kal prowling through the midnight glades, tasting the scent of the
villages, and staring with hungry eyes from just beyond the shadow's
edge. Rather he became a panther, for in his caution was no cowardice,
only a feline patience. Village after village he hunted until he had
marked his prey. Then he waited to spring.

To be sure, he had never spoken with the girl, nor even seen her
clearly, but the sound of her voice made him tremble.

To accomplish even this much had taken many trips of the _Espirita_, had
meant many sleepless nights and some few tense moments when only the
shadows saved him from betrayal. There had been times, for instance,
when the quick simulation of a wild pig's grunt or the purr of _el
tigre_ had served to explain the sound of his retreat; other times when
he had stood motionless in the shadows, the evil rust-red blade of his
machete matching the hue of his half-nude body.

To-night he crouched behind the deck-house and ran his eye over the
schooner in one final glance of caution. It was well that all should be
in readiness, for the moment of his spring might come within the hour,
or, if not to-night, then to-morrow night, or a week, a month, a year
from to-night, and then a tackle fouled or a block jammed might spell
destruction.

He thrust his head through a loop of the leathern scabbard, and swung
the huge knife back until it lay along the crease between his shoulders;
then he seized the port stay and let himself softly downward overside.
The water rose to his chin. Without a ripple, he glided into the
moonlight astern, and a moment later his round, black head was no more
than a piece of bobbing drift borne landward by the current.

Down past the village he swam, noting the rows of dugouts on the beach.
He saw a blot in the big mahogany _cayuca_, a great canoe hewn from one
priceless trunk, and recognized it for the sentinel. On he floated, then
worked his way ashore behind the little point. Once he felt the hard,
smooth sand beneath his soles, he waited until a cloud obscured the
moon, and when the light broke through again he was dripping underneath
a wide-leaved breadfruit-tree at the jungle's edge. Removing the machete
from his neck, he wrung the water from his cotton trousers. Over his
head a night-bird croaked hoarsely.

The girl was at her father's house, tending a fire on the dirt floor. It
was a large house, for the old man was rich in daughters, and, by the
San Blas rule, their