id he come?" others inquired. "He is not one of us."

"From Jamaica, or the Barbadoes, perhaps. He has much evil in him."

"And yet he makes no enemies."

"Nor friends."

"Um-m! A peculiar fellow. A man of passion--one can see it in his face."

Hayti had become quiet once more--as quiet as could be expected--and the
former colonel of tirailleurs had prospered. He was now "General
Petithomme Laguerre, Commandant of the Arrondissement of the South," and
the echo of his name crept eastward along the coast, even to Azua.

The bitterness of this news finally sent Inocencio seaward in a
barkentine, the business of which was not above suspicion. He cruised
through the Virgin Islands, on around the Leewards and the Windwards,
seeing something of the world and tasting of its wickedness. A year
later, at Trinidad, he fell in with a Portuguese half-breed, captain of
a schooner bound on hazardous business, and, inasmuch as high wages were
promised, he shipped. Followed adventures of many sorts, during which
Inocencio became a mate, but made no friends.

One night when the moon was full and the schooner lay becalmed there was
drinking and gambling in the little cabin. It was the change of the
seasons, before the rains had come; the air was close; the ship reeked
with odors. Inocencio played like a demon, for his heart was fierce, and
the cards befriended him. All night he and the Portuguese half-breed
shuffled and dealt, drank rum, and cursed each other. When daylight came
the schooner had changed hands.

* * * * *

Colon sits on the southern shore of the Caribbean, and through it drifts
a current of traffic from many seas. It is like the riffle of a sluice
or the catch-basin of a sewer, gathering all the sediment carried by the
stream, and thither Captain Inocencio headed, drawn on the tide. It was
at the time of the French fiasco, when De Lesseps's name was powerful,
and when Colon was the wickedest, sickest city of the Western
Hemisphere.

Into the harbor came Inocencio's schooner, pelting ahead of the stiff
trade-winds that blew like the draught from an electric fan, and there
the Haytian stayed, for in Colon he found work that suited him. There he
heard the echo of tremendous undertakings; there he learned new
rascalities, and met men from other lands who were homeless, like
himself; there he tasted of the white man's wickedness, and beheld forms
of corruption that were strange to him.