"No, señorita. If a man could choose his last resting-place, wouldn't this blue water be much nicer than a mangrove swamp in Africa. That very little, however, makes a vast difference; and you have won the gloves. You shall have the best in Las Palmas to-night. You will land us by sunset, Mr. Purser?"
"Yes." The Purser sighed with relief when he saw that the contest was over. "Hadn't you better give me that pistol, señorita? Accidents happen when one least expects them, and the Company would hold me responsible if you killed anybody. I don't think the skipper would see quite as much humor in the position as you seem to."
Bonita laughed with the light-heartedness of a child, and glanced demurely at Dane.
"To kill the Señor Maxwell, or my good friend Don Ilton, is catastrophe; but to kill a bad man, it is nothing. Many men are killed in Africa; I myself shoot one. There was in him the blood of the negro, and he forget it when without respect he speak to me."
Dane was a trifle staggered by the matter-of-fact manner in which Miss Castro mentioned the way she had disposed of one whom he surmised had been too venturesome a suitor.
"Verdad!" exclaimed Dom Pedro. "The man, by bad fortune, he is not die, and that affair is cost me much commercio. My daughter she has, in your English, the spirited way."
The lady's face changed suddenly as she turned toward Maxwell.
"I beat you, Señor, but it is because you are muy caballero, and prefer the defeat from me. You have the steady hand and the dangerous eye, and have not the fear. That is well if you go up into the forest in my country. It is different with your friend. The pistol is not for him. No, he remind me of those big fair men with the axes I read of in England. I make you my compliments, Don Ilton, and you show me where the swift Bonita he leap at the bow."
Whether, because Miss Castro was fond of admiration, this was done out of pique at Maxwell's indifference to her attractions, Dane naturally did not know, but he answered with a bow, and the two strolled forward together. There were no porpoises circling, as they often will, athwart the stem, but the lady who perched herself upon a knighthead seemed in no way disappointed. The sun made rainbows in the spray which whirled beneath her, as each blue ridge fell back shattered from the shearing bows; and nowhere else could one realize so well the swift passage of the quivering hull through the white-topped seas, or feel the same cradle-like rise and fall of the warm deck planking.
"All this," remarked Miss Castro, "is very nice; and the Señor Maxwell, who is muy caballero, but somber sometimes, he is not here. You have my permission to sit there, and I will talk to you."