The lazily undulating Mediterranean stretched unbroken save for the yacht's stack, funnels and stanchions, in a sight-wide radius of blue. Overhead the sky was serene. Here and there, in fitful humors, the sea flowed in rifts of a different hue.
The sun was mellow and the breeze which purred softly in the cables overhead came with the caressing breath that blows off the orange groves of Southern Spain. Ahead lay all the invitation of the south of France; of the Riviera's white cities and vivid countryside; of Monte Carlo's casinos and Italy's villas. Beyond further horizons, waited the charm of Greece, but the man lay on an old army blanket, clad in bagging flannels and a blue army shirt open at the throat. His arms were crossed above his eyes, and he was motionless, except that the fingers which gripped his elbows sometimes clenched themselves and the bare throat above the open collar occasionally worked spasmodically.
Blanco had come quietly, and his canvas shoes had made no sound. For a time he did not announce himself. He was not sure that Benton was awake, so he dropped noiselessly to the deck and sat with his hands clasped about his knees, his eyes moodily measuring the rise and fall of the glaringly white stanchions above and below the sky-line. At frequent intervals they swept back to the other man, who still lay motionless. It was late afternoon and the smoke-stack shadows pointed off in attenuated lines to the bow while the sky, off behind the wake, brightened into the colors of sunset. Finally Benton rose. The unexpected sight of Blanco brought a start and an immediate masking of his face, but in the first momentary glimpse the Andalusian caught a haggard distress which frightened him.
"I didn't know you had come," said Benton quietly. "How long have you been here?"
"I should say a half-hour, Señor," replied Manuel, casually rolling a cigarette.
"Why didn't you rouse me? I'm not very amusing, but even I could have relieved the dullness of sitting there like a marooned man on a derelict."
"Dullness?" inquired the toreador with a lazy lift of the brows. "It is ease, Señor, and ease is desirable—at sea."
The American sat cross-legged on the deck and held out his hand for a cigarette. When he asked a question he spoke in matter-of-fact tones. He even laughed, and the Andalusian chatted on in kind, but secretly and narrowly he was watching the other, and when he had finished his scrutiny he told himself that Benton had been indulging in the dangerous pastime of brooding.
"Tell me—everything," urged the yacht-owner. "What are the revolutionists doing and how is—how are things?" Carefully he avoided directing any question to the point on which his eagerness for news was poignant hunger.
When Blanco told how Louis had left Galavia just before the soldiers reached the lodge, Benton's face darkened. "That was fatal blundering," he complained. "So long as Delgado is at large the Palace is menaced. If they had taken him, and held him under surveillance, the Cabinet Noir would be disarmed. Now they will try again."