his eyes from the light, discovered
the little Captain standing well-forward on the nearest--a puffy,
impatient face, pathetically unconscious of its own workings in
anxiety. Bedient's uplifted hand caught the other's eye as the launch
neared. The old adventurer needed a second or two to take in the tall
figure and the changed countenance--then a look of gladness, full, deep
and tender with embarrassment, crowned the years and the long journey.

Bedient had to remember hard, after dozens of fluent and delightful
letters, that he must encounter the old bashfulness again.... Plainly
the Captain showed the years. There was the dark dry look of some inner
consuming, and the trembling mouth was lined and assertive where
formerly it was unnoticed in the general cheer. There was a break in
rotundity. Perhaps this, more than anything else, put a strange hush
upon the meeting. Bedient was glad he had not delayed longer; and he
saw he must break through the embarrassment, as the boy and the cook of
years ago would not have thought of doing. The old perfume sought his
nostrils delicately with a score of memories.

The Captain seemed to have an absurd number of natives at his disposal.
Bedient's small pieces of baggage were prodigiously handled. A carriage
was provided, and the two drove up the main thoroughfare, _Calle Real_.
The little city was appointed and its streets named by the Spanish.
Parts of it were very old, and Bedient liked the setting, which was new
to him--the native courtesy and the mellowness of architecture which
that old race of conquerors has left in so many isles of the Western
sea.

At the head of the rising highway shone a gilded dome, a sort of crown
for the city. Bedient had seen it shining from the harbor, and supposed
it to be the capitol. The building stood upon an eminence like a
temple. _Calle Real_ parted to the right and left at its gates. Their
carriage passed to the right, and within the walls were groves of
palms, gardens of rose, rhododendron, jasmine, flames of poinsettia,
and a suggestion of mystic glooms where orchids breathed--fruit,
fragrance, fountains.

"The Capitol?" laughed the Captain. "No, my boy, those little
rain-rotted, stone buildings near the water-front are the government
property. However, you never can tell about Equatoria. There are folks
who believe that this stone palace of Senor Rey is fated to become the
Capitol. It might happen in two ways. Senor Rey might overturn t