He remembered a naked child in the vestibule of the Casa da Bonnyfeather. Clothes were, he felt, the most intimate and internal things in the world. How tall and keen he was now, how supple and light, how able in this armour to prevail!

"Ah! Carlo," he said turning himself about before a mirror--and Carlo knew it was not vanity--"I shall collect that debt!"

"Good, good, you understand why we came here. Flap your wings and crow, my fine cockerel!" cried Cibo.

The Jew clucked over the unexpected English gold out of Mr. Bonnyfeather's roll, and they all laughed. Anthony felt the talons of the little man touch him on the breast.

"White! white like a true caballero of the town," exclaimed the tailor bowing them out.

"He means you are not burnt black like a rider on the sugar plantations," said Cibo as they drove off. "There is a ring where your collar used to be. But that will soon correct itself in this glare." Cibo hummed a little and laughed as he chatted away. The tailor amused him. He kept talking about him.

"Your Jew sees everything and yet never draws a romantic inference. He only flatters you by telling you that he does. You are pleased in spite of yourself and yet you know that he understands. The Gentile is nakedly revealed in the fiction which he lives by and yet is truly flattered by the Jew. So your feeling toward Jews is one of soothed-irritation plus constant surprise. That is why many either pet or persecute them. Very simple people cannot deal with Abraham; they are either lured into his net or driven to seize the club. The complicated balance of emotions necessary to a prolonged traffic with Jews cannot persist in peasants. Peasants take one extreme or the other. So your Jew stays in towns. I have dealt with them a long time. Many came here some time ago from Portugal. Lisbon was too hot for them. Your friend the tailor was one. He and I have managed a number of little matters together. I trust him.

"In dealing with Jews you should find out what they laugh at. If it is only at matters that occur below the belt let them alone. Simply do not deal with them. Most of that type have a kind of rat's-eye view of life. They see nothing but legs and their appurtenances going by even when they look up. But there are some Hebrews who laugh at the way the world is made. They are humorous with God. Beware! They are wise. Make friends with them. They become powers in the state. Such men are wisely cruel and unbelievably kind. That is all included in the joke. I once saw the little man who just measured you driving in a closed carriage with his wife along the Alameda de Paula. He had introduced a new style into Havana and was watching all the aristocrats preening themselves along the Paseo. Through the curtains I saw him, sitting next to his moon-faced wife, laughing. Ah, Toni, it was terrible. You see, he knew. Most of the land-poor rich in Havana and Pinar del Rio are in debt to him, not only for clothes, but for jewels. He makes loans. If you want gold go to Moses of Cintra. He and I laugh together and we get along."

They turned into the Calle Obispo. Here were business establishments and awnings over the sidewalks. A languid flow of traffic toward the Plaza de Armas was already under way. At one place they stopped and Cibo called the proprietor out to him, giving instructions as to the outfitting of Juan with great particularity.

"After you get yourself shaved," said Cibo to Juan, "wait for us here. Do not disappear in your new clothes, my friend. The convict quarries are always short-handed. Very well, we trust you then." They drove on to the Caxa de Consolidación.

----------

Upstairs in the hall of the intendant, where that personage seldom if ever came, Cibo was at some pains to introduce Anthony to several of the clerks, managing to indicate that any papers which might pass through their hands with the señor's name upon them would be accompanied by double fees. "His business is my own," said Cibo and lifted his brows. Assurances of extreme solicitude over the señor's correspondence followed.

"They have annual cause to remember me," whispered Cibo crossing the room. "This is Herr Meyier, a Rhinelander, the only man not a complete rascal in the place. He is the chief clerk."

A pleasant conversation followed. Herr Meyier warmed to Anthony even over his bad German. Anthony supplied him with all the German news he could remember having overheard for some time past from Vincent Nolte while Cibo sat by greatly relieved at so promising a turn of affairs. Cibo even pretended to like the beer which Meyier sent out to have brought in from his own restaurant. It was the only beer in Havana, and it was warm.

The sympathy of Meyier having been aroused for the predicament of his countrymen in Livorno, it was not difficult for Anthony to enlist his interest in his own affairs. They dropped into Spanish so that Cibo could follow. . . .

"As I see it," said Meyier, "there are several people with whom you must deal. It would help greatly if you get an official admittance of the debt from Gallego. Without that it is a question, señor, if you can succeed. At least it would enormously hasten matters. Merchants here under the old laws of the Indies are supposed to import only from Spain. Of course, of late years that has been largely disregarded and winked at, and foreign bills must eventually be paid or commerce would cease. But there is no legal way here for a foreign merchant to press his claims. He must go through the form of transferring his claim to a Spanish firm when it is then presented as a domestic bill and payment allowed.

"Now it is a curious thing," said Herr Meyier smiling, "but there is only one firm here whose foreign claims are ever successful in court. It is the firm of Cuesta and Santa María. Señor Santa María is a great friend of the intendant. He has retired, but lives, I am told, quite magnificently in the suburb of the Salú. He is said to have remarked once to the bishop at a state dinner that he was not very anxious to go to paradise for awhile since only the pavements there are made of gold."

"We are not especially interested in improving the celestial landscape for the señor," murmured Cibo. "Is there no other way?"

Herr Meyier consumed very thoughtfully the last of his beer. It was very tepid. He looked down the long, cheerless stone room--where the sallow clerks sat in their shirt sleeves at heavily gilded desks--with a hint of nausea in his pale blue eyes.

"Ach Gott, Cuba!" he said suddenly, and spread out his palms in disgust. "I am sorry for you, Señor Adverse. What is the amount owed by Gallego and Son to the Casa da Bonnyfeather?"

"About forty-five thousand dollars in round numbers," replied Anthony.

Herr Meyier languidly calculated something and rang a small silver bell.

"Engross that for me," he said to one of the clerks.

"Old Señor Gallego has recently died, hasn't he?" continued Herr Meyier while waiting. Anthony nodded. "In that case there may be complications. You might have to levy on his estate." He shook his head. "I am afraid that will never be granted. Every merchant-planter in the island would protest. What is the son doing?"

"He is in Africa," answered Cibo. "Since the death of the father the transactions of the firm have been in slaves. Gallego's schooner, the Ariostatica, is now outfitting in the harbour for Africa."

"So," said Meyier, pursing his lips, "so?"

"Would it be possible to attach the ship?" asked Anthony. "In that case we might come to some agreement with them, possibly an assignment on the next cargo of slaves."

"Dunder!" exclaimed Meyier. "I begin to see light." He rang the bell sharply twice.

"Bring me the papers in the case of the ship Black Angel--and of the Ariostatica, Gallego, now fitting out." His heavy bureaucratic face grew suddenly animated.

"Now, señor," said he when all the papers had been brought, "come into the bureau of the intendant." He closed the door behind them, listened for a full minute, and then walked to the far end of the room.

They all sat down again about a magnificently furnished desk with dust upon it. Herr Meyier flicked it with his handkerchief and laughed. "It is not likely we shall be interrupted here," he said sardonically, and spread the papers out before him. "Now, gentlemen, your attention if you please. Let us see if we can't avoid drowning the cat in cream. El gato Santa María, you understand. Here is what my clerk has engrossed":

$45,000 @ 18 piastres local legal exchange is 810,000 piastres.
$45,000 @ 15 piastres current foreign exchange is 675,000 piastres.
Hence, the difference between the legal and foreign exchange is 135,000 piastres.
(1/2 of 135,000 piastres is 67,500 piastres)

"The import of this is extremely simple," continued Herr Meyier. "If you place your claim in the hands of Señor Santa María he will collect it at eighteen piastres on the dollar, the legal rate, and pay you only at fifteen. That will place in his hands the difference of one hundred thirty-five thousand piastres which he and the intendant will divide. I understand they split evenly. For them, you see, a charming arrangement. But that will not be all. In order to engage the noble interest of these gentlemen a 'retaining fee' of eighteen thousand piastres is customary. Otherwise their valuable time might be wasted in ignoble pursuits. In addition to this you will, of course, have to meet all the legal fees. A jingling argument is the only one really convincing to the court. And on that too the masters of ceremonies here will also collect their percentage. If you leave Havana in a year's time with thirty-five thousand dollars you will be doing well. You can now see why sugar planting, for those who understand it, is so profitable. Very rich canes are usually crushed and squeezed twice in case any juice remains."

Carlo whistled whimsically and looked at Herr Meyier, shaking his head.

"You may well whistle, Cibo," said the German. "There is the possibility I think, however, of another way. Would you care to have me advise you, Señor Adverse? As it would be entirely extra-legal, a mere matter of policy as it were, perhaps you would care to--er, ah, make use of my humble services under the circumstances. I believe, if you saw fit to do so, you might not only collect the amount due you without the embarrassing deductions required by Señor Santa María, but finally emerge perhaps with a comfortable margin of profit. Call it interest on your long overdue account. What do you think?"

"You would not, of course, be averse to participating in the profits of so equitable an arrangement, Herr Meyier?" asked Anthony.

Cibo beamed with approval.

"As a silent, a very silent partner," said the German. "A reasonable percentage to be agreed upon, say five per cent on your claim, and ten per cent on any possible profits."

"And in any event two per cent on the claim," said Anthony.

"Did you say three?" murmured the German.

"Of course, how could you misunderstand me, Herr Meyier? And payable half in advance."

"Himmel! mein junger Herr, thou hast been nursed in the lap of Reason."

"I will be surety," added Cibo.

"We go on then!" cried Meyier. "Adiós, Señor Santa María! Will you condescend to look at these?

"They are the papers of the ship Black Angel, a slaver, which cleared for Sierra Leone it so happens exactly seven years ago today. Now notice," said Meyier rearranging the file, "that up until within three days of the time she sailed her papers are all in the regular form. Then what happens? On August thirtieth, seventeen-eighty-nine, an order of temporary sequestration of the ship by the captain-general of Cuba issues. A purser, sworn in as agent of the Caxa de Consolidación, is put in charge to collect certain sums due the colonial government by the owners. That is, you see, our purser accompanies the ship which is navigated by its captain still employed by the owners. But the cargo of slaves waiting for it in Africa is seized by the crown agent. Here, seven months later are the bills of sale for the entire cargo at public auction at Havana. That is the point of it all. The government agent being on board has prevented the cargo from being taken to a foreign colony, say, Barbados or Jamaica, and quietly run on shore at night. The sale takes place here as of government property. The amount due the crown with all expenses is deducted, and the remainder returned to the owners along with the ship. Even at that, I see, the owners came off fairly well."

"Why didn't the government seize the ship to begin with and sell it?" asked Cibo.

"The answer is very simple, señor, for two reasons. The ship would not have satisfied the sum required, slavers are only worth a tithe of their cargo, and there is no ordinance for the captain-general to proceed upon an order to confiscate marine property. His maritime authority is limited. No, no, I remember the case well! It was when you spoke of the Gallegos being in the slave trade that it flashed into my mind. Old Señor Gallego has recently died and his son is in Africa. The estate is a huge one. Undoubtedly there will have been a lapse in inheritance fees and other dues and taxes with the heir absent. If not, trust me, I am a man of arithmetical imagination. Do you see my plan?"

"To use the case of the Black Angel as a precedent and seize the Gallegos' schooner Ariostatica now in the bay?" asked Cibo.

"Exactly!" cried Meyier. "An order will be issued of temporary sequestration for the Ariostatica. We shall swear in our young friend here as the government agent in charge. He will go to Africa as supercargo, receive for the crown the cargo which Gallego will have ready for his ship, and return to Havana where it will be sold. That sale, gentlemen, will be conducted by the Caxa da Consolidación of which I have the honour to be chief clerk. Señor Gallego will have nothing to say about it. After the sums due the, er--government--are deducted, any remainder will be scrupulously returned to him. I regret to say, however, that it looks to me as if the entire proceeds of this particular voyage will be swallowed up. After all, Gallego will only be having his hand forced a little to pay a just debt. If in that process a certain profit is realized, inadvertently as it were, only ourselves and the captain-general will ever know. I am sure, Señor Adverse, that if you received the sum due you together with reasonable interest, your curiosity at least would be satisfied. You, you see, will have done nothing but collect your debt plus, let us say, expenses. Your time is of course--valuable. Speaking frankly, I feel I am entitled under the peculiar circumstances of the case to the small premium we agreed upon."

"There can be no question about that, Herr Meyier. Set yourself at rest on that point. But speaking frankly myself, and not from mere curiosity, there are one or two points I do not quite understand yet," Anthony replied. Cibo leaned forward a little alarmed as Anthony continued.

"In the first place, how and why will the captain-general be interested enough to issue the order? And what is there to assure me, in case of your death, for instance, or your leaving here for any cause, that I shall not be sent on a wild goose chase to Africa? Suppose I am successful and return with the cargo. You are gone. It is sold, and the proceeds pocketed by--well, the 'government'--why not? Indeed, speaking absolutely candidly, I should feel much relieved if I thoroughly understood the real cause of your interest in my case."

"Herr Meyier and I are old friends," interrupted Cibo, "we play, I may say, very much into each other's hands. The scheme is a little more subtle than you suppose, Señor Toni. Things in Havana have ramifications all of which do not appear. His word and mine that you will receive the sum due you should be sufficient. Don't you think so?"

Anthony sat thinking for a moment. He was aware that the atmosphere was beginning to be a little tense.

"Yes," he said, "I shall accept either of your words, of course. But I must insist at least on knowing the reasons why you will not answer my questions."

Both Cibo and Meyier broke into a laugh.

"You might have been educated by the Jesuits, young man," said the latter.

"I was," said Anthony.

"Ah!" said Cibo. "To think of it! And how I have talked!"

"For the same reason you can rely on my discretion where my own interests are involved," interjected Anthony smiling.

Carlo snorted. "Tell him, Herman," he said to Meyier, "or he will find out for himself."

The German drummed on the desk for a minute.

"Ach Himmel! You are both against me. Then I shall a prophet be. It is modesty, you see, señor, which has kept me from speaking out. Carlo, is it for thee to laugh? I will tell you, sir, why the captain-general will issue the order. It is because I shall ask him. Carlo, is it not so?" The man puffed himself out.

"It is like this, Señor Toni," Meyier continued leaning forward and becoming familiar and convincing at the same time. "Have you ever heard of the Prince of the Peace? Yes! Well, he is the real ruler of Spain. By many he is said to be only the queen's favourite. He is that, but also much more. It is his desire to put vigour again into the government, to destroy where he can the worm of corruption."

"And to enjoy the increased revenues himself," interrupted Cibo.

Meyier made a deprecating gesture.

"Our friend is too cynical," he said. "Nevertheless it is true that in every part of the government some appointees of the Prince of the Peace are now to be found. They are put there for a purpose and they are feared, for they enjoy the confidence of this great minister at Madrid. That is why I, a German, an accountant, and an honest man, am now the head of the Caxa da Consolidación en Habana. I," he repeated, scrawling his own initials dramatically on a piece of paper, "am an appointee of the Prince of the Peace! Without these initials, no important government financial operation in Cuba is undertaken. With them much may be done. Is it not so, Carlo?"

"You scarcely ever exaggerate," said Cibo.

"But that is not all, my young friend. In Havana there are two parties. There is that of the captain-general and that of the intendant-general. It is a very curious situation. Some years ago the office of intendant-general was created over great protest to bring about a fiscal reform here. Most of the financial power of the captain-general was placed in the intendants hands. Pouf! what happens? The second intendant-general who is sent out is a blood brother of Barabbas. Compared with his the clutch of a Turkish bashaw is like that of a gentle milkmaid. The cow--Mein Gott! she go dry! The intendant is a dangerous man, a successful politician, and he forms a powerful local party. He and Señor Santa María and the like had all but succeeded in diverting the revenues when I arrived. The poor old captain-general, he is alarmed. In me he sees an unexpected ally. He sends for me and weeps on my shoulder. 'Permit me,' he says, 'to draw my own salary. The intendant and Señor Santa María have consolidated the Caxa da Consolidación. They are patriots. I am only a viceroy.'

"That was seven years ago, my boy. The old captain-general goes home still a poor man. It is terrible. But a new one arrives. He also is comparatively poor, but he is a great hidalgo and a very cunning man. Very quietly we collaborate on undermining the intendant. The soldiers are now paid out of the revenues. I became head of the Caxa da Consolidación. Some money goes home to Spain. We entrench ourselves in, ahem, a comparative honesty, for we have to fight thieves and we intend to win. Then the grand reforms can take place. But in the meanwhile there is the intendant--and Señor Santa María. They are still very popular with certain merchants, with slave importers particularly. They protect them from foreign creditors. Do you see now? For this is where you, my young friend, come in!

"As I listened to you this morning I had suddenly the great idea inspired. I see instantly what has long perplexed me. I see how to frighten the friends of the intendant, provide an independent revenue for the captain-general, and permit foreign merchants to collect their debts. The mere threat of this will be sufficient. Señor Gallego shall be merely an example. It needed just your particular case to enable me to put two and two together, the Black Angel and the Ariostatica." He slapped the papers.

"Señor, I am grateful. The payment of your own debt is assured, for it is upon that pretext that we shall proceed. The authorities in Spain and my master can be made to understand the situation. Despite the old laws foreign merchants must be protected and rascals suppressed. Indeed, I shall regard the payment of your claims as a kind of premium for your going to Africa to collect them. In a case like this it is only someone whose own interests are vitally involved that we would care to trust. Do you see? Will you go? Much depends on it. Much!" Herr Meyier looked suddenly harassed.

"It may be a little dangerous, señor. Keep your own council--and ours. The knife is not unknown here as a method of cutting Gordian knots. I myself . . ." His mouth twitched a little--"Ja wohl! It is true that I may die at any moment!" He ended on a note of scorn.

