She drew further aft and began to fade; but Grahame now saw danger ahead. The Enchantress was throwing fiery spray about her bows and rolling as she forged slowly through broken water. The shoal was close ahead and, taking a sounding, he found scarcely a fathom under the keel. This was enough, however, and, beckoning to Miguel, he let her go until the darkness astern was broken only by the gunboat's lights. Then, finding deeper water, he struck the engine-hatch.
"We're clear!" he called down in an exultant voice. "Drive her, but make no sparks!"
The Enchantress began to tremble, and a few moments later loose stanchions rattled and deck-planks shook as she leaped through the long swell with green fire blazing in the wake of her thudding screw. Grahame laughed softly, and sat down to light a cigarette. He imagined that when morning came there would be several badly disappointed intriguers in the port he had left.
He thought it best, however, not to proceed directly to his destination, and it was three days later when he ran in behind a point, and anchored in shallow water. It was daylight, but the Enchantress's gray hull and slender spars would be hard to see against the land, and there was no sign of habitation on the sweep of desolate coast. A cliff rose behind the steamer, and then for some miles the dazzling sea broke in a fringe of lace-like foam on a beach of yellow sand. On the landward side of this, glossy-green jungle rolled away and merged into taller forest that was presently lost in haze. No smoke streaked the horizon, and there was not a boat on the beach, but while Grahame carefully watched, two appeared from behind a reef, and he put down his glasses with a smile.
"Our friends!" he said to Walthew. "You might get the winch ready while we take the hatches off."
An hour later a small party sat in the shade of the new stern awning. The boats had gone away loaded, but they had left Don Martin and three companions on board. Father Agustin, whose rusty black cassock jarred upon the blaze of light and color, leaned back in a canvas chair with a wineglass in his olive-tinted hand.
"I'm surprised to find you in such company, Father," Grahame said to him.
The priest's eyes twinkled.
"It is not only the rich and respected we are sent out to seek, though I think they need us as much as the others."
"You might find their help useful," Walthew suggested.