augustness lay concretely behind the sky; hell was no mere mediaeval
fantasy. He might ignore this in daily practice, yet it held him
within its potent if invisible barriers. Charles Abbott believed it.
The supremacy of God, suspended above the wickedness of Spain, would
descend and crush it.

Ranged, therefore, squarely on the side of the angels, mentally he
swept forward in confidence, sustained by the glitter of their
invincible pinions. The spending of his life, he thought, was a
necessary part of the consummation; somehow without that his
vision lost radiance. A great price would be required, but the
result--eternal happiness on that island to which he was taking
linen suits in winter! Charles had a subconscious conception of the
heroic doctrine of the destruction of the body for the soul's
salvation.

The Morro Castle, entering a wind like the slashing of a stupendous
dull grey sword, slowly and uncomfortably steamed along her course.
Most of the passengers at once were seasick, and either retired or
collapsed in a leaden row under the lee of the deck cabins. But this
indisposition didn't touch Charles, and it pleased his sense of
dignity. He appeared, erect and capable, at breakfast, and through the
morning promenaded the unsteady deck. He attended the gambling in the
smoking saloon, and listened gravely to the fragmentary hymns
attempted on Sunday.

These human activities were all definitely outside him; charged with a
higher purpose, he watched them comprehendingly, his lips bearing the
shadow of a saddened smile; essentially he was alone, isolated. Or at
least he was at the beginning of the four days' journey--he kept
colliding with the rotund figure of a man wrapped to the eyes in a
heavy cloak until, finally, from progressing in opposite directions,
they fell into step together. To Charles' delight, the other was a
Cuban, Domingo Escobar, who lived in Havana, on the Prado.

Charles Abbott learned this from the flourishing card given in return
for his own. Escobar he found to be a man with a pleasant and
considerate disposition; indeed, he maintained a scrupulous courtesy
toward Charles far transcending any he would have had, from a man so
much older, at home. Domingo Escobar, it developed, had a grown son,
Vincente, twenty-eight years old; a boy perhaps Charles' own age--no,
Andres would be two, three, years younger; and Narcisa. The latter,
his daughter, Escobar, unashamed, described as a budding whi