"I will go," said Anthony.

Carlo patted him on the arm. "Men are not always such rascals as you think, my young Jesuit," he said.

"Oh, Carlo, you overdo that, believe me," said Anthony evidently annoyed. "I was right in asking Herr Meyier those questions!"

"What! what! Must the old dogs and young ones always be snapping at each other?" exclaimed Meyier. He tucked his papers under one arm and led them both toward the door with a certain air of triumph. "This is a lucky meeting, you know," he went on. "Now one thing more. Get, that acknowledgment from Gallego's clerk if you have to garrot him. It is vital. If you have trouble let me know. Ach, my friend Carlo, I rely upon you. Let us work together in this as in old times. I myself will see the captain-general tonight and let you know his decision. I have small doubt about it. You must be prepared, Don Antonio, to visit the palace later on yourself. His Excellency insists upon knowing all his agents personally."

"Would it not be a good precaution to make sure the Ariostatica does not sail too soon, Herr Meyier?" asked Anthony.

"Ach, what a wise infant you have brought here today, Carlo!" exclaimed Meyier. "His words are dollars. Ja wohl, I shall see to it. An order to the port authorities, quietly! And now, auf wiedersehen." He opened the door and bowed them out past the clerks with a formal and distant courtesy as if some purely routine matter had been tritely disposed of.

Anthony walked down and climbed into the carriage with his heart on fire. "To Africa!" he said to the driver. Carlo exploded--and gave merely local directions.

----------

On the way to the Gallegos' they picked up Juan. He was standing on the curb still in his sailor's garb but with a new, silver-mounted guitar under his arm. He looked foolish.

"What is the meaning of this?" inquired Cibo turning red. But the man addressed himself to Anthony.

"Pardon, Don Antonio, the money which you gave me to buy clothes--I have spent for a guitar." He ran his hands over its strings caressingly. "I do not know how I do such things. It is terrible. But I have a beautiful tenor voice. I lack accompaniment. Forgive!" He was white at the lips.

"You rascal!" said Anthony. Then he laughed. "Jump up, Juan. Driver, go on."

With the troubadour on the box they drove to the Gallegos'.

"You had better leave this to me," said Cibo, and went in.

It was sweltering sitting in the carriage under the leather top.

"Señor," said Juan looking around at Anthony with a dog-like affection in his eye, "shall I sing to you while we wait? I am your hombre. I would pour out my heart which is full of a passionate gratitude."

"Later on, Juan," said Anthony. "This is a respectable neighbourhood."

"Sí, sí," said the man and sighed.

Carlo finally emerged with a scared, middle-aged clerk who rode with them silently to the notary. The man made a declaration there setting forth that the sum demanded by Mr. Bonnyfeather was a just debt contracted by Gallego & Son for value received. He signed it as chief clerk of the firm, and an attested copy of his power of attorney to transact business during the absence of young Señor Gallego was attached. They left him still white about the gills.

"This paper has cost you five hundred dollars, Don Toni," said Carlo as they drove on toward the water gate, "but it is worth it. Never hire a chief clerk with a sombre past," he added. "It makes them too compliant with well-informed strangers."

A blue glimpse of the bay came in sight through the old water gate.

"Oh, I shall be glad to meet Cheecha with her little wagon on the veranda," said Cibo. "There is pompano today. The one fish I . . ."

He was interrupted by a scream of agony that made them both wilt. The thud of a whip, and the answering cries and moans of a number of black women gathered about a gate the carriage was just passing made a horrid chorus that accompanied spasmodically the whistling of a lash.

"Jesús!" whispered Juan. The strings of his guitar jangled faintly. The carriage stopped as if accosted by death. They looked through the gateway into the space beyond.

In the centre of a wide patio floored with blinding, white sand a great, black grating seemed to erect its sinister gridiron malevolently from the top of a little platform. Lashed to this so that he was spread-eagled helplessly against the blue sky beyond was a black Hercules of a man. His muscles bulged in huge knots and his head hung back straining as if it would tear itself loose and be gone. Under each whistling blow he rippled from head to foot and screamed hoarsely.

"O God!" said Anthony standing up.

It was just then that they saw Brother François. He had emerged suddenly from a little door and was crossing the white, sunlit space to the gridiron in his bare feet and faded gown. He cried out and the sound of his voice filled the place with pity. The man with the whip turned. His large, jowled countenance fell flat with amazement. Nothing but the moans of the man on the gridiron could be heard.

"In the name of Christ," said the clear, quiet voice of Brother François, "this man is your brother." He took the whip from the man's hand. A dead silence followed.

Suddenly the man seemed to take in the situation. He gave a roar of astonished rage, and picking up Brother François like a child, rushed with him to the gateway. He hurled him into the gutter and started to return.

"Do not interfere, my son!" cried the monk getting up calmly out of filth. He caught Anthony by the coat and dragged him back against the wheel of the carriage. He put his cool hands on his cheeks. "This is for me. Remember, you do not understand yet."

When a kind of red darkness cleared from his eyes Anthony found Cibo holding him down in the carriage. Rage had loosened the caps of his knees till he shook.

Brother François was half across the yard again. He was following the man and calling. The fellow turned sullenly. Brother François advanced smiling, holding out his hand. "My friend," he said. The man gave a confused bellow and rushed him. He threw him down on the sand and kicked him. Then he turned to go again.

"My friend," said Brother François rising. He advanced upon him again still holding out his hand. The performance repeated itself.

"Sit still, young ass," said Cibo holding Anthony. "Let God decide. Who are you?"

Brother François was getting up again, slowly now. He stood swaying a little but he still smiled. Suddenly he tottered forward to the man. He held up his little crucifix and pointed to the negro on the grating. Then he held out both his hands as if he would give shelter to the dew-lapped head of the tormentor on his own breast. The figure on the grating gave a great cry and went limp. The man in the courtyard looked about him as if appealing to the common sense of mankind and fled. The whip lay on the sand.

"Now," cried Cibo. "Now!" He laboured after Anthony and Juan had dashed into the court where Brother François had fallen limp. The three of them picked him up and carried him limp as he was to the carriage.

"Go!" shouted Cibo. "Whip your horses, you black fool!"

Juan caught hold of the carriage from behind as it whirled off down the street. A shriek of despair from the women at the gate followed it as it wheeled around the next corner.

On the way back to Regla Brother François opened his eyes. They were pouring cool water on his face and hands. He said nothing. A great sorrow seemed to engulf them all. Ashamed of himself, Anthony cried out at the sight of the battered lips which hurt themselves to smile back at him. A tumult as of great waters had rushed through his soul. He sat and wept. Even Cibo was silent.

But at Regla Brother François insisted upon going home himself. He forbade them to come along. They watched him go down the little alley toward Father Trajan's, and as he turned the corner they saw him lift a basket of fish from the head of a small negro child whose legs wobbled under it. He took her by the hand. The negro boatmen grunted.

"I am afraid that this is the end of Brother François," said Cibo as they walked down the dock. "I hope we got him away without being recognized. Do you know what the penalty is for interfering with slaves who have been sent to the city-yard to be whipped? A monopoly of Señor Santa María, by the way. No! You do not know? Well, then so much the better," he said as he swung the little door into the cool green patio, "so much the better for your appetite for lunch. Cheecha!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A MANTILLA INTRUDES

Hot countries, Anthony discovered, had a curious effect upon him. He had ebullitions of emotion; they passed, and left him much the same as before, dreamfully contented, merely existing comfortably. The crests did not disturb the form which was, after all, Cibo in his chair on the veranda with rum and lime juice. Then there was tobacco. He had begun to soak up a good deal of that into his system, the dark Cuban leaf. It made contentment easy and keenness uncomfortable. It prevented in a northerner the constant foolish necessity of doing something.

Despite the tremendous impression which Brother François's interference with the whipping had made upon him only a week ago--what was it now?--only an event of the extremely remote past, he thought as he sat smoking on the veranda with Cibo, while a half-moon filtered into the patio and Juan fooled below on the strings of his new guitar. That lad did have a voice undoubtedly. A half-mocking song, no doubt addressed to Cheecha, mixed its soft chords with the moonlight and caused the parrot to shift sleepily on its perch. Tonight it was deliciously fragrant and cool. Pretty late though. Still you could not expect to sleep all the afternoon and all the night as well. The end of his cigar glowed revealing Anthony's face a little whiter than when he arrived, wrapt in a dreamful satisfaction. Cibo smiled to himself.

Yes, on the whole, as Cibo said, he had been lucky. His visit to Havana might so far be called a promising success. Brother François was doing very well. Getting about the garden again--that man! And as for Father Trajan--Anthony laughed as he thought of his crowded chapel. Carlo had certainly been most convincing with the bishop. It would take a long time, of course, to get the final confirmation from Santiago. Meyier seemed slow, too. But you couldn't hurry the captain-general. You couldn't hurry anybody here, not even yourself. And the Ariostatica had been detained.

He began to wonder how his clothes that he was to wear at the audience at the palace the next afternoon were coming on at the tailor's. Moses had promised them. Why couldn't Meyier settle all those details with the governor himself? Curious old dog that German! Able, and honest according to his own lights. Really trying to do a difficult job here. No one could live on a government salary in Havana. They weren't expected to. Ah, well, if Africa was like this it wouldn't be so bad.

"Good night, Carlo." The cigar streaked into the patio, and he went to bed.

Tomorrow morning he would have to take Mrs. Jorham to see the tombs. He wished now he hadn't promised her. Promises made in one mood could come back to haunt you in another. "Damn the beetles!" How they battered about the candle. "Puff!" In the darkness you were yourself again. No one on the wall . . . no, of course not . . . in the chest. And a good riddance . . . Yes? Mrs. Udney's sheets, ah-a-a . . .

But once on the Wampanoag again next morning it was not so hard to recapture the mood of only a few days before. It no longer seemed so far off. And both Captain Elisha and Mrs. Jorham were so glad to see him, and Collins dry as ever. That solemn face!

"So ye're harbourin' our desartar, Mr. Adverse."

Captain Jorham made small bones about Juan, however. The prices which he had recived for his miracle-working statuary had been miraculous.

"They're all gone but Jesus," he said. "St. Lawrence yesterday, fire and all, on an oxcart for some inland town. I'm holdin' out on the Saviour for eight hundred dollars with five hundred and thirty offered and a vacant niche in the cathedral biddin' against a new chapel at Cienfuegos." He rubbed his hands. "Say how dew ye suppose they fixed that Virgin at Regla? Pretty slick, eh! Got any idears, mister?"

"Not a single one, captain," said Anthony gravely.

"Sa-ay!" said the captain beating him on the back till he coughed. "But here comes the old lady all set for seein' the t-umes."

Mrs. Jorham was indeed dressed for the occasion. Long, fingerless, black gloves projected from her India shawl which was caught with a jet breast pin. A straw bonnet upon which rested a grey dove still glistened with camphor dust. A small sunshade, and a palm-leaf fan, as a slight concession to the climate, announced her upon pleasure bent. There was something eternal and widow-like in the droop of her shawl. But under her bonnet her face shone. A neatly bound copy of the Testament and four silver dollars distended her reticule.

Anthony handed her into Cibo's boat with great formality. She sat on the cane seats rather doubtfully and raised a doll-sized sunshade against the Cuban glare. From a strictly female point of view Mrs. Jorham was undoubtedly one of the most intriguing women who had ever landed at the water gate at Havana. The negro washerwomen gathered there to discuss her.

Anthony hailed one of the carnivorous ponies. In what appeared to Mrs. Jorham to be a recklessly extravagant mode of travel they set forth to do epitaphs. But the churches were a flat disappointment to the lady from Scituate. What few tombs they contained were to her sadly lacking in a sense of inevitable doom. The smooth pomp of marble and basalt conveyed a feeling of security in the hereafter, even an aristocratic contempt for it which outraged her. In the tone of the epitaphs she missed a single whine. "Every hour wounded; the last slew me. I flinched not till I fell." There were candles burning before that! She turned away, longing for some stone that recorded a snatch of thoroughly abject hymn that a Protestant woman could sing with fearful conviction. These churches seemed to have been built by superior beings for man. She longed for her white wooden chapels with a fanlight over the door and a cold, northern light inside. Chapels that man had built for God! One could make up one's own mind about religion there. Here, as she looked about from one church to the other, she saw that religion had long ago made up its mind about her. She snorted and waved her palm-leaf fan.

To Anthony, Mrs. Jorham was intensely interesting. He was curious to understand her sense of Protestant outrage. They went to Santa Catalina, San Agustín, and Santa Clara. They saw the curious oil paintings on the walls of La Merced. In the bare, grey limestone of old Santo Domingo they sat down on the floor and rested. Here for some reason or other Mrs. Jorham felt more at home.

"What was it made her so indignant?" he wondered, "and so grim?" He would like to take her to the cathedral. Poor soul, perhaps it was her idea of pleasure that made her so sad? He had a notion to try on a good time for her benefit. Havana with Mrs. Jorham!

He went out and hired a double carriage, only one of whose wheels was very oval. With her little mushroom sunshade projecting over the back like the small targe of a defiant warrior they left the churches and drove along the sea wall and the Alameda clear out to the Cortina de la Reina, and out the Paseo de Tacón to El Principe.

"My!" said Mrs. Jorham, semi-approvingly, as the incomparable gardens of Los Molinos burst on her view.

Good, she was thawing!

He himself felt like St. Lawrence and it was only ten o'clock. Under an awning in the old Parque de la India they had claret lemonade. He took her to a luxurious shop on San Rafael Street and bought her an expensive fan. He whirled her around the monastery of Belén at Luz and Compostela streets. Dashing as recklessly as he could prevail on the driver to dash, he finally wound up on O'Reilly where he bought her a black mantilla and made her put it on. Why he did all this he could not tell, Mrs. Jorham had touched off something of the devil in him. Mrs. Jorham in a mantilla was so gorgeous a solecism he almost began to make love to her. He finally bought her a chameleon on a chain.

"They live in cemeteries, Mrs. Jorham, and change colour," he explained. But she did not believe him. She put the chameleon in her bag with the Testament and the four silver dollars. He felt profoundly sorry for it. In the great heat he felt sorry for a chameleon in a reticule. O God! Here he was driving about in Havana with an old woman. He did not know any other woman in the whole place. Yes, Cheecha! He bought another chameleon for Cheecha.

"Mrs. Jorham, Mrs. Jorham," he hummed close by her ear as they drove off again.

"What is the matter with ye, young man?" said Mrs. Jorham through a mouthful of black lace. He looked at her. She was having a good time! He had a notion to let Cheecha's chameleon run up the back of the driver. The horses might run away then. No! Instead he would take Mrs. Jorham to the cathedral and show her the tomb of Columbus.

Mrs. Jorham sniffed disdainfully at the holy water from which the mosquitoes rose as Anthony dipped his fingers in it. The interior of the cathedral was still full of scaffolding. Some frescoers at work held her attention. She had never seen a painter at work before. She stood looking up till she was dizzy. They went over and sat down on unused stone blocks that had not yet been removed before the Admiral's new tomb. Several parties of fashionably dressed people began to arrive while Mrs. Jorham sat fanning herself. It was certainly cool and restful here after the scalding glare of the street. A verger came and uncovered the font.

"I alers did think Columbus was the bravest of them all. Crossin' the ocean fer the first time! It's bad enough now 'specially if yer husband can't navigate. Columbus believed in what he knew, of course. But it must have ban hard to get folks to do somethin' so new."

The distant wail of a baby interrupted Mrs. Jorham. She laid her fan spasmodically on her chest as if she had caught her breath. The organ started to play. Anthony looked up.

He was surprised to see the number of people who had come in. And the sound of more carriages arriving at the door could still be heard.

"There is going to be a christening, Mrs. Jorham, rather a fashionable one I think. Look, the bishop is here to bless the child. If we move over there in that corner we can see it all without disturbing them. Here by the big pillar."

"My! This is going to be worth while. Look at the jewels and laces and uniforms!" she exclaimed half to herself.

They drew back in their corner and waited while the family arranged itself about the font. The service began, evidently as long and complete a one as wealth and influence could obtain. Mrs. Jorham watched the small howling bundle of lace being passed from hand to hand, held up and waved about, sprinkled, and sung about in Latin. So much to-do over a baby made her think better of the Catholic Church. But that was not what Anthony was looking at.

Between the responses he had fallen helplessly in love.

The girl was standing directly opposite him just across the nave. And of such a witches' bundle and mad faggot of chances is fate composed that if he had not happened to move a little to clear himself of the pillar he might never have laid eyes on her at all. Or, if he had seen her otherwhere he might not have fallen in love. He might only have admired or yearned over her a little. Or he might not have really seen her. Her image might only have fallen upon his eyes with no penetration. But he did move.

And as he stepped out from the pillar, at that instant, his pupils were opened upon the extremely delicate and mysterious living substance behind them. Looking inward he beheld a divine image within himself. He could not have imagined it in all its overpowering charm and living splendour. It was something which now drew upon reality and had its own independent vigour and validity although it was nourished within him. Looking into the outer world he saw a Spanish girl in a mantilla, with nearly black-blue eyes and pale gold-gleaming hair, regarding him over her fan. And the outward and inner images became one. The next instant their eyes met.

Exactly what happened then he could not tell. There was undoubtedly a current that passed between them. He had an irrefutable intuition that what was going on in his own eyes was also occurring in hers. The effect upon his body was a kind of relaxed and breathless suspense. Unconsciously he leaned back against the pillar for an instant and closed his lids. When he opened them again he saw that she was still studying his face. Then a wave of colour rushed up from her neck and shoulders and she disappeared behind her fan.

