d, and the painter,
thinking of matters further north and further south, found no delight
in its beauty. He would stand, deep in thought, at the bow when day
died and night was born without benefit of twilight, watching the disk
of the sun plunge into the sea like a diver. It seemed that Nature
herself was here sudden and passionate in matters of life and death.
He saw the stars come out, low-hanging and large, and the water blaze
with phosphorescence wherever a wave broke, brilliantly luminous where
the propeller churned the wake. It was to him an ominous beauty,
fraught with crowding portents of ill omen.

The entering and leaving of ports became monotonous. Each was a
steaming village of hot adobe walls, corrugated-iron custom houses and
sweltering, ragged palms. At last, at a town no more or less appealing
than the others, just as the ear-splitting whistle screeched its last
warning of departure, a belated passenger came over the side from a
frantically-driven row-boat. The painter was looking listlessly out at
the green coast line, and did not notice the new arrival.

The newcomer followed his luggage up the gangway to the deck, his
forehead streaming perspiration, his none-too-fresh gray flannels
splashed with salt water. At the top, he shook the hand of the second
officer, with the manner of an old acquaintance.

"I guess that was close!" he announced, as he mopped his face with a
large handkerchief, and began fanning himself with a stained Panama
hat. "Did the--the stuff get aboard all right at New York?"

The officer looked up, with a quick, cautious glance about him.

"The machinery is stowed away in the hold," he announced.

"Good," replied the newcomer, energetically. "That machinery must be
safeguarded. It is required in the development of a country that needs
developin'. Do I draw my usual stateroom? See the purser? Good!"

The tardy passenger was tall, a bit under six feet, but thin almost to
emaciation. His face was keen, and might have been handsome except
that the alertness was suggestive of the fox or the weasel--furtive
rather than intelligent. The eyes were quick-seeing and roving; the
nose, aquiline; the lips, thin. On them sat habitually a
half-satirical smile. The man had black hair sprinkled with gray, yet
he could not have been more than thirty-six or seven.

"I'll just run in and see the purser," he announced, with his tireless
energy. Saxon, turning from the hatch, caught only a vanis