w
beheld him, poised half nude at the rail, his fierce eyes bent upon the
forbidden shore, they would have ventured no remark. As it happened,
however, they were all asleep, all three of them, and the captain's lips
curled scornfully. What could black men know about such subtleties as
the call of moonlight? What odds to them if yonder palm fronds beckoned?
They had no curiosity, no resentfulness; otherwise they, too, might have
dared to break the San Blas law.

It was four years now since he had begun to sail this coast, and even
though he was known on every _cay_ and bay from Nombre de Dios to
Tiburon, and even though it was recognized that the Senor "Beel
Weelliams" paid proper price for cocoa and ivory nuts, his head trader
had never beaten down the people's distrust. On the contrary, their
vigilance had increased, if anything, and now, after four years of
scrupulous fair dealing, he, Captain Inocencio, was still compelled to
sleep offshore and under guard, like any common stranger.

It had made the Haytian laugh at first; for who would wish to harm a San
Blas woman, with the streets of Colon but a hundred miles to the west?
Then, as the months crept into years, and for voyage after voyage he
never saw a San Blas woman's face, he became furious. Next he grew
angry, then sullen, and a sense of injury burned into him. He set his
wits against theirs; but invariably the sight of his schooner's sails
was a signal for the women to melt away--invariably, when night came,
and he and his blacks had been herded back aboard their craft, the women
returned, and the sound of their voices served to fan the flame within
his breast.

Night after night, in sheltered coves or open river-mouths, the captain
of the _Espirita_ had lain, belly down, upon the little roof of the
deck-house, his head raised serpent-wise, his gloomy eyes fixed upon the
cook-fires in the distance. And when some woman's figure suddenly stood
out against the firelit walls, or when some maiden's song came floating
seaward, he had breathed curses in his bastard French, and directed a
message of hate at the sentinel he knew was posted in the jungle
shadows. At times he had railed at his crew of spiritless Jamaican
"niggers," and lusted for a following of his own kind--men with the
French blood of his island in their veins, men who would follow where
the moonlight flickered. He had even gone so far, at one time, as to
search the water-fronts from Port Limon to Sa