Heavens, would she never come out of that eclipse! At the font the sponsors were promising on behalf of the wailing baby impossible things. Several millenniums passed. The fan spread a little. It came down as far as her chin.

Splendour of Angels! Already he had forgotten how lovely she was. You could only remember it when you really saw her. He must always be able to see her. Always! Why, she was smiling at him! At him! Already there was a great secret between them. He straightened up and leaned forward a little. She shook her head. It was just the dream of a shake. Ah! She saw him now. Who was that dignitary beside her? Her father or an uncle, no doubt! Damn his soul! Surely that man could not be . . . But be careful. He would just answer her smile. He did so. The fan seemed to touch her lips. No? Well, he could not be sure. Now it made a graceful curve, opened out a little, and rested on her breast. She might have been fanning herself! He put his own hand under his coat and looked at her . . . Then he hastily managed to turn that heartfelt gesture into a trite continuation of removing his handkerchief from his left pocket. "Uncle's" eyes were taking him in coldly.

Everything that could be done for the baby was now completed. As an impeccable candidate for the communion of saints it and its family and friends departed, leaving Anthony leaning against the pillar hopelessly. Suddenly he realized he was being left in darkness. He rushed out just in time to see her driving away.

"Señorita Dolores de la Fuente," said the verger. He gave the man a gold piece and never knew it. Then he remembered Mrs. Jorham. He rushed back again. She was sitting again before the tomb of Columbus.

"Mrs. Jorham, Mrs. Jorham," cried Anthony seizing her by both hands and dragging her off a marble block. "Mrs. Jorham, I'm in love!"

"Now look here, young man, now look here," she said, snatching at her reticule. "Ye behave yerself. The idear! But air ye in love?" she said, "air ye?" peering out of her bonnet into his face. "Swan to man, I believe ye be!"

The verger, scandalized, looked at them and then went away. For short of arson the donors of a gold piece were, so far as he was concerned, invisible.

"You won't say anything, will you, Mrs. Jorham?" said Anthony as the sober light of day overwhelmed him at the door.

"We'll just cancel secrets, mister, and call it square," said she. "I never was one to talk much, except about sewing," she added, laying her black glove on his arm. "Na-ow," she gave a little sigh, "ye might take me home. Listenin' to that baby squallin' kind of made me anxious over 'Lisha. I guess ye know our secret."

They found the crew of the boat from the Wampanoag waiting with their jackets spread out on oars against the glare of the noon sun. Anthony was keeping Cibo's boat until later.

"I did have a good time," said Mrs. Jorham as she arranged herself in the stern sheets. She gayly waved her hand with the black glove on it. Collins grinned back at Anthony as they pulled away. Anthony saw her shawl fall out of its rigid folds into something more natural. At a little distance over the water she looked smaller, even frail. Suddenly he saw what Mrs. Jorham must have looked like as a young girl.

That must be what was caught in Captain Jorham's eyes. Yes, he understood now. Mrs. Jorham was going home. That was what the Wampanaog was! Home! Whenever on sea or land, whenever . . .

"Dolores, I must find you!"

He ran up the steps again and jumped into a carriage. It was terrible to have business to do when he did not even know where she lived.

"Where, señor?"

"Ah, where indeed? Perhaps the driver would know!" But he could not bring himself to mention her name to him. Her name! He felt tears gathering behind his eyes.

"Señor?"

What the devil then! To the tailor's? His suit would not be quite done yet. But a last fitting before going to the captain-general's . . .

"Moses of Cintra in the Calle Obispo."

"Sí, sí! El judio." The man whipped up and drove off.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

THROUGH A COPY OF VELASQUEZ

If Carlo had not warned Anthony to pay strict attention to the advice of the little tailor he could scarcely have brought himself to wear the suit which he found waiting for him at the cubicle of Moses. It was dark, but gorgeous, and of the style Incroyable which the smart old Jew had just imported from Paris. Such a collar Anthony had never seen.

"I have made certain alterations," said Moses, "a concession to local taste. Those who go to an audience with His Excellency should bear in mind that he prides himself on being a very modern man. It is not only in clothes but in government, señor, that to a certain extent he admires the French taste. 'New times, new fashions, and new minds,' is a favourite saying of his. Permit me to pin the waist a little tighter. It is the Herculean bust, that which looks so well on the orator when he gestures from the rostrum with one hand in his breast, which has now come in. Ah! I am always breaking my chalk. More pins, Sabathio. But I would not advise you to orate to the governor. Let him do the talking.

"Great men always talk a great deal," continued Moses, despite his mouthful of pins. "They realize by a lifetime of conversational disappointments that others seldom have anything to say. Have you not found it so yourself, señor? Pardon, I slipped with that pin. And many are coming to believe here that Don Luis de las Casas is really a great man. In six years he has worked wonders. The Marqués de Someruelos who will shortly be sent out to succeed him is also of the modern cast of mind, they say. No, it would never do to go to the palace resembling an old hidalgo. They are out of date here. And the general will observe you keenly. He will question you without your knowing it. It has been his method here always to see personally those who are doing anything for him. All those who serve him must first be his friends. It is thus that he has made headway against the intendant. By his Junta as it is called, Señor Cibo, Herr Meyier, Mr. James Drake--even the bishop and the military are of his party. I myself have the honour of making his clothes! You can see you have been fortunate in Havana in having your ends shaped by powerful hands. There now! I think that will do. Some last stitching and the iron! Ah, the hot goose! What would tailors be without it?" He grinned and spat out the remaining pins. "A dangerous conversation, you see, señor. It would not do to swallow my words."

While the last touches were going on they went over and sat down, Anthony on a chair and Moses crosslegged on a table.

"Do you happen to know anything of a certain Señorita Dolores de la Fuente?" asked Anthony. "I should be glad of a little information about her." He was relieved to be able to say her name so casually.

". . . y Someruelos! Do not forget that! Señorita Dolores de la Fuente y Someruelos, a niece of the incoming captain-general! Ah, the señor is to be congratulated on his eyesight. Yes, all Havana knows. She has preceded her uncle here with certain relatives and domestics to set up his establishment at Los Molinos. A lady with the true gracia of old Castile.

"It is because the present governor has permitted her to move into the palace that it is plain to all the world how the political wind blows. If the present and the newly-appointed captain-general were not both liberals the señorita would have to wait. As it is, the palace will now be all ready for her uncle when he comes. Extensive alterations are under way. All of the domestics are to have new liveries." Moses rubbed his hands.

"At the palace! I shall be under the same roof with her in a few hours," Anthony said half aloud.

"Pardon me, señor; but I do not think you will see her at Los Molinos," said Moses. "Don Luis has taken her under his wing like an eagle. It is not the custom here, you know, for young ladies . . ."

Anthony held up his hand. "I understand," he said.

Nevertheless, as he put on his suit for the audience he felt fired with hope. "Dolores was at Los Molinos!"

Moses charged for advice as well as for his cloth, Anthony discovered when he paid the bill. But it was worth it, he felt, as he drove on to Herr Meyier's small establishment in a street just off the plaza. And he was enjoying himself. He wished Vincent were along. How he would gape at this raiment. What had become of Livorno, anyway? In the vividness of the present his old days seemed to belong to someone else. Old clothes--he would have to get into them again to remember what they felt like. Even one's contour changed. He kicked the bundle of the suit he had worn to the tailor's. Then he remembered he had left his watch in it! Well, he was already late for the appointment with Herr Meyier. He knew that.

Herr Meyier had a number of papers to go over carefully. The order for the temporary sequestration of the schooner was made out, Anthony's appointment as government agent, and an authorization to seize the slaves. All of these already bore the seal of the Caxa de Consolidación and lacked only the signature of the captain-general. Annexed to these were the long records of the process of the government in the case of the Black Angel, the rescript of the Council of the Indies confirming it, and a decision of the alcalde-major dated the day before called "Processional Confirmation of Precedent in Camera."

"All of these papers," said Meyier, "you will please notice, Don Antonio, are in triplicate. One set for you, one for my bureau, and copies for the captain-general. The last paper with the high-sounding title is the most important of all. It means that the highest court in Cuba has certified that the case of the Black Angel is a precedent upon which the executive government here can act. A 'procession' of other acts can now legally proceed from this first one. Do you see? 'In Camera' simply shows that the decision has been made at the private request of the captain-general and is confidential. No public notice of it is required. It is simply certified back to him as valid. Perhaps you do not fully appreciate the beauties of Roman Civil Law from the standpoint of a government official. From now on all that the executive has to do to seize any slaver is to--well, seize it--and certify that it is precedental with the case of the Black Angel. The viceroy's signature makes it so. It is then a fact in law. To re-establish possession for themselves the owners of slaves who have been subjected to the process must prove conclusively that the government is in error, that is, that the case is not a precedent. That is very difficult to do, and in the meantime the slaves must remain in the government's possession and may be sold. It is simply beautiful!

"I may say," said Herr Meyier getting up and walking about excitedly, "that this puts a weapon in our hands for which we have long been searching. The slave interests are powerful and have been the most active element behind the intendant and Señor Santa María, 'the patriots,' as they call themselves. Now they belong to us. Only one example will be needed. Señor Gallego is unfortunate. But that first example we must have.

"You must therefore thoroughly understand all of this when you take the papers to the captain-general to be signed. He is a penetrating and exacting man. I have explained your mission here to him and I have also stretched a point by indicating that it was you to whom we should be grateful for suggesting this process. That in a sense is true." He waved his hand deprecatingly. "Naturally I worked out the details, but let that go. He will give you the credit. We shall all participate in the benefits."

"Are you sure the captain-general does want to see me?" asked Anthony.

"I am not exactly certain why he insists upon seeing you but I think I know. This case is a very important one. Out of it may proceed much revenue for the palace. Don Luis would assure himself that he is placing this matter in competent hands. It will be for you to convince him of that. If he feels you can carry this seizure through, your own reward, the matter of the Gallego debt, will be a trifle. But I am being frank. If he does not like you, he will find someone else and there will be nothing left for you to do but to make your suit to Señor Santa María. There is much risk in all this for you. I do not conceal that. You must, for instance, on the way to Africa avoid--well, avoid falling overboard. But I think I am right in feeling that you will not be prevented easily or cavil at small things. By God! señor, make the captain-general like you. Become a convincing young man! In that case it may be possible the governor will have a further proposition to make you. If he does I advise you to accept. If not--" he shrugged his shoulders--"there is one thing more. What is your nationality? Where were you born?"

"I do not know," said Anthony turning red.

"So?" said Meyier looking at him appraisingly. Then he laughed.

"Don Antonio Adverso, citizen of the Western Hemisphere, white, a subject of God? No, no, that will not do. It is a legal fiction you need in order to exist."

"I suppose I am English," said Anthony.

"Why, señor?"

"I cannot answer you, Herr Meyier, a matter of honour."

"Teufel! Englishmen are seldom mysterious about being Englishmen. But, we cavil unnecessarily. Will you take an oath of allegiance to the King of Spain in order that the law may be able to see you favourably, and hence for your own protection?"

But Anthony hesitated visibly. He felt very much the same about this oath as he had felt about Father Xavier's wafer. As he looked at Herr Meyier he could see that he was both disgusted and surprised. He was losing ground with him--and there was the debt. Should he sell himself to collect that? But why put it that way? This was only an earthly affair, himself and the King of Spain. He could bargain there.

"I will take the oath if you do not register it," said Anthony.

"Good! I will only have it attested, to produce if necessary," grunted Meyier, and sent for a notary. So Anthony swore with his hand.

"It is," he told himself, "a compromise."

They packed the papers in one of Meyier's portfolios and put a lead seal on it. "Himmel!" Meyier had said at last, leaning into the carriage. "Do not let trivialities interfere with your success, Don Antonio, even a citizen of the Western Hemisphere must live. Yes! No?" Anthony had left Meyier grinning and waving good luck.

Incidents like these that threatened to uncover the merely vague grounds for the supposition of his own existence were terribly disconcerting. They left him melancholy. Herr Meyier's banter about the oath had gone deep. With Meyier the oath was a mere formality. Herr Meyier was a German. He was sure of himself. He had been born into and turned out of a mould. He was irrevocable to himself and to all men. He remained a German no matter what oaths he took. But Anthony--what of him? "Citizen of the Western Hemisphere, white!" How deep that cut! In all the inherited loyalties of men he had no part. At the table of the sun he drank to no king. He had no right to be there which was humanly visible. Perhaps Cibo was right and he should attach himself to something. But Mr. Bonnyfeather's legacy had made that difficult because it was unnecessary. He did not even need to go on playing at making a living. Life would be just a game with the means assured and no ends to play for except to win. Win what? Undoubtedly he must find something. Suppose--suppose a citizen of the Western Hemisphere proposed marriage to Señorita Dolores de la Fuente y Someruelos. What would he say, for instance, to the de la Fuentes and the Someruelos? He knew what he would say to Dolores. That would not be in the realm of logical argument--but to them? And he knew now that they would be there, too. The best he could now do would be to whisper something to Dolores in the moonlight--and go away. Someone like that baby this morning who had sponsors for himself must be the final accredited cavalier.

Well, he would go on. He would see. Perhaps the Western Hemisphere might be a mould. Feeling vaguely English because he looked it, and being sure himself that he was born, he would pour himself out into the mould. He would find out. Now that the madonna had gone she would also take his cradle of the pool in the convent with her. It was the only one he had had. That--and a certain face on a miniature which he must never speak of.

To hell with all that, then!

Here I am. I know that. I will try following up one practical thing, call my object all, and see where it leads to. Object, the debt. I will collect that. I make an oath to myself. The oath to the King of Spain is purely contributory. It is a means. Result so far: I have achieved nationality. Supposing the debt to be "x" I shall simply work out its value to me in the terms of what happens while I collect it thus:

y (The Wampanoag + Havana + Africa) = x

Now then, I make a note of that. Memorandum for A. A. He set it all down--and

y = the unknown factor of myself.

Let us see, are there any other factors? Luck? Oh, well, this is a non-human equation, not a logical one. To supply the value of luck would require a constant unknown factor operating throughout. To be able to know that would also imply being able to know "x" in advance.

He put his notebook into his pocket rather pleased with his fancy.

"Hence you see," he told himself, "it follows . . . what follows? That I am being drawn by two horses to see the Captain-General of Cuba at Los Molinos and Dolores is there. Very good, that!--Driver, a little faster please. I must be there by four o'clock. So this is what carriages are about. How reasonable!"

Yet what he really enjoyed, now that all the important business was set down in a "mathematical" memorandum, was the mysterious and easy pleasure of forward motion as he rolled along over the new military road toward Los Molinos. Having a constant series of impressions follow each other in rapid succession without doing anything to produce them gave him the sensation of having increased life. He was enjoying as a more powerful being might enjoy. The horses had accelerated fate and made the world change. In the collection of the debt, in solving "x," this would be one of the most enhancing experiences he felt.

"Driver, faster! Use your whip!" They flew along now.

The gardens of Los Molinos with the summer palace of the captains-general came in sight, a gleam of old ivory in a tossing sea of palms. In those living depths the wind blew the treetops back into white, glistening spots that shivered in the sea of green like the Caribbean lashing over a hidden reef. A sentry emerged from a gold-and-scarlet striped box and took his pass. Ten minutes later Anthony was ushered into the Hall of the Governors of Cuba.

----------

At first he could not see anyone there. The rather low room with grey stone walls and a moulded stucco ceiling looked more like a corridor than an apartment. It ran clear across the front of the main building with deep, recessed windows stretching from ceiling to floor. Through these, like reflections from the surface of a lake, fell the shuffling lights and shades of the waving palm fronds without which mirrored themselves and rippled aquidly upon the gleaming, ebony floor. Shifting spots of sunlight and half-lights flowed along the grey walls and lent an almost liquid aspect to the atmosphere of the room.

Indeed, it was no wonder that the eye at first lost itself in this ancient apartment. Had Anthony seen tropical fish come swimming through the windows he would not have been surprised. High, narrow teakwood chairs, set at stately intervals; chairs upholstered in faded red brocade shot through with tarnished silver threads died away into the watery perspective as if all those who had sat on them were dead and this was the cabin of a foundered galleon. It was not until his eyes adjusted themselves to the somnolent and stealthy shifting of shadows that at last in the centre bay of the windows he discovered the captain-general himself.

He was standing with his back turned looking out into the garden and had evidently not heard the secretary announce him, for Anthony could still see his card lying on a silver tray before the governor's desk chair.

"Your Excellency," said Anthony.

General Las Casas turned with a slight twist of annoyance. Seeing it was not a lackey he hastily picked up the card, read it, and immediately broke into a quiet smile. Anthony could scarcely restrain a start of surprise. Here was the same gentleman who had been standing beside Dolores in the cathedral.

"Come over, Don Antonio, I am glad to see you. Have I kept you waiting long? Ah, I see. Well, you are not the first who has not been able to find me in this--aquarium."

He pointed Anthony to a chair by his escritoire, answering his bow with an easy and winning courtesy.

"You must really co-operate with me in helping to set aside the old formalities of a viceregal court," continued the general leaning his head on one hand and looking at Anthony frankly and keenly. "Personally I find it impossible to get anything done in Cuba by insisting that this is the Escurial. It has shocked some of the old Castilians even here. But formalities are not the end of life any more. Things have been happening in Paris, you know. One must admit they exist. 'New times, new fashions, and new minds,' I often say. I see you believe at least in cutting your clothes to the year. You will not be shocked, I trust, if I do not permit you to kiss my hand?"

