The first time Billy appeared in public riding in the same victoria with Mother Jenks and Dolores, therefore, he was fully aware that for the future Dolores Ruey was like himself, socially defunct in Sobrante. However, he did not care, for he had a sneaking suspicion Dolores was as indifferent as he; in fact, he took a savage delight in the knowledge that the girl would be proscribed, for with Dolores cut off from all other society she must, of necessity, turn to him throughout her visit. So, up to the night La Estrellita, with John Stuart Webster on board, dropped anchor on the quarantine-ground, Mr. Geary was the unflagging ballyhoo for a personally conducted tour of Dolores Ruey's native land within a radius of fifteen miles about Buenaventura. He was absolutely bogged in the quagmire of his first love affair, but until his mining concession should amply justify an avowal of his passion, an instinctive sense of the eternal fitness of things reminded Billy of the old proverb that a closed mouth catches no flies. And in the meantime (such is the optimism of youth) he decided there was no need for worry, for when a girl calls a fellow Bill, when she tells him he's a scout and doesn't care a whoop for any society except his—caramba! it's great!
A wireless from Webster warned Billy of the former's imminent arrival. Just before sunset Billy and Dolores, riding along the Malecon, sighted a blur of smoke far out to sea—a blur that grew and grew until they could make out the graceful white hull of La Estrellita, before the swift tropic night descended and the lights of the great vessel shimmered across the harbour.
“Too late to clear quarantine to-night,” Billy mourned, as he and Dolores rode back to her hotel. “All the same, I'm going to borrow the launch of my good friend Leber and his protégé Don Juan Cafetéro, and go out to the steamer to-night. I can heave to a little way from the steamer and welcome the old rascal, anyhow; he'll be expecting me to do that, and I wouldn't disappoint him for a farm.”
Fortunately, good little Leber consented to Billy's request, and Don Juan Cafetéro was sober enough to turn the engine over and run the launch. From the deck of the steamer Webster, smoking his postprandial cigar, caught sight of the launch's red and green sidelights chugging through the inky blackness; as the little craft slid up to within a cable's-length of the steamer and hove to, something told Webster that Billy Geary would soon be paging him. He edged over to the rail.
“That you, Bill?” he shouted.
“Hey! Jack, old pal!” Billy's delighted voice answered him.
“I knew you'd come, Billy boy.”
“I knew you'd know it, Johnny. Can't come aboard, you know, until the ship clears, but I can lie off here and say hello. How is your internal mechanism?”
“Grand. I've got the world by the tail on a down-hill haul once more, son. However, your query reminds me I haven't taken the medicine the doctor warned me to take after meals for a couple of weeks. Wait a minute, Bill, until I go to my stateroom and do my duty by my stomach.”
For ten minutes Billy and Don Juan Cafetéro bobbed about in the launch; then a stentorian voice shouted from the steamer. “Hey, you! In the launch, there. Not so close. Back off.”