nta Marta in quest of such
fellows; he had winnowed the off-scourings of the four seas gathered
there, but without success. They were villainous chaps, for the main
part, crossed with many creeds and colors, and ready for any desperate
venture; but he could not find three helpers of sufficient hardihood to
tamper with the San Blas virgins. Instead, they had retold him the tales
he already knew by heart; tales of swift and sudden retribution
overtaking blacks and whites; retribution that did not halt even at the
French or the hated _Americanos_. They told him that, of all the motley
races gathered here since earliest Spanish days, the San Blas blood
alone retained its purity. It was his boss, the Senor Williams, who had
gone back farthest into history, and it was he likewise who had
threatened him with prompt discharge if he presumed to trespass. The
Senor Williams was not one to permit profitable trade relations to be
jeopardized by the whim of a Haytian mulatto.

Inocencio had listened passively; then, when alone, smiled. He owed no
loyalty. He had no law. Even the name he went by was a fiction.

He continued to make his trips and, when he came driving in ahead of the
humming trade-winds, his schooner laden with the treasures of the
islands, the back streets of Colon awoke to his presence and prepared to
greet him. But however loud the music in the _cantinas_, however fierce
the exaltation of the liquor in him, however wild the orgy into which he
plunged, he could never quite drown the memory of those sleepless vigils
far to the eastward. Ever in his quiet moments he heard the faint song
of San Blas women wafted by the breath of the sea, ever in his dreams he
saw the slim outlines of girlish figures black against a flaring
camp-fire.

Four years this thing had grown upon him, during which he haunted the
San Blas coast. And then, one night, he slipped overside and swam
ashore. It was not so dangerous as it seemed, for, once he had gained
the shelter of the jungle, no less than a pack of hounds could have
followed him, inasmuch as the thickets were laced by a network of trails
that gave forth no sound to naked soles, and the rustling branches
overhead, played upon by the never-ceasing breeze, drowned all signal of
his presence. Once he had defied the tribal law, he knew no further
peace. It was like the first taste of blood to an animal. Thereafter
Inocencio, the outlaw, whose name was a symbol of daring, became a
jac