"Thank you, for breaking the ice of etiquette so thoroughly, sir," said Anthony. "I confess to coming here with considerable trepidation, despite the assurances of your many friends in Havana."

"I was not aware my friends in Havana were so numerous," said the governor. "But it is pleasant to hear you say so. You yourself, Don Antonio, seem to have fallen into excellent hands. Herr Meyier and our good Carlo Cibo have both been talking to me about you. I have been given to suppose that it will not be difficult for us to arrive at a conclusion about certain matters, and to our mutual advantage. You have already made a very happy suggestion, I am told." Anthony saw his eyes rest on him inquiringly.

"I shall be frank with Your Excellency. A very small part of the credit for that suggestion is due to me. It was only something I said inadvertently which enabled Herr Meyier to . . ."

"Tut, tut!" exclaimed the governor. "You dispraise yourself. But I see you are honest even in claiming credit and that is, to say the least, refreshing here. Your inadvertency was a very happy one. Go on, make some more. But Herr Meyier has entrusted you with some papers, I believe?"

"Here," said Anthony laying the sealed portfolio on his desk.

"You may gain some insight into the conditions of this business," remarked the general as he extracted the documents and spread them out, "when I tell you that it is only to a messenger whose own interests are inseparable with their safe delivery here that these papers would be entrusted. Do you realize, my young friend," continued he opening his eyes a little wider, "that if certain gentlemen here in Havana had known of the contents of this portfolio neither you nor it would have arrived here this afternoon? As it is I have no doubt whatever that you are already being watched."

"I am prepared to take the risks which will inevitably be involved if Your Excellency sees fit to trust me," said Anthony. "It is true my own interests are involved in this affair but that is not my main motive, sir. I want you to know that. No, there is something more." He hesitated.

"Go on," said the governor, "I am really curious now."

"It is the thing itself," Anthony burst out, "the difficulties that are in the way, what will happen, my own determination to go through with it. I would find out for myself how I shall cope with this affair. But I suppose that is not what I should have told you."

The governor answered with a quick flash of his white teeth. He drummed on the desk for a minute with the end of his pen. Then he started to sign the papers.

"On the contrary I am very glad you have said it, Don Antonio. It puts a new face on the matter. We shall not simply be using each other for so much cash. It encourages me, in fact, to propose to you something further since you are a caballero with whom gold is not all. What I shall say now is between us only, as men of honour. Is that agreeable?"

"You have my word, sir, but I reserve my decision as to your proposal."

"Naturally. Do not imagine I would inveigle you. Quite the contrary. In fact, as you shall see, to a certain extent I shall have to commit myself to your hands." He leaned forward and began to sand the papers for a minute. Then he looked up frankly and continued.

"Señor, in a few months I return to Spain. I return there a poorer man than when I arrived here six years ago. It might have been otherwise if I had cared to play the game here with the intendant and Señor Santa María. Meyier has told you of them? So! You understand then. But perhaps you do not understand fully. The 'game' is to separate Cuba from the crown of Spain. Troubled times are now with us and more ahead. With universal war brewing in Europe we shall soon be separated for months from Madrid. Insurrection gathers here. My successor, the Marqués de Someruelos, my cousin, will soon be left here alone to struggle with those who call themselves patriots. Need I add that their conception of patriotism is the concentration of revenue in their own hands? The intendant is not without influence at home. It has been only with the greatest difficulty that I have succeeded in having a loyal successor to myself appointed, a man of honour and ability, a liberal, but loyal. To smooth the way for himself he has sent his niece out in advance to set up his household here at Los Molinos. Social prestige is very important in Cuba among the great landholders. I am a widower and have been handicapped. But with the arrival of the Señorita Dolores we have been co-operating in building up the viceregal court. When my successor arrives there will be a court for the royalists to rally about. It has been very difficult for her. She has had to disregard many conservative customs. But--as you seemed to observe this afternoon in the cathedral--she is a señorita of singular charm."

He leaned back and laughed, enjoying Anthony's obvious confusion.

"I see to a certain extent you have already joined our party," he continued. "That is well. Much serenading now takes place on moonlit nights in the gardens of Molinos. All the voices are terrible so far, it is true. But we have gained a number of the influential young caballeros to our side, for the cult of Dolores must also, by her decree, be the policy of the King of Spain. There have been dinners--and duels. Several troublesome patriots have been removed--honourably. It is now fashionable to come to court on certain afternoons to kiss the hand of the captain-general and that of the señorita afterward. Her uncle when he arrives will already be enormously popular. Patriotism, which has only an intendant and a mustachioed Señor Santa María, will soon be left cold."

"Do you want me to come and join the choir in your park then, general?" laughed Anthony. "If so, you can count on me for that."

"Do so by all means," laughed Las Casas. "I shall instruct my sentries not to fire on the night when you arrive. Let your soul overflow. But we wander a little from the point.

"Under all of this, you know, I am really quite serious. Would you be interested, Don Antonio, for instance in being the agent for providing the somewhat embarrassed Captain-General of Cuba with an independent revenue? You might, ahem, er, participate--to a certain extent. I should add that you would deserve to do so for you would be providing the means for preserving intact the interests of the crown here."

"You mean," said Anthony doing some fast thinking, "that once in Africa you would like me to continue there for a while as your confidential agent."

"Your surmise has hit the mark very closely, señor."

"I could never consider engaging in slaving as a permanent business, sir, there is no need for me to do so, and besides I do not . . ."

"Certainly, of course not, that is for any length of time or in the usual way. My thought was this: once arrived in Africa establish yourself at Gallego's base and remain there long enough to ship me and my successor sufficient cargoes to permit us to get the upper hand here financially.

"We will undertake to provide you ships. They will be temporarily sequestrated from the friends of Señor Santa María. Thus the thing will work both ways to our benefit. It will hamstring them and provide us funds to pay the garrison and equip loyal colonial forces. I should say it would require some years to bring this about, provided you can keep sending slaves. It will not matter then if we are cut off from Spain. The commercial details of the matter will be handled by Herr Meyier through our good friend the rich grocer of Regla. Any reasonable arrangement which you and Cibo might care to make with the Caxa da Consolidación would, I am sure, be approved of at the palace." He smiled.

"You see the merit of the scheme is that the intendant and his friends will not be able to lay their hands on the root of, the trouble at first. It will all be done quietly. You are not known here and it will be some time before they guess Cibo's connection, if at all. We shall take care to have the cargoes landed at Santiago, say, and marched overland if necessary. And slaves now are at a premium. I should hope for six or eight cargoes a year at least."

He paused looking at Anthony earnestly, again drumming on the desk. In the great room the sunlight was already beginning to fade.

"Can you give me a few men I can depend upon when the Ariostatica sails? It may be difficult to make this first seizure, in Africa," said Anthony. "Suppose that Señor Gallego objects."

"Ah," said the governor shrugging his shoulders, "that I admit is the rub. Frankly I cannot help you there. To put a crew on the schooner and send them to Africa, I have no power. My authority ends three miles from these shores. If I carried it with a high hand and put men aboard, the cat would be out of the bag. The first move must be perfectly legal and unsuspected. I can arm you with papers and nothing more. Those papers give you authority to tell the captain what to do and to attach Señor Gallego's slaves. You must contrive to do that and to establish yourself in Africa if you can. If this first move is protested I can simply say I am carrying out the unofficial policy of the present ministry to permit the collection of a foreign merchant's debt. If you make use of your opportunity and establish yourself, ah, then--then I shall take some risks in seizing ships. Until then why should I? Apparently I should simply be compromising myself for you. No one would believe that.

"As it is now only four of us will know, and the marquis when he arrives. Indeed, I should not risk it with any Cuban. They all have local connections. I wished to see you myself before I broached the matter. I believe you can succeed in this, Don Antonio. If you do, in two or three years you will be a rich man. In any event you will be taking much the same risks just to collect your present debt."

"It will take several years out of my life," mused Anthony.

"True, and very interesting ones they may prove to be," continued the general. "But there--I would not press you. Either you will want to do this as you say for its own sake, or not at all. I can understand that. I see by these papers, however, we are both serving the same master now--your oath of allegiance. I have always served my king well. The profit has not always been great. One does the best one can--and goes home. You will forgive me for having pressed all this upon you. I am surrounded by rascals here or incompetents. It seemed our opportunity might be mutual in several ways. Well, let us seal these and go. The señorita receives informally in the garden this afternoon." He looked up a little sadly and gave the bell rope a pull.

At some distance the bell tinkled musically. The door opened.

"Lights, Pedro, for a sealing." Presently the lighted candles came.

"There is always something childishly fascinating about this," said the governor as he began to soften the wafers for the seals in a little pan. The pungent smell of lit wax made him cough.

Instantly before Anthony arose the library of Mr. Udney at Livorno. He saw himself moving about there a ragged, stammering orphan with a priest's hat under his arm. That was who he was! He remembered now. He must be making his own place in the world. And now--he was looking at the captain-general of Cuba sealing documents that concerned that same orphan. He had come for them half-way across the world from the library of Mr. Udney eleven years ago. Why not gather in all that the wax might seal? It was running now, as it were, through the general's hands. Soon they would be hardened, those seals, once and for all. Florence Udney . . . No pigtails now . . . Mrs. David Parish thank you! Dolores, how lovely you are. In three years I might . . . in three years, who knows?

"Your Excellency, I have joined your party," Anthony said quietly.

"Good!" said Las Casas, "all the better that you did not jump at the first glimmer of a golden hook. It is more than that, isn't it?"

"Much more," said Anthony. "All I think."

The governor smiled and pressed down on the last seal.

"Well," said he, "since you have joined my party, I suppose you will have no objection to joining the one going on downstairs. No!" He laughed and put Anthony's sealed copies back in the portfolio. "The rest of these papers remain here, and with Herr Meyier. I shall myself add a confidential memorandum for the marqués when he comes. Depend upon it he shall understand. Now we go down to the garden. Don Antonio--" he looked at Anthony fixedly.

"Your Excellency?"

"I congratulate you. Permit me to introduce you to the Friends of the King."

They walked across the room together, Anthony's heart beating fast. To his surprise, however, they did not turn toward the door.

"How do you think I do as a politician?" said the governor. "I have had to learn it here," he grimaced. "I am not the first captain-general who found himself alone in Cuba, however. Look here!" They had stopped before a full-length portrait of Don Philip IV just opposite the governor's desk across the hall.

"It might," said Las Casas, "be a portrait of the old days here. It is a copy of Velasquez. A predecessor of mine had it hung here almost a century ago."

From the deep shadows of a black velvet curtain behind him the pale and utterly weary countenance of Don Philip looked out at them as if they were not there. The gold ringlets over his narrow, austere brow shone with as cold a lustre as the fishy-blue of his eyes. Disdainfully, with a smile that had nothing human about it except a hint of cruelty, he was drawing on a pair of long, thin gloves.

"You see?" said Las Casas. "It is the same king who once had a soldier executed for catching him in his arms when he fell downstairs. High treason! He had impeded the sovereign." A look of keen enjoyment passed over the face of the governor not unmixed with regret. "The king did not have to be a politician," he went on. "But it has been otherwise with viceroys in Cuba. They have sometimes thought that even a way of falling downstairs without attracting attention might be convenient. Even a century ago . . . now . . ."

He put out his hand and pulled the picture toward him. It swung out like a door. A narrow flight of stairs dived into the wall behind it. They descended these in two turns in the darkness and came out suddenly into a tropical garden below.

The garden had been there so long that it had forgotten it was in a patio. The smooth, grey stems of giant palms sprang upwards to a green clerestory above, a luminous Gothic ceiling which swam rather than rested on the cleanly curved boles of its natural pillars below. The eye lost itself in the fronded arches of palm leaves or wandered away through a maze of living columns to be reluctantly halted at last by the time-darkened walls of the palace beyond. It was the old tilt-yard of Los Molinos which the genius of some unknown architect had turned into a formal paradise for the viceroys of Spain.

A series of low terraces bordered with stone banisters and lined with ferns and giant cacti in green stone jars descended by regular degrees till they finally enclosed the centre of the garden. There was a level stretch of intensely green grass and ferns from the centre of which a fountain under great pressure lifted a constantly waving plume of spray. Water, indeed, was the secret of the place. The deep runnels of subterranean channels murmured with a constant moaning undertone as if the stream that had been diverted to refresh the place still softly complained. It was hard to tell whether it was the voice of the wind in the palms above or the rush of hidden water below that never ceased. It was a monotone that seemed to belong there and to be as natural as the cool shade of the giant palms themselves.

"An ancient tribe of peacocks once inhabited here," said Las Casas as they stood looking down a flight of broad Spanish steps that led to the fountain below. "The women's dresses moving about among the trees there remind me of them. It is a pity that hoops and brocade are now going out. We shall scarcely know what to do with places like this soon I am afraid. As for the peacocks--they had to go. They made a noise in the morning like filing glass. But come, I see they are waiting for us."

They were met at the bottom of the stair by a very old man of extreme Castilian gravity in a costume that might have done duty at the Escurial some decades before. Don Alonso de Guzman had been master of ceremonies at Los Molinos during the administrations of four preceding captains-general, and although he was now nearly eighty, he still contrived to impress even on a garden party a certain haughty air of mouldy etiquette that was only a memory even in Spain. To this personage Anthony was now delivered by Las Casas and a round of formal introductions began.

There was old Doña Mercedes, the captain-general's mother, who sat in a wheel-chair wrapped in heavy flaps of lace. A marmoset with a face like a bearded penny peeped out over her withered breasts. Above the low hum of conversation, the sound of water and of sere leaves, the dry, hacking cough of the old woman and the shrill whimpering of the monkey rang out disturbingly from time to time. As yet few of the younger generation had arrived. Everybody seemed to be waiting for the affair to begin.

In the meantime old Don Alonso struck his high, beribboned cane into the ground before the bishop, a sardonic, olive-faced old gentleman with a tight, churchly wig and a massive episcopal ring; before the Comandante of Police, Colonel Jesús Blejo; before Señor Gomez Calderón a rich planter, and Mr. James Drake, an English merchant of much influence. The old courtier bowed with the exact degree of deference due to each while he introduced Anthony.

Several officers of the garrison now began to arrive dressed in wide-brimmed, straw hats with heavy, silver lace bands. These Anthony thought looked anything but military. Two or three of the foreign consuls came in with their wives. By the time Anthony had made his rounds with Don Alonso it was understood that another rich, young Englishman with letters was on his travels. This explanation of his presence seemed to have invented itself for him and he gladly acquiesced.

"I suffer greatly from the dreadful humidity of Cuba," said old Doña Mercedes, evidently touched that a young gentleman should have expressed sympathy for her cough. "How I shall survive the trip back to Spain with Don Luis only the blessed Virgin knows. His Lordship here has promised me a hair of the blessed St. Teresa in a bottle to take along. Ah, he is a comfort, that man. I am just saying what a comfort you are, Your Lordship," she called out. The bishop came strolling over looking both saturnine and bored. "You will not forget the blessed bottle, will you?" she reminded him.

"You shall have it tomorrow," he said, and made an elaborate note of it in a black notebook with a gold cross on it. The old woman looked at him dotingly while biting the pink ear of her marmoset with her gums.

"As an Englishman, Don Antonio will scarcely understand how much your kindness means to me," she said.

"Don Antonio is a good Catholic I hear," replied the bishop. "It was he who brought the miracle-working Madonna to Regla, I understand."

"Scarcely that, sir," said Anthony. "I merely arrived on the same ship."

The old woman looked at them both with a live interest now and began to chatter in an animated way about the happenings at Regla. Evidently it was the talk of the town. Through her pious exclamations of admiration, wonder, and surprise, the bishop kept trying to pump Anthony. He walked all around the subject of the miracle like a cat but he learned nothing beyond the facts that he already knew. He looked disappointed.

"You see, señor," said he after they had bowed and walked away from Doña Mercedes, "frankly, I am glad to meet you here. Let us sit down for a minute. Your name has been mentioned to me already--our friend Señor Cibo. Only this afternoon we have had a long talk. What you say about the remarkable event at Regla confirms in every way what he has just been telling me--" the bishop smiled blandly--"I am much gratified. I trust, however, that no more of the statues which were so thoughtfully imported will prove to be miraculous. It would be somewhat embarrassing if the age of miracles were to return by wholesale. The faith of this generation would scarcely be adequate to the occasion. I trust you appreciate my conservative attitude, señor. What do you think?" He leaned forward putting his long upper lip over the gold knob of his cane and stared out into the garden.

"I am sure Your Lordship has nothing more unusual to anticipate," said Anthony. "The rest of the statues which Captain Jorham is now disposing of are in no way remarkable except in price. Of course, I do not pretend to speak either with authority or inspiration, only a certain prophetic instinct as it were."

"Ah, you relieve me greatly," sighed the bishop taking his lip off the cane. "All the ecclesiastical authorities want to do with miracles is to be reasonable about them. As it is there has been a great deal of unauthorized religious enthusiasm in Havana now for some time. As the watchful shepherd of my flock I feel it should be allayed. By the way, señor, you were present at a recent occasion when a French monk, whom I believe you know, interfered with the punishment of a slave. A very serious business!"

"Your Lordship seems to be very well informed of everything that goes on in Havana!"

"Very," said the bishop. "It was also intimated to me this afternoon, with great discretion I might add, that you were expecting to travel to Africa shortly under somewhat favourable circumstances."

"Carlo should scarcely have spoken of it," said Anthony somewhat annoyed.

"Ah, do not say that, Don Antonio. You see he knew to whom he was speaking! After all we are all of one party here." He swept his stick around. "Under the circumstances I can even understand your sympathy for Brother François. You are very young yet after all. But you will also, I trust, understand my own great forbearance and the difficulty in which I find myself. The civil authorities are demanding I take some action about Brother François. Such things cannot go on." He paused significantly.

