"Cogan looking out saw a young girl of maybe fourteen years with long black hair hanging loose behind her. It was a smooth, silver-like sea, with hardly surf enough to raise a white edge on the beach, and the girl, ankle deep in the water, was kicking her feet ahead of her, making a great splashing as she marched along. Her legs below her knees were bare, and she was gurgling with joy. By the time she was abreast of Cogan's window, it was full dawn.
"Suddenly she turned, ran in waist deep, and plunged seaward. Cogan, seeing her over her head and alone, began to worry; but he might have saved himself the worry—she came tumbling back like a young dolphin, found her feet on the beach, and flew to where was a cloak and a pair of Chinese slippers piled on the sand. The long rays of the just rising sun were now flashing level atop of the sea, and the sea-water clinging to her in a million [pg 282] twinkling drops as she ran. Cogan remembered a marble nymph he had once seen under a fountain in a square on a sunny morning in Rome, only the figure in Rome was a couple of hundred, or perhaps a couple of thousand, years old and needed washing, and being marble the water didn't cling so lingeringly.
"Her bare young legs, as they twinkled on the beach, were like a pair of moving poems to Cogan, and then the long cloak enveloped her. An instant later the little feet slipped out from beneath the cloak and into the sandals, and then a big woman came running down the beach. Cogan recognized her—the same big Indian who had come after his Peruvian friend the night before. He decided she must be a descendant of the old Incas that Pizarro conquered, and of course that didn't make it any less interesting. She began to scold the girl, peering distressfully around while she was talking as if to see if any early hotel riser had seen them. But the girl only made a face up at her, and that gave Cogan his first sight of her teeth. He thought her the most delightful looking creature he had ever seen. They disappeared between a row of trees further up the beach—a row of palms which guarded a line of cottages from the wash of the surf.
"'That,' said Cogan to himself, when his eyes couldn't make out the fluttering of her cloak any [pg 283] more—'that must be Valera.' And he sat down to the hotel breakfast with a great appetite, thinking happily that by and by he would see her father again.
"But Cogan, who was off a cruiser in Colon harbor, had to be back aboard for quarters that morning; and after quarters it was up the coast to Chiriqui Lagoon to coal ship, and it was three days more before he was back in Colon. His Peruvian friend he could not find, but he looked up the Chinese trader that he'd first seen him with and who had a shop on the corner between Martin Jackson's and the faro joint.
"The Chinaman could tell him. Señor Roca had taken the choo-choo back to Callao—si, si—Oh, yes, for Lima.
"Cogan asked for the name and address and got it. 'Señor Luis Roca,' he repeated. 'I'll remember that—and the street and number. And some day I'll take a run down to Peru—to Lima.'
"'Si, si—fine cit-ee. And bull fight—granda, señor,' said the Chinaman, who, like Martin Jackson, had also a Spanish accent."
The pump-man had come to a full stop. The third officer was standing near. A regurgitating and ruminating little animal was the third officer, who always after a meal came up on deck to lean [pg 284] over the after-rail, and spend a few enjoyable minutes in picking his teeth, and rechewing the lumps of food as they welled regularly into his throat; but otherwise a polite little man, plainly waiting for a chance to say a word to Kieran, but too well-bred to break in on any intimate conversation. However, Kieran remained silent so very long that the third officer turned and ventured: "'Adn't you better go below and have your bit o' dinner afore it's gone, mate?" And Kieran came out of his dream and said perhaps he'd better and stood up to go below; but on the top step of the ladder he paused and over his shoulder threw back to the passenger: "It was a long time, though, before Cogan saw Peru."