"Give me an envelope—quick!" he said.
Macallister got him one, and he slipped a strip of paper inside before he addressed it and tossed it across the table.
"You'll post that. There's a Castle boat home to-morrow, and I'd sooner trust you with it than myself," he said, with a little sigh, which, however, once more changed to a chuckle.
"If there's money inside it ye're wise," said Macallister drily. "Still, what are ye grinning in yon fashion for?"
"I was thinking it's just as well I've only—one—old woman. It would make a big hole in eight pounds a month—an' a bonus—if I had any more of 'em. But you get that letter posted before I want it back."
"Wanting," said Macallister, reflectively, "is no always getting. Maybe, it's now and then fortunate it is so, after all."
It was two hours later, and Jacinta stood on the flat roof of Pancho Brown's house looking down upon the close-packed Spanish town, when the crash of a mail gun rose from the harbour and was lost in the drowsy murmur of the surf. Then the other noises in the hot streets below her went on again, but Jacinta scarcely heard the hum of voices and the patter of feet as she watched a blinking light slide out from among the others in the harbour. It rose higher and swung a little as it crept past the mole, then a cluster of lower lights lengthened into a row of yellow specks, and she could make out the West-coast liner's dusky hull that moved out with slanting spars faster into the faintly shining sea. Jacinta closed one hand as she leaned upon the parapet and watched it, until she turned with a little start at the sound of footsteps. She was, one could have fancied, not particularly pleased to see Muriel Gascoyne then.
"We were wondering what had become of you, and Mrs. Hatherly is waiting to go home," said the latter. Then she turned and caught a glimpse of the moving lights that were closing in on one another and growing dim again. "That must be the African boat?"
"It is. She is taking out six careless sailormen whose lives are, perhaps, after all, of some value to them."
Muriel looked at her, and wished she could see her face. "Every one of them may be of some value to somebody else."