"My son, it occurs to me that if you could make things comfortable for Brother François on your approaching voyage you would be doing him a great favour. In fact I might add that I have arranged to have him, er, transferred to the African province. The captain-general and I have just had a little talk. He quite understands and has suggested that I inform you myself as the matter may be somewhat of a surprise to the good monk. I understand you start soon. By the way, His Excellency would like to see you for a minute before you leave this afternoon." He rose. "This has been most gratifying, Don Antonio; you shall have my prayers for a smooth voyage, I assure you." Without waiting for any reply he walked away smiling.

"I shall warn Brother François tonight," thought Anthony and rose to greet Mr. Drake who passed just then with his wife on his arm. They talked for some time.

"You hail from about Dundee, do you not, Mr. Adverse?" said the Englishman. "I think I detect certain--ah--Dundeeisms in your accent."

But there was no time to reply. The company suddenly began to gather itself together on the lawn. Those who had been strolling about under the trees now suddenly appeared. Old Doña Mercedes broke into a violent fit of coughing to attract notice to herself. But no one paid any attention to her.

The brittle, snapping sound of the sudden opening of fans revealed several women advancing along a faint path through the ferns and palm trees. They seemed to appear suddenly out of the background of greenery and were now standing by the fountain fanning themselves, laughing and talking to those who crowded up to meet them eagerly.

From the remoter vistas of the garden, where they had evidently been concealing themselves and smoking to avoid the boring preliminaries with the bishop and Doña Mercedes, five or six young caballeros also hastened forward. Several little wisps of blue smoke amid the shrubbery discovered their former hiding places. But all this Anthony caught out of the side of his eye. For in the centre of the group of señoritas by the fountain was Dolores.

He lost no time in hurrying forward himself, and it seemed to him a particular act of grace on the part of Las Casas that he rescued him from the formal clutches of Don Alonso to present him to Dolores.

"Here, señorita," said he, "is a young gentleman whom I believe you have seen before." He seemed to be enjoying the slight evidence of confusion in both of them which marked his words. "Don Antonio has brought us letters from important friends." This was evidently for the benefit of the young Cubans who were standing near waiting their turn somewhat impatiently.

Anthony was aware of a sweetly modulated voice with a surprising depth of tone saying something to the effect that Cuba was honoured by the presence of so distinguished a traveller. She was dressed in shimmering green with something in bright scarlet that fell down from her shoulders into long fringes. On account of the light which seemed to him to emanate from her garments their exact outline remained vague. He looked up to see her dark eyes smiling at him gravely while she manipulated her fan. A faint perfume slept in the lazy breeze she evoked.

"It is I who am greatly and unexpectedly honoured," he managed to reply not very happily. Then they both smiled at the immense gravity of this formal exchange--as if their meeting in the cathedral had already put them far beyond that. He saw the corners of her lips twitch a little with amusement.

"Have you brought along with you the charming lady who accompanied you this afternoon at the christening, Don Antonio, la inglesa?" She looked at him half mockingly over her fan.

"I regret, señorita," he began.

"Ah, that is a great disappointment," she said, "frankly my curiosity was aroused. None of us had any idea that young English caballeros were accompanied by duennas. Come, enlighten us, señor, who was she? I hope you have not trusted yourself alone here!" A titter ran through the group of girls behind her, some of whom Anthony now remembered having seen in the church. They looked at him archly awaiting his explanation.

"You do my moral character no great compliment, señorita, but you underrate the strength of the temptation it finds here. Can you blame me for needing protection? And besides it was I who was protecting the lady from the ardent caballeros of Cuba.

"As a matter of fact," he hurried on making the most of having turned the tables slightly, "I was merely showing the wife of a Yankee captain the epitaphs and tombs of Havana. She is a great authority on cemeteries and visits them all over the world."

The explanation aroused a gratifying interest. It was plain Mrs. Jorham and her cavalier had caused a good deal of comment. They had even been seen taking lemonade together. Anthony was presented to the other señoritas. The Cubans and several young officers now crowded up. The talk became general and extremely animated.

Evidently these garden parties of the Señorita Dolores were affairs of the younger generation. There could be no doubt that they belonged to her. She moved about here and there, always faithfully followed; the object of much ingenious attention, and with a dignity, a charm, and a serene enjoyment of her position which at once dominated everybody and yet put them at their ease.

Even Don Alonso recognized this. He withdrew quietly, accompanying the chair of Doña Mercedes which was wheeled off somewhere, leaving the light chatter and laughter of the group by the fountain uninterrupted by her cough. She and Don Alonso took coffee alone and exchanged the court gossip of previous reigns for hours at a time.

In the garden coffee and light confections were served by orderlies of the Andalusian regiment in the garrison. Anthony secured some cakes representing a Jew in the flames. He perched them on the back of a stone bench with coffee and a napkin and managed to catch the eyes of Dolores. She nodded and he came forward bowing to her cavalier. He, however, still followed.

"May I not have the honour?" Anthony said to her, pointing to the bench. He smiled at her partner. "I hope, señor, you will permit me to intrude without offence. You have often the valued privilege of drinking coffee at Los Molinos, while I, I remain here for only a few days. I ask a great sacrifice I know, but imagine the memory you will be conferring."

"If the señorita permits," said the young cavalryman who was with her, half hopeful she would not.

"Tomorrow, Don Esteban, I promise you. Don Antonio departs so soon," she said. "You would not be cruel!" She tapped the young soldier with her fan.

The lieutenant bowed with more courtesy than enthusiasm and went off to light a cigarro philosophically. Dolores and Anthony sat down on the bench with only the Jewish martyr between them.

"I eat my cruel words, señor," she said. "You are decidedly not in need of a duenna. Don Esteban is not easy to put off. You see I know."

His hand shook as he poured out her coffee.

"Are you really so much moved, Don Antonio?" Her fan folded itself together softly on her lap. She sat back and watched him, studying his face.

"Thou seest, señorita," he said boldly, looking up. The blood rushed to his face as he looked at her. Her shoulders rose and fell deeply. At last she sipped her coffee taking her eyes from his. He picked up the cup and drank from it where she had put her lips.

"He burns," said Dolores picking up one of the little cakes laughingly.

"Would you have no mercy for a poor devil in the fire then?" asked Anthony. "It is true I must go in a few days. Tell me, tell me at least that you are not glad of that. I believe you were glad to see me, that we did truly see each other when we first met this afternoon. All my life I have been looking for you and when I looked up, standing there by the pillar, I thought--I dared to think--that at last I was no longer alone. Just to have found you, just to know you are alive . . ."

"Be careful," she whispered, "the intendant is coming this way." They waited, sipping their coffee together while a dark, middle-aged man with a jewelled court sword passed close to the bench where they were sitting. He bowed deeply to Dolores and gave Anthony a keen glance.

"He knows he is not welcome here," she said. "Go on, Don Antonio, you were saying something, I believe."

"Was I, does it really interest you?" he asked. He leaned forward suddenly with his napkin drooped over the cake dish and took her hand from her lap under cover of it.

"Do not crush it," she said at last. Her eyes opened widely upon him. "Yes!--I shall keep this cake," she said. She took it from the plate with her other hand. "Now you must let me fan myself, señor! Remember where we are!"

He sat back reluctantly trying to clear his eyes of a dazzling golden light. The muscles in his throat relaxed again.

"Could I not see you somewhere else than here? Only for five minutes, but alone?"

She shook her head doubtfully. "It would be all but impossible."

"All but?" he said.

She laughed at him now. His disappointment was so grim.

"You are serenaded, señorita, I am told. Is it only the Cubans, 'the Friends of the King,' who are to be consoled? Ah! Sorrow of the Flame, Dolores de la Fuente, por Dios, you are well named!"

He saw that she looked at him tenderly despite herself. She brought the fan up so that only her wide forehead with the pale, golden ringlets curling over the delicate hollows in her temples, and her eyes dark as violets at twilight looked at him like a vision. He remembered her that way; he remembered her always. It was like the forehead of the face in the miniature.

"Dolores," he said, "I do not burn. Do not think that. I love you with my soul."

He heard her gasp.

They sat for almost a minute and both were thinking the same thing. Across the garden they saw that General Las Casas and someone else were strolling toward them.

"It would be very difficult," she said suddenly. "There are many who come to serenade in the outer park but my windows open into this garden. No one could climb the patio wall . . ."

"But if they did," he said.

"Quién sabe!" she replied. "Here is the governor."

"Give me the rose in your hair, señorita, that at least to remember you by. I beg you . . ."

"Ah! your pardon, Don Antonio," said Las Casas. "It is really painful to interrupt under the circumstances," he bowed to Dolores, "but I must detain you a minute. How do you get on with Englishmen, señorita?" he said.

"Very well, Your Excellency. Indeed," said she, putting her hands behind her head, and looking up at him from the bench with her head thrown back in a charming defiance, while her fingers seemed to rearrange her high, silver comb--"indeed, I wish they did not have to leave Havana so soon."

"So!" said Las Casas, taking a pinch of snuff. "Iay, señorita, I am afraid we shall have to disappoint you."

"Adiós, then, Don Antonio," said Dolores with an exaggerated regret as she stood just finishing rearranging her hair. She gave him her hand to kiss. As he bent over it, in the folds of their fingers as they met, he felt the petals of a rose.

"But will I ever see her again?" he wondered.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

THE TEMPORARY SEQUESTRATION OF THE "ARIOSTATICA"

Upon my word, señor, I am afraid I have some bad news for you," said Las Casas to Anthony as they watched Dolores walk away. She disappeared down a path which Anthony did not fail to mark. Now and then, before she vanished entirely, he could still catch sight of her black fan waving through the palms. He turned to find that he had kept the captain-general waiting.

"This is Don Jesús Blejo, el comandante de policia en Habana," continued Las Casas with a slight twist of amusement still visible in his smile. "The bad news, under the circumstances, is that you will be leaving Havana about sunrise tomorrow morning, Don Antonio."

Despite himself Anthony could not entirely conceal his surprise and disappointment. He stood crushing the rose in his fingers and biting his lips.

"Por Dios! It is high time you were on your way, I think," exclaimed the governor with a slight gesture of annoyance. "Still," said he softening, "I do not blame you. But we cannot even for so charming a reason delay. You may have noticed that the intendant was here this afternoon?"

Anthony nodded, trying to look as if he cared.

"He came to complain of the detention of the Gallegos' schooner by the port authorities. To preserve appearances I was forced to give poor Don Jesús here a thorough rating." He turned to the man who stood by rather uncomfortably with a look of surprised chagrin still on his face. "I trust you fully understand that now, colonel."

"Since Your Excellency has been pleased to explain," he said.

Las Casas looked extremely annoyed.

"You see what subterfuges I am put to," he said striking his sword. "So the Ariostatica has been released for tomorrow. I had to promise it, and even to pretend surprise that she had ever been held. We have only a few hours in which to act. It must be tonight or not at all. I have given orders to Don Jesús to have ten men and a boat in readiness at the Maestranza from midnight on. Fortunately, due to his loyalty and care, you can rely upon those he will pick for duty. As soon after midnight as possible you will row out and put yourself in possession of the schooner. Allow no one from her to return to shore. After you have once served your papers on the captain prevent all communication. You should be out of the harbour by sunrise. Make out to sea as soon as possible. The police will leave you and row in somewhere near Jibacoa. After that, señor, it depends on you. I wish you luck." He twirled his moustache and looked at Anthony a little doubtfully.

"You have my word, Your Excellency, to do all I can," said Anthony.

"Bueno!" said Las Casas. "This is a little more hurried than we had expected but it may turn out for the best. The intendant when he inquires tomorrow will simply be informed that the Ariostatica has been released as he demanded. He will suppose that the captain has lost no time in getting under way. And in that supposition he will be correct." He twirled his moustache again with more assurance now.

"You will be wanting a few hours to make your personal arrangements for the voyage, Don Antonio. Arm yourself," he added significantly. "But you will also have to return to the palace tonight to receive the final papers for the sequestration; the release to the port authorities in due form. I shall have my personal secretary make them out this evening. Return about eleven o'clock if possible. They will be ready then and I shall sign them. You will find Don Esteban at work in the big hall, the 'aquarium,'" he laughed. "Is there anything further you can think of? Ah, si! a pass for the palace tonight, of course! What! There is something? I thought I had covered it all."

"Not quite all, sir," said Anthony hesitating a little.

"Ah, excuse us for a moment, Don Jesús," said Las Casas. He and Anthony took a few turns up and down the path alone. The comandante stood waiting by the bench.

The governor at last gave a relieved laugh. "I thought you were going to withdraw at the last or make some final costly stipulation," said he. "I am used to that."

"No, no," replied Anthony, "I would not bargain with you for this. I appeal to you as a man of understanding and sentiment. I am going--who knows to what? A half hour only, Your Excellency. Perhaps never again--quién sabe?"

"Ah, quién sabe?" echoed Las Casas. "But what would the lady say? I am not in authority there you know, señor."

Anthony opened his hand and showed him the rose.

"Madre de Dios! you are a dangerous man. It is high time you were on your way. But it shall be your pass. A half hour then--fifteen minutes if you have a bad voice. My windows also look into this patio."

Anthony spoke earnestly again for a turn or two. The governor broke out laughing aloud and finally nodded. "But I shall give orders to search the guitar for lethal weapons," he said. "That will at least save the comandante's face--and perhaps a quarrel between you. He is a man of literal duty you know, a Basque. By the way, you will treat him with marked courtesy. He is important here in the scheme of things."

"What is the least which will not insult him, sir?"

"Not less than a hundred dollars I hazard," smiled Las Casas, "but that is not all that I meant. He is somewhat nettled at having been transferred from his regiment to take over the police. Pride--you see?"

"It is a great pleasure to be associated in this enterprise with so gallant a soldier," said Anthony as they rejoined the comandante by the bench. "His Excellency has been speaking of your invaluable services here, Don Jesús, I am honoured."

The man's jacket bulged slightly about the breast as he bowed with a sudden and very marked cordiality. "I am at your disposal, señor. It is but for His Excellency--and you--to command."

Las Casas was secretly much pleased, too. The police were his chief reliance next to the garrison.

"Have passes made out to the palace for Don Antonio and his servant tonight," said the governor--"and a guitar." He smiled whimsically. "If the holders of the pass should be found during the evening in the patio . . . I trust you will not be alarmed, Don Jesús. The conspiracy is not aimed at me. In fact I have nothing to do with it."

"Except to bind me to your service with tender bonds," said Anthony bowing deeply.

"Ah! that remains to be seen," said the governor. "As you say, quién sabe? And now adiós, Don Antonio. I wish you well in several ways. Do not let the moonlight delay you too long. That is all. Don Jesús will accompany you now as far as Regla. Make what haste you can. Do not forget that other matter, colonel," he called after them. The soldier turned and saluted again.

Looking back from the top of the steps as they left the garden Anthony saw the Captain-General of Cuba standing by the fountain smoking a cigar. An hour and a half later, after a breathless drive and dash across the harbour, he broke in on Carlo on the veranda with the news.

----------

But Carlo refused to be hurried. In the brief tropical twilight he was comfortably having supper. A large tureen with charcoal under it simmered audibly.

"Sit down and have some pompano," he said. "The most delicious of fish. The only one I really care for. Some fried yams? Yes! I insist! What is a mere voyage to Africa compared to a supper like this? Ah! What you will miss! Tomorrow is the dinner I have prepared for you and Father Trajan in celebration of the miracle. And now you will be at sea instead! Well, well, you must go well prepared. Now let me show you something, since you are going to Africa, that land of servants. Sit here and drink your wine. It is not necessary to move now merely because you are going on a journey. Cheecha, send Tambo, and Eunice, and three bright boys. Also rouse Señor Rodríguez. Fly now!"

In a few minutes the various persons white and black who had been sent for appeared. Leaning back in his chair with a glass of Malaga in his hand Cibo gave his orders.

He had Anthony's chests brought out on the veranda and repacked by the slave girls. He had several other receptacles, iron-bound and provided with heavy locks, carried up by the black boys. From a list which he wrote out by the light of a candle he began to fill these with such a variety of articles, clothing, food, private trading goods, luxuries and necessities, that Anthony was amazed.

"When you have boarded the schooner tonight and taken possession hang a green light in the shrouds and I shall see that all this is sent out to you immediately. The boys will be waiting with the boat laden at the wharf. Have these chests stowed where you can watch them. Remember you are going to be moving from now on in a world of thieves. You are going to steal men, and in return you can expect them to steal everything from you they can. Do not waste any time thinking about the morality or philosophy of it. Use locks. I shall send you everything you can need for a year's stay. It will be the first charge on our trading account. It is fortunate that Moses has delivered all your linen suits. You will need them. The Rio Pongo alternates between a Turkish bath and a furnace. Sometimes the nights are cool."

For an hour Cibo continued to talk of nothing but slaving and Africa. He gave off a world of particulars and sound practical advice. He settled the last details of how he would act as agent for dispatching further ships if Anthony was successful. He drank two bottles of wine and described the Gallego establishment on the Rio Pongo near Bangalang, the tribes surrounding it, and the half-caste Mohammedans who came down in caravans from the interior to trade. He even touched on the rising opposition to slavery in the British House of Commons and its possible effect on the trade in general. At the end of his discourse, for it could be called nothing less, he presented Anthony with two cases both of English make. The large one contained a pair of splendidly mounted pistols and the smaller a set of razors, one for each day of the week.

