I glanced at Gates, but saw no incredulity in his face.
In another hour, at nearly dusk, Key West had grown small and finally sank below the horizon, leaving only its three skeleton-like towers standing against the sky—standing erect with all nerves strained, watch-dogs of the darkening sea; ears cocked, to catch a distressed cry from some waif out in the mysterious night.
Looking back along our wake I imagined the big black man standing as we had left him on the dock, gazing after us with patient regret; and I was glad to have given him the handful of coins at parting, little dreaming how many times that loaf upon the water would come floating in to me.
Monsieur Dragot revealed himself more and more to our astonished eyes as we sat that night on deck. He had been a professor in the University of Bucharest, and hinted at an intimate entente with the reigning house of Azuria. Besides being versed in many sciences, including medicine, he spoke seven languages and read several others. But these things were drawn from him by Tommy's artful questions, rather than being said in boastfulness. Indeed, Monsieur was charmingly, almost touchily, modest. Of his business in Havana he gave no hint, yet this happened to be the one piece of information that Tommy seemed most possessed to find out.
"You'll be in Cuba long, Monsieur?" he asked.
"No one can say. A day, a week, a month, a year—it is an elusive search I follow, my young friends. May I call you that?"
We bowed, and I deferentially suggested:
"If we can help you in any way?——"
"It is the beautiful spirit of America," he sighed, "to help those in distress, yet there is nothing to do but watch—watch. For you have not yet been here long enough to see a child in these waters—no?"
Tommy, perhaps because he came from the South and was on more or less friendly terms with superstitions, glanced over the rail as if an infant might be floating around almost anywhere. Our strange guest's mysterious hints were, indeed, rather conducive to creeps.