when the two little brown men
had gone below, where Barnay had immediately retired, tucking his
beard in his collar and muttering sedition. If the two strange
creatures were twin Robin Goodfellows perpetrating a monstrous
twentieth century prank, if they were gigantic evolutions of Puck
whose imagination never went far beyond threshing corn with shadowy
flails, at least this very modern caper demanded respect for so
perfectly catching the spirit of the times. At all events it was
immensely clever of them to have put their finger upon the public
pulse and to have realized that the public imagination is ready to
believe anything because it has seen so much proved. Still, "science
was faith once"; and besides, to St. George, charts and compasses of
all known and unknown systems of seamanship were suddenly become
but the dead letter of the law. The spirit of the whole matter was
that Olivia might be there, under the lights that his own eyes would
presently see again. "Who, remembering the first kind glance of her
whom he loves, can fail to believe in magic?" It is very likely that
having met Olivia at all seemed at that moment so wonderful to St.
George that any of the "frolic things" of science were to be
accepted with equanimity.

For an hour or more the moon, flooding the edge of the deck of _The
Aloha_, cast four shadows sharply upon the smooth boards. Lined up
at the rail stood the four adventurers, and the glass passed from
one to another like the eye of the three Grey Sisters. The far
beacon appeared and disappeared, but its actuality might not be
doubted. If Jarvo and Akko were to be trusted, there in the velvet
distance lay Yaque, and Med, the King's City, and the light upon the
very palace of its American sovereign.

St. George's pulses leaped and trembled. Amory lifted lazy lids and
watched him with growing understanding and finally, upon a pretext
of sleep, led the others below. And St. George, with a sense of
joyful companionship in the little light, paced the deck until dawn.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PORCH OF THE MORNING

By afternoon the island of Yaque was an accomplished fact of
distinguishable parts. There it lay, a thing of rock and green, like
the islands of its sister latitudes before which the passing ships
of all the world are wont to cast anchor. But having once cast
anchor before Yaque the ships of all the world would have had great
difficulty in landing anybody.

Sheer and almost smooth