"Use these," said he. "When you begin to look and act like a native it is time to leave Africa. I give you two, at the most three years. That is longer than usual. The blue medicine chest there is mostly full of cinchona bark for the fever. I will nail directions inside. Follow them or you will die. Did it ever occur to you that you can die? No? Well, you can. In fact you will. Delay it. Immortality should be shunned with intelligent forethought whether it is inevitable or not. Quién sabe! Cheecha, another bottle of wine."

In the meantime the moon was flooding the patio with a deeper and deeper light. All the ropes were on the chests. For good luck Anthony took a last look at his own with the sextant in it. He settled the little madonna deeper into some soft things under his great-coat and wedged her in. How curious that she was going to Africa, too! If it had not been that Cibo was sitting near he would have taken a peep at her. But he was in no mood for quips and raillery now. It had been hard enough to listen to Cibo at all with his own head dancing with Dolores, moonlight, and the adventure of the night yet before him. Only the man's immense kindness and the inherent wisdom of what he had to say had held him. And now--now it was time to go.

He sent for Juan who appeared grinning in his new servant's clothes. "Sí, sí, señor, I am all ready. Sí, I have the guitar." Anthony wrapped his boat-cloak about him and turned to Cibo to say good-bye. Then he remembered something.

He undid the bundle of soiled clothes he had worn to the tailor's that morning and from it took his watch. He gave Cheecha the chameleon on the little gold chain. It kept coming up between her breasts when she hung it about her neck, which was probably the reason that made her both laugh and cry out while at the same time she clutched a few coins he had given her. Her stream of blessings and thanks made him ashamed. After all she was not the woman he had seen in the dream. That was something else. Cibo laughed at his serious face.

"Leaving a chameleon at a girl's breast is nothing to worry about. Ha, Toni, what a tender conscience we have! A glass now. Something I have saved to the last."

He brushed some cobwebs off a small, green bottle with a reverential gesture and carefully filled two tumblers. It was a very old and mellow Montrachet.

"May whatever gods there be go with you," he said. They clinked.

Cibo walked down to the dock with Anthony. He was to cross again in the fast little boat. The dark bodies of the rowers glistened in the moonlight. Someone was patting a tune drowsily.

"Do you understand that I am grateful, Carlo?" asked Anthony. It was hard to tell now whether it was water or the men's hands slapping below the dock. Cibo drew in his sash very tight. He suddenly looked younger with his faun-like face smooth under the moon.

"All that is nothing," he said. "We could not help being friends. Remember me, your philosopher in exile."

"Adiós, Carlo. Farewell, farewell!"

"You should have waited for the supper tomorrow night, a great supper! I will send along some of the wine. Drink to . . ." Carlo's voice called after them as the boat flashed out from the dock. The swift click of the oars and the rush of water drowned his tones in the distance. The black rowers grinned and pulled together for the tip that was so soon due. Anthony turned around and waved his white hat.

It was a miraculous night. Havana harbour was one blaze of silver and the moon straight overhead. The city lay before them twinkling with a thousand little lights. Juan unslung his guitar. They fairly flashed by a ship where the heads of the watch lined the rail. The rollicking voice of the young Spaniard made the six negroes pull as one man. At every stroke Anthony felt the light, soft air cool against his cheeks. "Dolores, Dolores!" He had forgotten all about the Ariostatica for the moment.

Before his eyes burned a vision of the pale face of the Spanish girl. It was not merely a vague pictorial thought of her. As he looked across the molten silver of the bay toward Los Molinos an actual reflected image of her face seemed to be cast upon the water just ahead of the boat. The rich, full tones of her voice sounded in his ears. For a while she possessed him. When his brain cleared again he found himself still swinging to the rhythm of the oars and Juan's barcarole while Havana suddenly sprang up before him much nearer than it had been before. The lights in the harbour seemed to have shifted.

He took a deep breath of the warm salt air. Tonight belonged to him and to her. He was living fully and all for now. He was, he felt, the captain of events for the first time in his life. Things had come his way in Havana remarkably well. It would be his part to continue to make them behave that way in the future. His last monitor had disappeared; had been left, talking, on the dock at Regla.

He was glad to have left Cibo. He liked him. He was grateful. Yes, but he was glad to be sitting in this boat bound on his own affairs with the tiller in his hand. The only one with him now was a servant. Bueno, that was as it should be.

And he would take and drive the Ariostatica to Africa. How he did not know. But he felt sure of it, sure of himself as he sat there. Cibo's wine gave just enough of a tinge of madness to turn the city ahead and the harbour into something a little better than even the moonlight could confer. It was a slightly mad, transfigured world of Dolores and untold adventure, all marvellous, all good, all tinglingly vivid, that lay before him. It had no end. In it one was immortal. It was impossible to fail. The pleasures of it were as infinite as one's capacity to enjoy. It was hard, and youthful and real. And yet--it was beautiful and dreamful; it was moonlight and mad music over the water.

He sat up with an intense sureness and took active charge. The boat, which had been driving a little out of its course, he set directly on the water-gate lights. He stopped Juan and slowed the rowers to a steadier but more time devouring speed. The Wampanoag, he noticed, had slipped her mooring and was riding far down the harbour. So Captain Jorham was on his way. He must have sold all his statuary. Well, he had learned much from the Wampanoag he could use now. Adiós to her! Adiós to everything!

They glided into the slip by the water gate and he gave a gold piece to the stroke oar for the crew. A babble of African approval and well-wishes seemed to waft him up the steps of the quay. Two minutes later he was being whirled through the dim, narrow streets of the old city toward Los Molinos again.

Once beyond the walls of the town they began to trot swiftly and more swiftly along the straight, white road awash with mad shadows where the palm trees flaunted and rustled their lofty double row of seething plumes down an infinite avenue. There was a thin, gauzy mist blowing by here in the valley; there was a hint of northern coolness, the smell of heavy dew on grass and leaves, and a blurred-glistening of green things in the foggy moonlight. The horses broke into a gallop thinking they were going home. They bolted. To the expectation of happiness ahead was now added the exhilaration of speed. A divine recklessness rode with them. The tenor voice of Juan lifted itself in staves of some Andalusian love song that rang out over the vacant plantations like the chorus of an unearthly, lyrical hunt. A few dogs barked and howled in the distance. At the open doorways of huts dark figures outlined in the orange glow from within watched them streak past. The driver at last brought up his team beside a roadside fountain.

"He will founder them if he lets them drink now," said Juan.

"Let him," replied Anthony. "As long as we get to the gardens I do not care."

They sat listening to the beasts gulping and breathing and to the fall of the spout. A streak of moonlight fell full on a little slide of water that came down a steep slope of fern and moss-covered rocks just above the trough. In the shady nook by the road everything but the clear space by this spring was in shadow. Their eyes naturally came to rest on the brilliant little waterfall as if it were a piece of miniature landscape illuminated.

It was only for a few seconds, but as Anthony watched this weird little Niagara that seemed to be leaping forever out of a tropical elfland through a haze of maidenhair ferns, a gorgeous coral snake glided down to the brink of a still pool and began to drink. Under the moon its brilliant scarlet was turned to dark amber. It was so delicate in all its motions, so graceful, and so utterly wild that there was not the slightest hint of anything sinister about it. Its tongue like black, forked-lightning flickered into the silver water making all but invisible ripples, and the moon glinted on its small eye. Suddenly, when one of the horses blew loudly on the surface of the font just below, it was gone.

He had watched it without complications as Adam might have seen the first serpent in Paradise before the fall. It had, he felt, given an expression and a meaning to the tropical night in a language that lies behind words.

Juan proved to be no Cassandra. The tough little horses did not founder. Ten minutes later they were at Los Molinos.

A glare of candles in the centre bay of the front windows of the palace showed that the secretary was still at work, although it was now past eleven o'clock. In spite of the pass the sentinel on duty was obstinate. It was late, and he looked at them, but especially at the guitar, with profound suspicion. He insisted on searching the instrument. A sergeant came but he could not read. It was finally necessary to send for the comandante himself. While they waited Juan retuned his strings and groaned. He was afraid he had lost key. Finally Don Jesús appeared and the gates were opened.

As they went up the broad stairs to the Hall of the Governors Anthony took the occasion to press into the hand of the comandante "the least sum which would not insult his honour." Evidently Don Jesús carried about him some receptacle for such contingencies, for the roll of gold pieces disappeared, internally, as it were. It neither clinked nor bulged upon his person. Except for a slightly more familiar and affable manner, he remained exactly as he had been before. One eyelid, one epaulette, and a shoulder, all on the left side, sagged. His moustache also drooped in that direction and he limped slightly. Anthony wondered if it was on that side that he carried gold. Don Jesús had evidently expected Juan to remain in the vestibule, but he made no protest at his not doing so.

"When you have finished, señor, you will find me waiting below," said he. "If possible we should be at the dockyard in two hours at least. Dawn is early still, and Don Esteban has already taken longer with those papers than we expected. I will, if necessary, arouse His Excellency to sign them, but I trust you will be through before he retires. All is ready at the water front. I made final arrangements on returning from Regla some hours ago." He threw open the great door for them, and excusing himself, went downstairs again.

The secretary in the alcove looked up and nodded as they came in. He introduced himself a little nervously.

"It will take at least half an hour longer, Don Antonio," he said. "It is the making of three copies which consumes so much time. They must all be original to take the seal. I am sorry to delay you. Will you be good enough to sit down for a while? The chairs are not very comfortable, I know." He made a grimace and shifted himself uneasily looking somewhat surprised at Juan and the guitar. Then he snuffed the candles and resumed hastily. Anthony thanked him and seated himself and Juan on two chairs flanking the large portrait of Don Philip IV.

The sound of the secretary's pen and the tread of the sentry below were the only sounds in the great apartment. Except for the bright lights on the desk, where Don Esteban bent over his papers intent on rapid and accurate copying, and a dim sconce by the door, the rest of the room was in a flux of moonlight and the black, moving shadows of the palms outside.

"To all officers, servants, and ships' commanders and to all loyal subjects whomsoever of the Crown of Spain: Know that, inasmuch as the good ship Ariostatica of our port of Havana in Cuba . . ."

scraped the secretary's quill for the third time that evening.

Quietly opening the door which the portrait concealed, Anthony and Juan disappeared down the dark, little stairs behind it.

----------

Under the moon the shaded patio seemed to have suffered an unearthly change from the garden of the afternoon before. Long pencils of silver light stole down through its palm-fronded ceiling, turning the court into a kind of dream-forest where pools of white mist gathered in the hollows of its paths. Indeed, the fountain in the centre remained the only familiar landmark.

Anthony had hoped to find some windows with lights in them. But beyond the thicket of palms, on every side the dark walls of the palace loomed without a break of gleam. He thought he knew on which side her apartments lay--in the direction of the path which she had taken that afternoon. But he could not be sure. He and Juan went as far as the fountain. Anthony looked about him again. Not a human light. Only a few fireflies winking here and there. Well, he must risk it.

"Sing, Juan--your best now!"

"The lady is beautiful, señor, you say?"

"Lovely as the night," said Anthony with a catch in his voice and trembling with eagerness.

"This then!" said Juan.

The strings began a low prelude. Then the pleading tenor of the young sailor suddenly filled the old tilt-yard of Los Molinos with an even more ancient ballad.

In the middle of the second chorus Juan suddenly stopped. They both waited. A light in a double window above a balcony flashed out in the wall. Outside the tread of the sentry had stopped. They could feel the whole place listening. Someone, Anthony felt sure, had come out on the balcony. He ran back up the steps to look and caught the gleam of moonlight on gold epaulettes. Las Casas was standing on the balcony. Ah, he had thought that was the wrong direction for her room! Juan was singing again.

Suppose after all she should give no sign! How the governor would laugh at him! There was another light now. But not here, not so near the roof. Juan had stopped again. Anthony stood listening. Nothing but his own blood throbbing. Not a sound or a sign from her.

Then at the other end of the patio he heard a faint clapping of hands.

He dashed down the steps and taking the guitar from Juan tried to pick his way as nearly as he could along the path over which Dolores had vanished that afternoon. Presently he saw a light as if from one candle in a room on the second floor. He came out of the palms against the eastern wall of the patio abruptly. There was a dark gate with a heavy, wrought-iron grille just before him. Above that shone the dim glow of the window. Someone was standing there. He could just see her. She was in white with something dark over her hair. He looked up and stirred the strings of the guitar softly. The light tapping of a fan on the windowsill answered him.

"Señorita," he whispered, "I came to say good-bye and to thank you for the rose."

"Is it really yourself, Don Antonio? Where did you find your voice? I have another rose in my hair. Sing again and I will make a little snowstorm of the petals for you."

He came close under the wall and looking up saw her bare arm holding out something over his head. A few white petals floated down like tired moths upon him. Like a beggar he held up his hat for more.

"You are already well paid," she whispered. "No more without another song." He heard her laugh again.

"Ah, Dolores, for the love of God, do not tease me now. Thou knowest I have left my singing voice by the fountain. Roses are not enough tonight."

"You despise my flowers then?" she said.

He came closer under the window and stretched up his arms to her.

"Come down!" he whispered.

As if to mock him she let the flower fall onto his breast.

He caught it to him and began to plead with her. A hundred endearing names which he did not seem to have known before leapt from his lips. If she would only come down to him, come down, only for an instant!

"Dolores, Dolores! Do you not know the few minutes we might have with each other in this life are passing. I must go to the other side of the world tonight. Now! In only a few seconds I must go. Will you only stand there? Come down, Sorrow of the Flame, do not let my heart die when it is so young. Dolores, Dolores!" He kept whispering her name. Then his voice broke. In the silence that followed he heard her catch her breath sharply above him.

After all he would have to go then without . . . but she was speaking.

"Take the guitar back to your man and tell him to sing . . ."

God! was that all then? After all she . . . he leaned against the wall weakly.

". . . they will think you are still by the fountain then. That will give us a few moments . . ."

Reprieved then!

". . . when you come back I shall be at the little gate below. Hurry!"

The candle in the room above went out. He picked up the guitar and dashed back to Juan. As he stumbled back once more over the little path the voice by the fountain rang out again and went on. She was standing behind the grille in the gate. Her face was outlined in a frame of iron leaves. He put his hands through the tracery and clasped them behind her head, drawing her toward him softly. Only her weight resisted him. For a long minute he kissed her on the mouth. After a while she unclasped his hands. What moved him most was that he discovered she had tears on her cheeks.

His hands sought her through the grille again but she laughed a little and caught him by the wrists.

"Anthony!" she said, still holding him as if pleading for a respite--he could feel her trembling--"you are wearing the wrong kind of sleeve links. See they are pearls!" She held his wrists up in a ray of moonlight. "I should send you away."

"Is it so terrible then?" he asked anxiously. "Tell me, tell me what have I done?"

She came closer again as if she thought he might leave. Presently she was explaining to him with her cheek against his own.

"Don't you know that when a caballero's lady is away from him only carnelians are worn? It is a sign that his heart bleeds. Pearls mean that the innocent one is near." She giggled.

"Mine do not lie then."

"Were you so sure as that?" she exclaimed pretending to try to draw away from him.

"No, no, only my soul dared to hope. And now tell me, tell me for once and all. Was I wrong?"

"Thou knowest," she said and clung to him.

"Promise you will not forget me, Dolores. If I never see you again, even if you know that I am lost, if you are married and I can never even speak to you again, you will not forget that we love each other? If our lips can never say it again, still we shall know. Say it is so. Say, at least, that we can go on remembering. Tell me that if I ever can come to you, you will still be there." He kissed her passionately.

"If you can," she said, and looked up at him with the resignation of love in her face. She hid against his breast--"if you ever can."

They stood for a minute as close as they could, with the iron-work cold between them.

"Ah, I am afraid," she whispered, "I am afraid it will always be like this." She reached up and touched the grille that separated them. He cried out and caught her hands to him again, kissing them.

Just then they heard a warning whistle from the fountain.

"You must go!" She thrust his hands out.

"Dolores, I will never see you again!"

"No, no," she exclaimed, "my soul will come back to me!"

He heard a key grate in the lock. The grille swung open and she was on his breast. For a moment the world died to them conclusively. They had abandoned it and taken refuge in each other's arms.

The low, shrill whistle of Juan revived time again. They stood with it ringing in their ears--that keen doom! He cried out an incoherent protest. "Hush!" she said. She kissed him and broke away. He heard the gate clash softly behind her and found himself alone. When he rushed to the grille again she had gone.

"Señor," said the tense voice of Juan, "señor!"

Anthony groaned.

"The governor has sent for you twice. He is coming down the steps now himself. Hurry!"

They rushed back to the fountain. Someone was sitting on the bench smoking a cigar. But to Anthony's great relief it was not the governor but Don Jesús.

"His Excellency has signed the papers and has been waiting to see you," the man said a little grimly. "I trust you will be able to explain to him your presence here? I am responsible, you know, for seeing that no intrusion occurs even by favoured persons!" Don Jesús looked considerably chagrined and eyed Juan in particular with obvious doubt.

"I shall take the entire responsibility on myself," Anthony hastened to say. The man was obviously nettled. "On account of my immediate departure His Excellency has been particularly generous tonight. There were potent, reasons. Surely, Don Jesús, as a gallant caballero you will not ask me to explain!"

Don Jesús bowed a little coldly but managed to smile. "Permit me to congratulate you on your remarkable voice," he said. He still looked puzzled about something. They mounted the stairs together with Juan behind them. Suddenly, from the direction in which they were going, it became evident that Don Jesús could know nothing of the private stairs.

"So that was why he was angry and perplexed," thought Anthony. Indeed, they went out by the big gate. The comandante glared at the sentry angrily.

