Venezuelan, who had approached trembling with
resentment, sulkily murmured his thanks. With a hope that sounded more
like a threat that they would soon meet again, he begged to be allowed
to rejoin his friends.

"Now you've done it!" whispered Peter cheerily. "And he won't let it
rest there, either."

"Don't you suppose I know that better than you do," returned Roddy
miserably. He beat the rail with his fist. "It should not have
happened in a thousand years," he wailed. "He must not know I have
ever even seen her."

"He _does_ know," objected Peter, coming briskly to the point. "What
are you going to do?"

"Lie to him," said Roddy. "He is an old friend of the family. She told
me so herself. She thought even of appealing to him before she
appealed to us. If he finds out I have met her alone at daybreak, I
have either got to tell him why we met and what we are trying to do,
or he'll believe, in his nasty, suspicious, Spanish-American way, that
I am in love with her, and that she came there to let me tell her so."

Roddy turned on Peter savagely.

"_Why_ didn't you stop me?" he cried.

"Stop _you_--talking too much?" gasped Peter. "Is that my position? If
it is, I resign."

The moon that night threw black shadows of shrouds, and ratlines
across a deck that was washed by its radiance as white as a
bread-board. In the social hall, the happy exiles were rejoicing
noisily, but Roddy stood apart, far forward, looking over the ship's
side and considering bitterly the mistake of the morning. His
melancholy self-upbraidings were interrupted by a light, alert step,
and Pino Vega, now at ease, gracious and on guard, stood bowing before
him.

"I do not intrude?" he asked.

Roddy, at once equally on guard, bade him welcome.

"I have sought you out," said the Venezuelan pleasantly, "because I
would desire a little talk with you. I believe we have friends in
common."

"It is possible," said Roddy. "I have been in Porto Cabello about four
months now."

"It was not of Porto Cabello that I spoke," continued Vega, "but of
Curacao." He looked into Roddy's eyes suddenly and warily, as a
swordsman holds the eyes of his opponent. "I did not understand," he
said, "that you knew the Rojas family?"

"I do not know them," answered Roddy.

Vega turned his back to the moon, so that his face was in shadow. With
an impatient gesture he flicked his cigarette into the sea. As though
he found Roddy's answer unsatisfactory, he paused