States had
touched there, while the ship that brought Roddy south had not. This
fact irritated Roddy, so Peter naturally selected the moment when the
launch had broken down and Roddy was both hungry and peevish to talk
of Curacao.

"Think of your never having seen Curacao!" he sighed. "Some day you
certainly must visit it. With a sea as flat as this is to-night you
could make the run in the launch in twelve hours. It is a place you
should see."

"That is so like you," exclaimed Roddy indignantly. "I have been here
four months, and you have been here a week, and you try to tell _me_
about Curacao! It is the place where curacao and revolutionists come
from. All the exiles from Venezuela wait over there until there is a
revolution over here, and then they come across. You can't tell _me_
anything about Curacao. _I_ don't have to _go_ to a place to know
about it."

"I'll bet," challenged Peter, "you don't know about the mother and the
two daughters who were exiled from Venezuela and live in Curacao, and
who look over here every night at sunset?"

Roddy laughed scornfully. "Why, that is the first thing they tell
you," he cried; "the purser points them out from the ship, and tells
you----"

"Tells _you_, yes," cried Peter triumphantly, "but I _saw_ them. As we
left the harbor they were standing on the cliff--three women in
white--looking toward Venezuela. They told me the father of the two
girls is in prison here. He was----"

"_Told_ you, yes," mimicked Roddy, "told you he was in prison. I have
_seen_ him in prison. There is the prison."

Roddy pointed at the flat, yellow fortress that rose above them.
Behind the tiny promontory on which the fortress crouched was the
town, separated from it by a stretch of water so narrow that a
golf-player, using the quay of the custom-house for a tee, could have
driven a ball against the prison wall.

Daily, from the town, Peter had looked across the narrow harbor toward
the level stretch of limestone rock that led to the prison gates, and
had seen the petty criminals, in chains, splash through the pools left
by the falling tide, had watched each pick up a cask of fresh water,
and, guarded by the barefooted, red-capped soldiers, drag his chains
back to the prison. Now, only the boat's-length from them, he saw the
sheer face of the fortress, where it slipped to depths unknown into
the sea. It impressed him most unpleasantly. It had the look less of a
fortress than of a neglected