"Your man had nothing to do with my entrance," said Anthony. "On my honour! Set your mind at rest." Don Jesús looked instantly much relieved and nodded.

"Very well then," said he. "Señor, I shall wait for you here. We should now be at the dockyard."

Anthony received the papers from Don Esteban who was waiting. He was somewhat more deferential than before.

"His Excellency requested me to wish you"--he looked at a paper methodically--"as good luck and as much favour elsewhere as you have found in Havana."

"Convey my profound gratitude and assurance of devotion to His Excellency," said Anthony. The formal little Spaniard wrote it down. Then he delivered the papers to Anthony, took a receipt and bowed.

"Buenas noches, señor."

"Buenas noches."

Now he was whirling back again along the road to the city beside Don Jesús with Juan on the box. The moon was far west now. It was after three o'clock when the hoofs of their horses echoed under the ancient stone arches of the Maestranza.

----------

Don Jesús was no romanticist. He had arrested Brother François in the garden at Regla some hours before with as little compunction as one removes a snail from a flower. He was a Basque, and could any other European have been introduced to what went on inside his head, he would have been amazed at how absolutely four-square and literal was the world which Don Jesús looked out upon. It was this which made him such a magnificent policeman. His arrangements were always almost perfect. They included and took into consideration everything "as is." Had he also been endowed with a little imagination he might possibly have become a dictator. But he was not so endowed. Hence, he was merely comandante of gendarmes for General Las Casas; hence, the unexpected was to him enormously puzzling. Why, for instance, had a peaceable parish priest like Father Trajan smitten four of his best bully boys full sore with the stump of an oar last evening when he had arrested Brother François in the garden? And why had Brother François taken the oar from Father Trajan and thrown it away? How silly! He had pondered upon this on the drive from Los Molinos sitting next to the young señor who had entered the patio at the palace apparently through the wall. Altogether it had been a confusing night. He would be glad when it was over. The governor, he thought, had laughed at him--quién sabe?--and even to Don Jesús the deserted dockyards of the Maestranza looked a bit weary under a sinking moon.

Indeed, no building in the New World is so heavy with the futility of the past as the Maestranza. With a wisp of harbour mist drifting through its squat belfry that had tolled the passing of the treasure flotas of Spain, it seemed now in the silence of the tropical night as if Fate were withdrawing her last skein of lucky thread from the eye of a broken needle. Only an occasional stray waif of the royal Spanish navy came here now to refit amid curses out of the doubtful pickings of the past.

The deserted dockyard sloped down to vacant quays piled high with pyramids of whitewashed cannonballs and verdigrised cannon cast long ago from moulds that no longer gave birth to anything. In these guns rats nested, squeaking in the sterile wombs of thunder. Silent rope walks, and towering erections for weaving cordage swung like tattered spider webs against the stars. The watchmen slumbered. Here and there the bow of some abandoned and despairing galleon thrust itself upward at a desperate angle. A reek of low tide, festering pitch, and rotting teak filled the nostrils of Anthony as they threaded the mazes of this nautical cemetery where the bones of a monarchy obtruded from the slime.

At the foot of a flight of broad, stone stairs glimmered a single lantern that marked the presence of their waiting boat. It proved to be a large one rowed by eight manacled negroes. Its passengers were six bare-footed gendarmes in broad, cocked hats, and Brother François, who lay bound in the stern sheets.

Anthony exclaimed when he saw him, an exclamation half of indignant pity and half of self-reproach, for in the excitement of his departure and the absorbing events of the hours which had followed the garden party at Los Molinos he had forgotten all about Brother François. So the bishop had been as good as his word! And he, Anthony, had forgotten to warn Brother François. He reproached himself bitterly. If it had not been for Dolores . . . ! Now it was too late. The best he could do was to prevail on Don Jesús to loosen the monk's bonds, and he would not even do that till they were well out from the dockyard and rowing down the harbour. Cock-crow had already begun. What a paean it was this morning! Brother François looked at him and smiled. There were red welts on his wrists.

The Ariostatica lay across the harbour about a mile away. The barge drifted down upon her easily, swept along by the fast ebbing tide. "Señor," said Don Jesús, "from now on I am at your disposal. Those are my orders."

Anthony stood up and looked at the beautiful schooner that now loomed up before him like the vague outline of a great swan. His regrets vanished in excitement. He took command jubilantly and with assurance. They stopped rowing and drifted down upon the ship silently.

It was one of those breathless few minutes where much depends upon the simple negative of not being heard. The shadow of the graceful slaver stretched out monstrously in the dawn as if the black purpose of the ship with its vast consequences were mystically mirrored in the quiet harbour. Anthony looked down into the clear water and drew back again with a start which he could not entirely control.

Lying perfectly motionless scarcely a fathom beneath the surface with its sinister head pointed toward the stern of the Ariostatica was an immense hammerhead shark. It rose slowly toward them as if to see what of interest for it the drifting boat might contain. The sickle curve of its dorsal fin broke rippling from the water. It nosed the planks softly, sending a slight tremor through the barge so that all within it trembled as if the water of the bay itself had transferred to them the message of an earthquake. For a moment they could even see its long, grey flanks disappearing into the belly-pallor beneath. The brown, expressionless walnuts of its eyes on their protruding, transverse sticks looked at the boat and were satisfied. Some promising picture of sharkful hope must have mirrored itself in those black lozenges of pupils for the great fish sounded and turned with a slight phosphorescent glimmer to resume its station. As it did so they had one brief and sufficient glance into its utterly utilitarian mouth.

Don Jesús crossed himself automatically and nervously motioned to the crew to give way. The sound of the oars brought someone to the taffrail of the schooner. The man did not seem to realize at first that they intended to board. Only when they glided up and made fast to the small boat drifted against the schooner's stern did he suddenly straighten himself up.

"Hola, what do you want?" he said sleepily. Then for the first time he became aware of the armed men in the barge and half turned as if to give an alarm. Anthony rose in the stern sheets and covered him with a pistol. The man's jaw fell.

The fellow gaped stupefied at the little circle of the muzzle. The gendarmes swarmed in over the stern and secured the sleepy watch. Except for the pad of bare feet on the empty decks of the schooner there had been no sound. A few sparks were coming from the ship's galley. Brother François sat forgotten in the stern sheets of the barge with the shark just a few feet below and behind him. The slaves' manacles rattled a little as they passed about a single cigar. Anthony and Don Jesús stood on the quarter-deck with the scared individual who proved to be the mate. They looked about them laughing a little. It had been ridiculously easy. The growing dawn made the harbour metallic and the Ariostatica rosy. She was theirs--and without even a shout.

"Where's the captain?" asked Anthony of the now sullen mate.

"In the cabin."

"Have the kindness to introduce me, señor," said Anthony. "By the way, what is your own name?" He thrust the man before him down the ladder without ceremony.

"What's that to you?" snarled the mate shaking him off roughly.

"Nothing much to me," said Anthony, "but this to you." He gave him a resounding kick in the tail.

They were standing in a low passageway leading aft. A dirty lantern burned there dimly. As the man rubbed his posterior and whimpered, Anthony could hear the rats scuttling in the hold. The fellow was evidently a futile coward. His face was as yellow and undecided as an omelette. Anthony remembered how McNab had dealt with such cattle.

"I have not yet the honor of knowing your name, señor," he said, softly moving toward him again.

"María Magdalena Sóller," the fellow piped promptly enough now, clapping his hands over his derrière again.

"Listen, Mary Magdalen," said Anthony. "From now on I am in command of this ship. Do what I say instantly, and life will be easy for you; fail, and I will kick you loose from your stern. Do you, as it were, understand?" He smiled quietly.

"Sí, señor," whispered the man apathetically. There was nothing in him which even thought of resisting what lay behind the frosty look in his antagonist's blue-grey eyes. Besides, the tall frame and shoulders of his new commander he now noticed almost filled the passage-way. On the deck he had looked slim and youthful, but not here. Por Dios, what a mule's foot! Under his trousers the mate felt sure he already resembled a pansy bed.

"El capitán está la," he muttered.

"Captain who?"

"Ramón Lull."

"Bueno! Now go and hang a green light in the starboard shroud," said Anthony. "Have you one?"

"Sí."

"Sí, señor!" prompted Anthony. "And the green light quickly before it gets too light!"

"Sí, señor," repeated the man submissively, and scrambled up the ladder glancing hastily behind him.

Anthony went aft to the end of the passage and thumped on the door. He was amused to see that it was painted a cream-white and had a wreath of roses on its panel; a silver lock.

He looked about him. All the fittings were equally sumptuous. Evidently the Ariostatica had been built for a pleasure yacht. There was even an inlaid ebony deck. Christ, how elegant!--and filthy! Someone hummed a snatch of opera in a sleepy falsetto in the cabin. He banged on the door again with a will. A volley of shrill, Majorcan curses oozed through the panels like foul dew from a dirty rose. He gave the door the boot, springing the lady-like, silver lock clear out of kelter, and entered.

A small man in a silk skull-cap, who evidently owned the falsetto voice, for he was exhausting its abusive possibilities, sat up and arranged his nightshirt with the fluttered air of a startled canary. Seeing Anthony was a stranger he stopped and rested two white, smooth hands on the dirty sheet as if they had been paralysed. Behind him on the pillow Anthony could see the face of a quadroon girl with a wave of kinky, dark curls spread behind her like a fan. Save for the dark rosy-tan of her cheeks and the too-heavy lips, it might have been a face from a Greek coin that looked out at him. But the eyes ruined it. They drooped and were heavy-lidded as though tired with looking at a nightmare from which there was no escape. It was the countenance of a ruined angel. For an instant it made him so curiously uneasy that he forgot even the errand he had come upon. Then he laid his pistol and his papers on the table.

"You are the captain of the Ariostatica, Don Ramón Lull?" he asked.

The man slipped two thin legs from the covers and thrust his feet into a pair of ridiculously embroidered mules.

"Thou sayest it," he said managing to convey an insult.

"Do not 'thou' me, thou little man," said Anthony. "Listen to this." He quietly read him the authorization for taking over the Ariostatica.

The captain took it very calmly, too calmly in fact. At first his only reply was to hum a few staves of a popular air from time to time. Then he asked a few keen questions.

. . . "I see, I see. I am still captain but you are in command. And the police are now on deck you say?"

"Six of them and the comandante," said Anthony.

"What does Your Magnificence command then? You see this is the first time I have ever been, ahem, temporarily sequestrated. I am still a little confused. I am sure Señor Gallego will be as charmed as I am. You will be royally received in Africa, señor, as the representative of the crown." He shifted the skull-cap back on his head and grinned at Anthony in a way the latter did not like. Evidently Don Ramón would play a waiting game. Anthony determined to strike hard now.

"In the first place, my hospitable friend," said he, "I shall require your cabin for my own use. You will move out of it immediately. Also, even more immediately, you will go on deck and get your ship under way."

"Impossible," said the captain.

"It starts to happen now," said Anthony taking up the letter he had been reading and revealing his pistol under it. "Or--shall I call the comandante?"

The captain's face fell. He looked about him as if for some way out, shrugged his shoulders, and began to put on his clothes. With his shirt pulled half-way over his head he burst into another volley of shrill curses. An invisible little man swearing helplessly in falsetto through a starched frill made Anthony rock.

"Ah, for the love of Mary do not laugh at me, señor," said Don Ramón reappearing at last with tears of rage in his eyes. "It is bad enough to lose one's ship and one's cabin without being laughed at too!" He whined on a little. "But you will permit me to keep my own cabin boy in the second room. I hope you will, señor," he added plaintively while drawing on his shoes slowly. The girl on the bed stirred uneasily. "You see I am much attached to him and he is my property. I cannot spare him."

"I have my own servant," said Anthony.

"It is a bargain then?" cried the man.

"Certainly," laughed Anthony, glad of peace at so cheap a concession.

The captain began to move about more cheerfully now as if he were well enough satisfied and had made his own terms. He even showed some alacrity and became voluble.

"In a minute, señor, in a minute. Three of the crew are still ashore. But we shall not delay. No, I assure you. I shall be on deck in a minute." He began to put on a pair of preposterous, green, satin breeches. "In five minutes we shall be under way." He put powder in his shoes. "Polio, rouse yourself! My essence, the new scent bottle, where is it?"

The brown body of "Polio" now emerged from the berth somewhat sullenly and without a change of countenance, walked over to a chest and after some bending over and rummaging gave the captain a small perfume bottle with a silver top. Anthony sat in astonished silence. If it had not been for the evidence of nature before his eyes he would still have thought that Polio was a girl. Suddenly an overpowering odor of tuberoses filled the cabin. The captain had removed the stopper from the bottle and was anointing his hair. Anthony got up choking and drove the little man on deck with a hearty curse.

Don Jesús spat over the side and grinned at the apparition from a band box which now began to walk up and down the quarter-deck giving shrill orders and humming operatic airs. The order was repeated each time by a huge negro in a green turban. With much confusion the anchor was finally weighed. Polio came on deck. Don Jesús spat again.

Anthony stood by the wheel taking it all in. He thought he had never seen such a sorry crew. There were some truly villainous faces among them. The best were a few blacks who all wore turbans.

"I do not envy you, Don Antonio," said the comandante. Anthony agreed. But he was soon busy enough keeping one eye on the deck and getting his own boxes on board. Cibo's boat had arrived. How glad he was Juan was to be with him!

The sails went up by jerks one by one. There was no wind yet but the tide was taking the ship out. In a few minutes they would be passing the Wampanoag lower down. He climbed into the shrouds and waited till they were abreast of her.

"Collins," he roared.

A familiar figure lounging by the Wampanoag's galley suddenly snapped to and looked about him with amazement.

"Here, Collins! On the schooner!" he cried. Collins ran to the rail.

"Where be ye bound?" he shouted excitedly.

"Africa!"

"God help ye!"

Captain Elisha came up in his night-shirt. Anthony saw them talking and getting smaller as the water between the ships widened. The captain cupped his hands.

"Wisht ye was aboard here."

Anthony waved helplessly.

"The Missus sends her regards. She says Lord love ye." He tried to call something back to them but failed. The captain waved his old night-cap. "And so say I," he roared.

It was too far to reply now. He could see them still watching the schooner, and he knew what they were saying about her sloppy sails. Oh, if Collins were only aboard the Ariostatica. How it would go then!

He leaned over the taffrail and looked astern. Cibo's boat had cast loose and was making back for Regla. Breakfast on the veranda--how pleasant that was! He wondered if Dolores were awake yet, and stood gazing back at the hills about Los Molinos.

The swift ebb at the harbour entrance took the ship and drew her out to sea. The wind outside filled her sails as she turned eastward, rising and falling slowly to the ground swell. The two boats that had drifted against her stern paid out behind and were towed along. The shackled rowers in the police barge were already sprawled out on the thwarts, belly down. Brother François was still sitting alone in the stern where he had been left an hour before. He was motionless. Anthony wondered if he was praying. He himself, he remembered, could no longer do so. He was alone now. There was absolutely nothing beyond for him to lean on. Cibo had put the last touch on that. Nothing was left but the world and Anthony. He had his own will and his wits to cope with coming events, and a bargain to keep. He looked back again toward Havana before turning to the deck and its business.

Following the ship a few lengths behind Brother François's barge he saw the black fin of the giant shark which had attached itself to the Ariostatica.

END OF BOOK FIVE

BOOK SIX

In Which the Bronze Goes Into the Fire

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

A GRADUAL APPROACH TO AFRICA

Nine weeks--and they were only a little south of the Cape Verdes. Much had happened in that time, although outwardly all was the same on the Ariostatica. She was a fast little topsail schooner with plenty of space below decks. It was only her dainty lines that made men apply a diminutive to her instinctively. But she had met light, baffling airs from the coast of Puerto Rico onward and had lazed across the broad belt of the world. Only constant showers had kept her crew from running short of water. Some of them were already showing the early symptoms of scurvy.

A thousand miles from land Brother François had come down with the yellow fever. That and the persistent presence of the shark which had dogged them day and night were for some weeks the chief topics of conversation for the crew. Even the tense conflict which all on board felt to be going on between Anthony and the captain paled into insignificance before the persistence of the indomitable hammerhead who had been dubbed "Old Faithful." Every morning found his black fin in precisely the same relative position as the evening before. At night it moved a little closer. One attempt to hook the monster had all but ended in a catastrophe. After that they let the big fish alone. He seemed to know what he wanted when he followed a slaver.

"When he gets his belly full he'll go," said one of the old hands, "and not until then. But it's white meat he wants eastward ho. He knows. He's an old 'un."

Considerable humorous, but nevertheless nervous and superstitious speculation as to who might provide the tidbit was rife. Several youngsters who were persistently nominated as scapegoats were ready to fight. The sickening of Brother François was to them at least merely a providential designation of Jonah. But to Anthony and Juan, for the young sailor stood by manfully, it meant long hours of perilous nursing and the contemplation of the monk's patient agony.

Brother François had doubtless picked up the infection before leaving Havana, where he had secretly nursed many among those who were always being laid low by what amounted in that port to a perpetual epidemic. So when the headache and lassitude and the muscular pains began the priest was the first to diagnose his own symptoms. The only remedy available was common table salt in water and a purgative. He drank large quantities of the former, disregarding what effect it might have upon hastening the scurvy. Nevertheless, in a few days his condition was pitiable.

The news of the nature of the priest's illness, which could not be concealed, had a peculiar solvent effect upon the miniature world of the Ariostatica. Authority backed by a strong hand was the only thing that might have held it together. But in the noble captain, Don Ramón Lull, authority did not reside. He had neither the will nor the courage necessary to enforce it. On the same afternoon that Brother François took to his cabin with Yellow Jack as a bedmate, the realm Ariostatica divided into three distinct spheres of influence.

