the
great blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly
ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief
twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the
Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms,
and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the approach of
soft-footed night.

In the offing the _Karlsefin_ swayed at anchor, her lights seeming
to penetrate the water to countless fathoms with their shimmering,
lanceolate reflections. The Caribs were busy loading her by means of
the great lighters heaped full from the piles of fruit ranged upon
the shore.

On the sandy beach, with his back against a cocoanut-tree and the
stubs of many cigars lying around him, Smith sat waiting, never
relaxing his sharp gaze in the direction of the steamer.

The incongruous yachtsman had concentrated his interest upon the
innocent fruiter. Twice had he been assured that no passengers had
come to Coralio on board of her. And yet, with a persistence not to
be attributed to an idling voyager, he had appealed the case to the
higher court of his own eyesight. Surprisingly like some gay-coated
lizard, he crouched at the foot of the cocoanut palm, and with the
beady, shifting eyes of the selfsame reptile, sustained his espionage
on the _Karlsefin_.

On the white sands a whiter gig belonging to the yacht was drawn up,
guarded by one of the white-ducked crew. Not far away in a _pulperia_
on the shore-following Calle Grande three other sailors swaggered
with their cues around Coralio's solitary billiard-table. The boat
lay there as if under orders to be ready for use at any moment. There
was in the atmosphere a hint of expectation, of waiting for something
to occur, which was foreign to the air of Coralio.

Like some passing bird of brilliant plumage, Smith alights on this
palmy shore but to preen his wings for an instant and then to fly
away upon silent pinions. When morning dawned there was no Smith, no
waiting gig, no yacht in the offing. Smith left no intimation of his
mission there, no footprints to show where he had followed the trail
of his mystery on the sands of Coralio that night. He came; he spake
his strange jargon of the asphalt and the cafes; he sat under the
cocoanut-tree, and vanished. The next morning Coralio, Smithless,
ate its fried plantain and said: "The man of pictured clothing went
himself away." With the _siesta_ the incident passed, yawning, int