"Never mind," said Jacinta. "After all, there is no great credit in telling people of your kind what they are thinking, though I can't help it now and then. You were wondering what anybody saw in me."
Now Austin was too wise to fancy for a moment that Jacinta was fishing for compliments. She knew her own value too well to appreciate them unless they were particularly artistic, and he surmised that she had merely desired to amuse herself by his embarrassment.
"If I was, it was very unwise of me," he said. "You are Jacinta—and one has to be content with that. You can't be analysed."
"And you?"
"I am the Estremedura's sobrecargo, which is, perhaps, a significant admission."
Jacinta nodded comprehension. "I think it is," she said. "Still, since you considered yourself warranted in approving of my dress, what are you doing in that jacket on a mail run?"
"As usual, there is a reason. When I was across at Arucas my comrades laid hands upon my garments, and disposed of them at a bargain. They had naturally squandered the money by the time I came back. I am now longing for a few words with the man who, I understand, is coming down to purchase some more at an equally alarming sacrifice."
Jacinta laughed, but she also looked at him with a little gleam in her eyes. "Don't you think it's rather a pity you—are—the Estremedura's sobrecargo?"
"Well," said Austin, reflectively, "I won't pretend to misunderstand you, but the trouble is that I don't quite see what else I could be. I cannot dig, and I'm not sure that it would be very pleasant to go round borrowing odd dollars from my friends, even if they were disposed to lend them to me, which is scarcely probable. Most of them would, naturally, tell me to look at them, and see what I might have been if I'd had their diligence and probity. Besides, I have time to paint little pictures which rash tourists buy occasionally, and the life one leads here has its compensations."
The Estremedura's whistle hooted just then, and as Jacinta looked round a lordly four-masted ship, carrying everything to her royals, swept up out of the night. She was driving down the trade-breeze a good twelve knots an hour, and the foam flew up in cascades as her bows went down, swirled in a broad, snowy smother along the slender streak of rushing hull. Above it four tapered spires of sailcloth swung back against the moonlight at every stately roll, and she showed as an exquisite cameo cut in ebony on a ground of silver and blue. Still, it was not the colour that formed the strength of that picture, but the suggestion of effort and irresistible force that was stamped on it. She drove by majestically, showing a breadth of wet plates that flashed in a leeward roll, and Jacinta's eyes rested on the bent figure high on the lifted poop grappling with her wheel.