Don Ramón, El Polio, and the estimable María Magdalena Sóller betook themselves to the quarter-deck where two hammocks swung under a piece of old sail sufficed temporarily for all three. Luckily for them the weather was calm and balmy. Only the shark disturbed their large view of things occasionally. But they did not look his way often. The captain's domestic arrangements might even be described as "nice." He and El Polio had the double hammock. A small sea chest of the captain's provided with drawers was arranged near by with a silver mounted toilet set on the top. This contrived to confer on the little quarter-deck of the schooner a certain boudoir atmosphere unusual on the Atlantic to say the least. It wanted but one fresh breeze to ruin so fragile and dapper an aspect, but that brisk breeze was long lacking. Such was the first kingdom on the ship where in reality only a titular captain reigned.

The second kingdom was the fo'c'sle, the third was the cabin. The fo'c'sle quarantined both the cabin and the quarter-deck. The quarterdeck had already quarantined the cabin. Mortal fear of contagion, fear made physically visible by the genial presence of "Old Faithful" just astern, was the effective warden of the marches.

Anthony and Juan were left alone, strictly alone, with Brother François in the cabin. Indeed, they had now the entire suite of cabins to themselves and the hold beneath it, although that perhaps, together with the rest of the ship's lower regions, might have been described as the neutral empire of the rats.

In the fo'c'sle seventeen temporarily affable, man-stealing ruffians held forth and carried on in such manner as it pleased them best to do. Their reign of riot was aggravated rather than tempered by the overshadowing influence of one Polyphème, a Gold Coast Frenchman, possessed of one eye and one knife with either of which he could fix his victims suddenly even at a distance. This man was constantly begetting the twins Trouble and Confusion by a process of parthenogenesis.

So it was that in a few hours after it became news the illness of Brother François had produced on the Ariostatica a condition of static mutiny. As usual there was not lacking a logical reason. It was believed by all the Christians on the ship that the air, particularly the night air, communicated the contagion. Hence the more air they could place between themselves the better for their health. Thus far logic and Christianity. With the Mohammedans in the vessel it was different.

They, as good followers of the Prophet, believed that death would overtake them when Allah willed. For that reason they did not care into what portion of the ship they went, whether it was inhabited by the sick or well. All places were alike to them equally exposed to the unreasonable arrows of fate. Hence, as universal prisoners they remained free. The practical conduct of the ship soon fell almost entirely into their hands by pure force of circumstance. Captained by the giant Arab negro, Ali Bongo, they went where common sense and the occasional frantic voice of Don Ramón demanded. That the captain still delivered orders from the quarter-deck, some of which were still obeyed, either through necessity or caprice was the chief reminder of the formal order of nautical life. Señor Sóller, the mate, made daily observations and marked his charts there. There the four Mohammedans also did their tricks at the wheel in regular succession, oblivious of everything but the double wages hastily promised them.

For this essential service they were despised by the free spirits of the fo'c'sle and carefully shunned as possible carriers of contagion. For in quarantining itself from the quarter-deck, the fo'c'sle had by no means been oblivious to certain privileges and exemptions which Polyphème had pointed out would ensue. These were now enjoyed to the uttermost. Any semblance of regular watches was given up. Cards, quarrelling, and boozy slumber were now the order of both day and night. The only systematic labour actually indulged in was the plundering of the ship's stores in the main hold. When the languid breeze shifted, a few of the crew sometimes condescended to trim the forward sails, but nothing more. The only exceptions to this delightful state of relaxation were the cook and his boy, who were reconsecrated to continue their usual labour by general acclamation and the violent laying on of hands.

Thus the drifting Ariostatica grew more and more a slattern day by day. Her standing rigging soon hung slack. Rubbish accumulated on her decks. Even primary sanitary suggestions from the quarterdeck were met by jeers. Food in wooden kids was shoved at the officers through the quarter-deck railing, and the cook retired. The same mess-kids were afterwards towed overboard in a bucket. Unfortunately the weather continued to favour this lax state of existence. Half the time it was dead calm or there were only fainthearted, little breezes interspersed with warm rains. About a hundred yards behind the ship "Old Faithful" battened on the unusually succulent garbage which now came his way. A small folding chair which Don Ramón hurled overboard in a rage went the same way and did not even produce a flurry.

Meanwhile, Brother François was tended by Anthony and Juan in the cabin. In the general state of affairs which had so unexpectedly developed Anthony felt himself temporarily helpless. The captain, indeed, did not fail to blame him for having weakened his authority. He frequently sat safely at the top of the hatch and expressed himself on the subject of divided authority with a laxative fluency. That there was some truth in Don Ramón's profane complaints Anthony recognized. But it was also evident to him that the captain was glad of the excuse and loaded upon its back all the blame for the trouble which the man's own weaknesses had brought about. And then there was another curious thing about Don Ramón; having once relieved his mind, he would return happily to the quarter-deck. There, despite his ridiculous position, he managed, as Anthony could tell from the noises that went on just over his head, to have a genuine good time.

For through the deck planks percolated into the cabin, where Brother François lay, the mild strumming of a guitar at night, the soft pad of the feet of El Polio in some heathenish dance, and the falsetto of Don Ramón raised in song. Such lyric outbursts were often greeted from the fo'c'sle with an applause in which sarcasm and genuine appreciation were inextricably mixed. In the sound of that mixture of vivas, howls, and catcalls, Anthony recognized what was the real strength of his rival. He understood from that bad noise that while Don Ramón might be temporarily isolated, there was yet a certain sense of brotherhood between him and the fo'c'sle, a bad admiration for his open and unabashed enjoyment of an unmoral existence.

Don Ramón's, indeed, was a simplicity of evil which those who still suffered from dregs of conscience might well envy and admire. Between men who were ambitious to be abandoned and to prosper by it, it was a bond. In any crisis Anthony felt that the captain and the fo'c'sle would be found united against him. And he began to understand, too, that Don Ramón was cunning.

Perhaps his indulgence of the crew while the Ariostatica drifted to Africa through the doldrums was, under the circumstances, somewhat calculated. Don Ramón expected to reap his own advantage from it when the time came. It was a little plainer now why the owners had confided a ship to a man like Don Ramón. Perhaps they knew their own trade well enough to understand that the ideal captain of a slaver was one who had no squeamishness at all. At any rate the captain would find his advantage in confusion while Anthony could only prevail by bringing about an order in which legal authority would be recognized. That was the problem. Whether the crisis would arise during the voyage or upon their arrival at Gallego's slave barracoon at Bangalang, he could not tell. He must use his wits. That was all he had to depend upon. He had already taken precautions against purely sneaking violence. He and Juan went well armed and Don Ramón and Sóller knew it. That was that. Neither of them, he felt, would risk his own precious skin. Meanwhile, the captain and Sóller played cards on the quarter-deck, hoping that "yellow jack" would solve their difficulties by removing all the unwelcome intruders in the cabin. That was another reason why the "quarantine" was so rigidly enforced.

"How do you like your temporary sequestration now?" grinned Señor María Magdalena Sóller down the hatchway. "It might be a permanent one, you know." He shrugged his shoulders. Ali Bongo was instructed to resist any possible émeute from the cabin.

It certainly seemed likely that Brother François at least would leave the ship. There were small means at hand for detaining him. As the fever ran its inevitable gamut, Anthony sat by the priest's bunk doing the best he could. Compared with this trial his experience on the Wampanoag had been nothing.

"Certainly," he thought, "I have no reason to be in love with ships. I have strange luck there. It goes better with me on land." And for a time it went badly enough. He and Juan settled themselves as best they could to live through the state of siege. After that? . . . "But sufficient unto the day . . ." Anthony told himself. Certainly it was all weird enough. Temporarily shoving his own problem aside, which it was plain might wait while the good weather lasted, he and Juan devoted themselves day and night to Brother François.

They carried him out of the dark, little hole at the end of the passageway, where he had been contemptuously dumped by Don Ramón, into the big stern cabin from which the captain and his ami had been excluded. A large window of leaded bull's-eyes set in a kind of battened casement ran clear across the stern. After two o'clock the place was flooded with sunlight. There was still a vile, faded carpet with an obscure coat of arms on the floor. There was also a large stain in one corner, deeper than all the others, about which ugly stories were still told.

The Ariostatica was a woman with a past. She had been built at Marseilles for a rich and recently ennobled banker some years before the Revolution. She had been called La Vénus du Midi then. It was said that on a cruise to Naples her first owner had murdered his mistress--in proof of which there was the stain. The story had followed the ship persistently. She had soon ceased to be an instrument of luxury, and after several evil vicissitudes had fallen to the Spanish slave trade cheaply enough.

Hence there was something undoubtedly sinister about the now queasy luxury of her cabins in which those silver fittings which had not been wrenched loose or battered away still glimmered through a film of filth.

Anthony and Juan did their best to remedy this by such cleansing as they could contrive. But even in his misery when Brother François was first carried into the place he sensed its atmosphere.

The Gallic humour of a ci-devant man of the world glimmered in his eyes as he lay looking at the bourgeois cupids romping in sooty roses on the smudgy, blue ceiling. It amused him to think he was being brought to die in an apartment faintly reminiscent of Don Ramón's tuberose perfume, a cabin whose upholsterer must have had about him a touch of debased genius, for he had managed to relate in a series of damask panels the innocent story of Paul and Virginia in a highly interesting way. The story had even been given a happy ending.

Just over the ship's bed that Brother François now occupied, Paul and Virginia were to be seen in that full consummation of their love which the too-pure and tragic pencil of their author had originally denied them. That such art is universal, the smudges and prints of the dirty hands of the slaves who had been packed into the cabin on the Ariostatica's last voyage from Africa testified in a truly touching way.

The hand of one huge negro seemed to have striven to tear the body of Virginia from the panel. And through a hundred other wishful blotches wandered the traces of a pair of wistful and delicate finger tips which Anthony thought he recognized as those of the youthful El Polio, the chicken. Anthony imagined he could see that arch youth locked in the cabin during his master's absence trying to seize from the panel what Don Ramón had denied him.

All this amused Brother François, for even in his approaching agony he still continued to be French. When he was carried into the cabin he managed to smile gallantly and to remark to Anthony that a happy ending to every story was what the multitude always desired.

"See," said he, pointing to the panel above him. "They have tried to tear love out of the panel of imagination and to make it real enough to handle with their poor dirty hands. Yet it remains apart. Comedy, you see, is what this unhappy age demands. Once I wrote about such things as that. It was long before the Revolution, before I had entered into real life. Paul and Virginia then was still thought to be charming." He sighed and settled back with an air of finality into the blowzy pillows.

"Well, I shall try to live up to my own criticism by making a proper end of it here. If not, pardon me for the trouble I am about to give you, mes amis."

Even then the fever was already upon him. He was talking in the accents of some former self. It seemed to be a soldier rather than a monk who lay there. But that was only momentary. He looked out of the stern windows along the wake of the drifting ship and at the tilting blue line of the horizon beyond. Through the bubbles a little behind the ship nosed the apocalyptic countenance of the shark like an obscene emanation from the bottomless deep. To the priest's now disordered imagination it seemed that the shark's mouth was so framed as to be able to utter only the word "Golgotha." He closed his eyes. Then he opened them at sunset, seeming to be able to gaze with a wide-pupilled, feverish glance out of his shadowed sockets into the red orb itself. The last thing he saw in the brief twilight was the shark which had moved a little nearer. He shivered.

"Men would be like that, my son, if God had not given them mercy."

They were the last words he addressed consciously to Anthony before the fever clutched his mind awry. He then seemed to be using his remaining conscious minutes to pray.

"If possible let this cup be taken from me . . . Nevertheless . . ." he muttered. He motioned to close the window and shut out the vision astern. They lit a dim lamp. "Let the Comforter be with us here, my Father. Where two or three are gathered together in Thy name . . . Thou rememberest . . ." After that he held converse only with unseen things.

Yet such was the vital and moving spirit of this man that even in the days of delirium which ensued his personality expanded and dominated by a kind of vibrant quality, not only Anthony and Juan, but the dowdy appurtenances of the cabin itself. Anthony found it impossible to explain this impression to himself by this and that or here and there. It was too subtle to isolate, but it was not too intangible to feel. The quality of the man's being, now strangely released, as if by the heat of the fever, evoked in those near him a continuous state of high emotion. In this condition they were able to glimpse and even to share to some extent in the exaltation in which it was now revealed to them Brother François must habitually dwell. Anthony, indeed, wondered now at the calm exterior of the man even when his health had endured.

For that which dwelt in Brother François seemed to be coloured like, and to move with the speed and force of the flame that jags from sky to earth. Yet there was nothing momentary about it. Like the vision of that flame seared upon the eyeballs it remained. It was not ephemeral. It was the natural state and condition of the man uncovered. Anthony could apprehend now why it was that the strong body of Brother François, despite its calm exterior, had seemed to be worn and emaciated from within. Recollecting him now as he had been at Regla, he found that his mental impression of him was that of something which emanated light. Perhaps he had been wrong in attributing all that quality to the vine alone.

How wonderful must be the strength of that gentleness which kept such vivid potentialities in control! Whence came the ability to poise and balance them? No wonder the world was afraid of such men! No wonder everyone from the captain-general to the philosophic Cibo had been disturbed! Had they felt a vesicle of lightning near? Suppose this force had been released to irradiate a community, what then? Anthony sat looking at him--where he lay apparently dying in the murdered harlot's bunk--lost in wonder, oblivious to all else.

For the drama of this spirit even in dissolution made all else seem trivial; ordinary life flaccid. Even though the light of this man was now dimmed by the dark heat of his dreadful fever, though the lightning motions of his thought were disordered by illness; while he lay thus revealed by the weakness of the body, stripped spiritually naked, no one near him could pay attention to anything else.

"I am thy lamp," he muttered once, "behold the flame consumes the oil of me. Let it be acceptable."

After that he no longer seemed to realize his own predicament. Through days of sustained delirium he tended only gradually toward a state of exhausted unconsciousness. Not until the third night was the crisis passed. Then the collapse came suddenly.

During this infernally and celestially illuminated period there were few niches of Brother François's past experience which a nursing listener was not forced to explore. From the total-recall which streamed incoherently from the monk's parching lips Anthony was eventually able to reconstruct for himself the order of time and place which the delirium ignored. To the parentless listener even the man's childish babble and talk with his mother was breathless with a mysterious sweetness.

At some château in Picardy the two walked through an orchard and spoke of the birds. In a field placed only in space he plucked flowers again with a shy little girl. "Laugh again, Adèle, laugh again," cried Brother François rising up to listen. "Here are daisies for your apron. I have never forgotten you. I knew you were not really dead. Here are the flowers. See, they are fresh still,"--and he plucked at the foul bedclothes. Then there was his gay but stern father, whose ridicule was smooth as polished adamant. "But it is here among our own people that I belong, mon père." In those days it seemed Brother François had besought God to assure him he was not mad. It had been revealed to him that he was more fully sane than those about him. This it seemed was the cross he found hardest to bear. He was always pleading with the "blind," always. Versailles had been horrible. They were all blind there.

On the second night in the midst of much vacant converse Brother François became almost lucid again. In a flood of semi-coherent eloquence he was once more accompanying the tumbrils on their way to the guillotine. Not a few of the blind eyes of which he had complained were then opened for a last look at life. The exhausting tension, the fierce ebullitions of frantic souls, the last tender confidences--words spoken to those who clung to him desperately for even a glint of hope--these were all fiercely renewed as the days of the Terror became incandescent again in the monk's fevered brain. Anthony seemed to feel the lean shadows of the buildings in the Paris streets falling across him as he rode in the carts with Brother François and the doomed.

In the chill lamplight of the cabin, silent except for the metallic cadences of the dying man's voice and the faint wash of the waves below, these scenes took on for Anthony far more than the vague outlines of a conversation. He participated in them fully and yet mystically as if at a distance. The endless monodrama went on interminably with all of the amazing detail of the mind which never forgets released again into life.

Clenched hands, weapons, impassioned faces tossed up in the words of the priest. Out of the sea of the streets came things which had long forgotten themselves. With Brother François Anthony overlooked the plains, the heights, and the abysses revealed by impassioned men and women about to vanish. He faced with them the thunder of drums, the prayers, pleadings, weeping; the laughter, the snarls, and the screams of the final act. "Ascend to heaven; son of St. Louis"--drums, and a tempest of jibes. One needed to have had faith, a true exaltation, to believe after that.

For the first time the desperate human necessity for hope beyond; the impossibility of rejecting it entirely when the whole being is really faced with the final riddle w

ANTHONY ADVERSE

by

HERVEY ALLEN

1933

CONTENTS

VOLUME TWO

THE OTHER BRONZE BOY

VOLUME TWO

THE OTHER BRONZE BOY

In Which Several Images Travel Together

THE TABLE OF THE SUN

THE VILLA BRIGNOLE

THE STREET OF THE IMAGE MAKERS

THE PILLARS OF HERCULES

THE SEED OF A MIRACLE

END OF BOOK FOUR

In Which the Necessary Alloy is Added

THE HOUSE OF SILENUS

THE MIRACLE IN THE CHAPEL OF ST. PAUL, REGLA

A DECENT MAMMALIAN PHILOSOPHY

HONOUR AMONG THIEVES

A MANTILLA INTRUDES

THROUGH A COPY OF VELASQUEZ

THE TEMPORARY SEQUESTRATION OF THE "ARIOSTATICA"

END OF BOOK FIVE

In Which the Bronze Goes Into the Fire

A GRADUAL APPROACH TO AFRICA