Jorge Toleto shuffled away, with the remnant of what in his youth had been a respectful bow. When he was gone Don Gil crossed the living-room, passed through two long passages, and entered a door at the end of the second. Here was a sort of general storeroom. When he emerged he carried in one hand a lantern, in the other he held a flat parcel. "A new lantern will burn more brightly," he said to himself.
It was growing dusk now. Don Gil descended the veranda stair and followed in the footsteps of Andres. As he crossed the rough grass beyond the veranda, old Guillermina espied him from a further window. She was engaged in opening the Señor's bed for the night, searching among the snowy linen to make sure, before tucking the rose-coloured netting beneath the mattress, that no black spider had hidden itself away, to prove later an unwelcome bedfellow to her adored Don Gil. For your tarantula will ensconce itself in unexpected corners at times, and is at the best not quite a desirable sleepmate.
"And for the love of the saints, where is our Don Gil departing to at this hour of the night? The dinner nearly ready, old Otivo watching the san coch' to see that it does not burn! The table laid, everything fine enough for a meal for the holy apostles! Aie! aie! for our Don Gil is one who will have it as fine for himself as for the alcade, when—pouff! off he goes, and we breaking our hearts while we wait. Ay de mi! ay de mi!"
The Señor, unconscious that he had been observed, passed hurriedly along the camino, and shortly struck into the little path or sendica which Andres had traversed but a short time before. As Don Gil glanced over the cliff, he saw that the sea was still; almost calm. Even the usual ocean swell seemed but a wavelet, as it reached weakly up the beach, expending itself in a tiny whirl of pebbles and foam whose force was nil, and lapsed in a retreat more exhausted than its oncoming.
A walk of ten minutes brought Silencio to the headland which bounded his property on the south. It was growing so dark that he could hardly distinguish the staff upon which it had been Andres's custom to hang each night his lanterna de señales, to send forth its white beam of cheer across the sea. When, after passing the red light of Los Santos Head, the pilot steered for the open ocean, the remark to the captain was always the same stereotyped phrase:
"Ah! There is the Palmacristi lantern bidding us Godspeed."
It is a sad thing when the habit of years must be changed. When a custom, fixed as the laws of the Medes, must be broken, chaos is often the result. Thus thought Silencio, as he reached the foot of the asta. It is, however, not necessary to say that his hand was not retarded by the thought. He groped for the cords which dangled from the top, and found them. He lighted a fusee and searched for and found the red slide, which he had laid on the ground. This was all that he wanted. By feeling, almost entirely, he removed the white pane from the lantern and replaced it by the red one, which he took from its wrapping. He then lighted the lantern, passed the cords through the metal hasps, and drew the signal to the top of the staff. The cords were so arranged as to permit of no swaying of the lantern. The light was fixed, and now from the top of the staff a red beam shone southward.
When Don Gil mounted the steps of his veranda at Palmacristi a tall, thin figure arose to greet him.
"Ah, padre, I am glad that Piomba succeeded in finding you. My dinners are lonely ones."
The padre laughed in the cracked voice of an old man.