d him into the oily waters, overside,
but the breeze refused to come and the _Stella_ continued to wallow
drunkenly. The sky was glittering, the pitch was oozing from the deck,
in the distance the Haytian mountains scowled through the shimmer.

Inocencio turned toward the approaching gunboat, which was very close by
now, a rusty, ill-painted, ill-manned tub. Her blunt nose broke the
swells into foam, from her peak depended the banner of the Black
Republic, symbolic of the motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." The
captain of the _Stella_ rolled and lit a cigarette, then seated himself
upon the cabin roof to wait. And as he waited he drummed with his naked
heels and smiled, for he was satisfied.

INOCENCIO

I

Captain Inocencio prepared to let himself self over the side of the
schooner. Outside, the Caribbean was all agleam, save where the
coral-reef teeth gnashed it into foam; inside, a sand beach, yellow in
the moonlight, curved east and west like a causeway until the distance
swallowed it. Back of that lay the groves of cocoanut-trees, their
plumes waving in the undying undulations that had never ceased since
first the trade-winds breathed upon them. Beneath the palms themselves
the jungle was ink-black, patched here and there with silver. The air
was heavy with the slow rumble of an ever-restless surf and, all about,
the sea was whispering, whispering, as if minded to tell its mysteries
to the moon, not yet two hours high.

It was the sort of night that had ever wakened wild impulses in Captain
Inocencio's breast. It was on such a night that he had first felt the
touch of a woman's lips; it was on such another night that he had first
felt a man's warm blood upon his hands. That had been long ago, to be
sure, in far Hayti, and since that time both of those sensations had
lost much of their novelty, for he had lived fast and hard, and his
exile had plunged him into many evils. It was on such a night, also,
that he had begun his wanderings, fleeing southward between moonrise and
moonset; southward, whither all the scum of the Indies floated. But,
even to this day, when the full of a February moon came round with the
fragrant salt trades blowing and the sound of a throbbing surf beneath
it, the sated, stagnant blood of Captain Inocencio went hot, his thin
mulatto face grew hard, and a certain strange exultance blazed within
him.

His crew had long since come to recognize this frenzy, and had they no