that Beth Truba
had left the highway, where pass the women of earth, to enter his most
intimate environs and possess him entirely; that passing on, she had
left but the stuff of death. The time had been when he would have
depreciated in another man the utter weakness into which he had fallen.

Bedient unearthed a companion at _Treasure Island Inn_, one whom he did
not doubt for an instant to be the chief of Rey's agents assigned to
watch his every movement. But even as a spy, old Monkhouse had helped
him to sit tight, during that forty-eight hours. For Monkhouse talked
alluringly, incessantly,--and asked only to be with the stranger--and
many a time, all unknowing, he banished for the moment some devouring
anguish with a tale of disruption told to a turn. The Island did not
hold more loyal devotion than his for Dictator Jaffier, to hear
Monkhouse tell it; and how Celestino Rey had reached his ripe years,
with such hatred in the world, was by no means the least of Equatorian
novelties.... Here was a desperado in the sere, shaking for the need of
drink, when he first appeared to Bedient. On the final forenoon of the
latter's stay at the Inn, he sat with Monkhouse in the big carriage
doorway on the street-level. The old man was elaborating a winsome plan
to capture the Spaniard at sea; and though Bedient mildly interposed
that he wouldn't know what to do with Celestino if he had him,--the
conspiracy was unfolded nevertheless:

"You're a good lad," Monkhouse communed. "I belave in you to the seeds.
C'lestin'--an' may Heaven deefin' the walls as I speak his name--has
nine an' seventy ways of makin' off with you. Boy, I've known the day
in these seas when he'd do it for practice. But he's old now an' tender
of hear-rt. He laves it to your good sense to lave him alone. 'Tis
well, you trusted no one save old Monkhouse. Adhere to it, lad, or I'll
be mournin', one of these gay mornin's, with you gone--an' your name on
no passenger list save--what's the name of that divil of a
pilot--Charybdus?"

"Charon?"

"True for you, lad. Charon it is. What with drink an' the sinful
climate, I've forgot much that many niver knew."

Monkhouse winked his red lashless lids, and meditated the while, as he
pressed the juice of an orange into the third of a cup of white rum,
and stirred in a handful of soggy brown sugar.

"Hark to you, boy--come closer," he whispered presently. "Nothin' that
sails in these par-rts can scrape the paint of th