“Don’t you suppose I know that better than you do,” returned Roddy miserably. He beat the rail with his fist. “It should not have happened in a thousand years,” he wailed. “He must not know I have ever even seen her.”
“He does know,” objected Peter, coming briskly to the point. “What are you going to do?”
“Lie to him,” said Roddy. “He is an old friend of the family. She told me so herself. She thought even of appealing to him before she appealed to us. If he finds out I have met her alone at daybreak, I have either got to tell him why we met and what we are trying to do, or he’ll believe, in his nasty, suspicious, Spanish-American way, that I am in love with her, and that she came there to let me tell her so.”
Roddy turned on Peter savagely.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” he cried.
“Stop you—talking too much?” gasped Peter. “Is that my position? If it is, I resign.”
The moon that night threw black shadows of shrouds, and ratlines across a deck that was washed by its radiance as white as a bread-board. In the social hall, the happy exiles were rejoicing noisily, but Roddy stood apart, far forward, looking over the ship’s side and considering bitterly the mistake of the morning. His melancholy self-upbraidings were interrupted by a light, alert step, and Pino Vega, now at ease, gracious and on guard, stood bowing before him.
“I do not intrude?” he asked.
Roddy, at once equally on guard, bade him welcome.
“I have sought you out,” said the Venezuelan pleasantly, “because I would desire a little talk with you. I believe we have friends in common.”