"So, I give the promise. To your bright eyes, señorita. It is a journey I make for you."
Rideau laid the glass down empty, and with a swift salutation that was half-ironical, and a swish of light draperies, Miss Castro had vanished before he quite realized that she had left him. When he did, he gnawed the end off a cigar, and lay thoughtfully back in his chair. It struck him that perhaps he might find Bonita Castro much less amenable to his wishes and more difficult to live with than a deeper-tinted helpmate.
In the meantime, a group of chattering Krooboys were lighting a fire on the crest of the bluff, their figures outlined against the increasing glare. It was a signal to the east-bound steamer due to pass shortly that cargo or passengers were awaiting her. Rideau watched the blaze until it flared high aloft in token that the fire had good hold, then he walked slowly to the rail of the veranda and leaned over it, as though expecting an answering light from the moonlit sea. There was none, and presently he walked back, still more slowly, and sank into his chair with a sigh. Then his shoulders sank lower until his head drooped forward and there was silence in the veranda except for the sound of his uneven breathing. This had scarcely continued five minutes when a slender black-robed figure flitted out of a shadowy door, and the profile of a woman's face was silhouetted against the moonlight as it bent over the sleeper.
"Sleep soundly, and awake too late!" a voice said, and the figure vanished again.
Presently, perhaps because there was nobody to watch them, or they had been regaled too freely with factory gin, the Krooboys left to tend the fire curled themselves up beside it, and when an hour had passed, only a thin column of vapor rose up from the bluff. The stokers slumbered peacefully, as did the comrades they should have awakened, when the twinkle of a masthead light crept nearer from out at sea. It rose until the black patch beneath it lengthened into a line of wallowing hull; but the fresh land breeze and the clamor of the surf between them rendered the hoot of the steamer's whistle but faintly audible at the factory. Still, the Señora Diaz awakened, and sitting upright on her couch near an open window, looked out on to the veranda. Her niece stood in a doorway, with the moonlight on her face, which showed white and anxious as she watched the sleeping figure.
The girl set her lips tight when again the whistle's summons, ringing louder this time, was flung back by the bluff behind the factory; but Rideau lay motionless in his chair; and Bonita quivered all through when, finding his signal unanswered, the steamboat skipper burned a crimson flare. She could see the wall of hull and slanting spars sharp and clear in the blood-red glare, with the figure of a man leaning out from the slanted bridge projected against it, but there was still no answer from either bluff or factory, and with a last blast of the whistle the steamer moved on. No other boat would call for a fortnight, and this one would have saved Rideau a protracted and risky surf-boat voyage, or a weary march through the jungles overland.
It was past midnight when Dom Pedro's hammock came lurching into the compound, and, alighting stiffly, the trader climbed the veranda steps. He started on reaching the veranda, for there was nobody to meet him, only a man whose visits he had learned to dread, asleep in a chair. The trader bent over him; and by the way his eyes glistened and his fingers twitched as he saw that the duck jacket had fallen open, leaving the dusky throat bare, an observer might have concluded that he would not have been sorry had some accident prevented the sleeper from ever awakening. Still, Dom Pedro was only a man of lax principles; he shrugged his shoulders as he quoted a Castilian proverb, and then he shook his guest by the arm. Rideau sat upright, grasping the arms of his chair. He stared at the table, possibly seeking the glass he had drunk from, but it was not there, and rising shakily, he staggered toward the balustrade.
"What hour is it?" he asked.
"Past twelve. It is not good to sleep in the moonlight, my friend."
Rideau's face was a study of evil passions, but his reason resumed the mastery. The fact that the glasses were missing was significant, and perhaps he recognized that the woman might prove no contemptible adversary; for he answered Dom Pedro calmly.