"Hasten, Agueda! Come! Come!" called Beltran.
Agueda ran to the ladder, which was ever ready for just such surprises. It was the expected which usually did not happen at San Isidro, but the ladder was always there, fastened secure and firm, rivetted to the floor and roof alike. It could move but with the house. Agueda stepped lightly upon the rungs, one after the other. She raised the basket up to Don Beltran's down-reaching grasp. He took it, placed it upon the gently sloping roof, and held out a kindly hand to the girl, but Agueda did not take it at once. She descended the ladder a round or two, and from a nail in a near-by beam seized a coat which Don Beltran wore sometimes when the nights were cool, and the trade winds blew up too freshly from the sea. When she climbed again to the opening in the thatch, Don Beltran was leaning against the old stone chimney, which raised its moss-grown head between the casa and cocina. He had forgotten the girl. His horizontal palm shaded his eyes from the ray of the level sun. There was no sign of fear visible upon his face; he appeared rather like an interested observer, which indeed he was, for he felt secure and safe, for himself, his people, and his cattle.
"See the commotion among the forests up there, near Palmacristi, Agueda! It may be only a slight storm and quickly over, but if we do have a flood like the last one, I have no wish that Garcia and Manuel Medina shall float in at my front door in their dugouts and carry off all things movable. It is so easy to lay everything to the flood!"
"The men have been moving the furniture for an hour past, Señor. I think there is little that can be carried away."
Don Beltran gave a sudden start.
"Where is the cross, Agueda? Did you remember that?"
"I have it here, Señor." Agueda laid her hand upon the bosom of her gown. "And the Señor's little cart, that is locked within the inner cupboard. It cannot go unless the casa goes also."
"And in that case I should want it no more in this world, Agueda. You are thoughtful, child. The two souvenirs of my mother! Ah, see!" As he spoke there was a stir among the treetops far over to the westward. There, where yellow-brown clouds hung massed and solid as a wall over the rift below, a strange agitation was visible.
"It is a dance, 'Gueda. Do you see them, those fairies? Watch that one advancing there, to the southward. She approaches the lady from the east. See them skip and whirl and pass as if in a quadrille. It is a pretty sight. You will see that once in a lifetime—not oftener. They call it the trompa marina at sea."