gan to appear on the horizon, keys and
trees silhouetted against the rising light. A huge heron flapped
grotesquely up from the top of a mangrove bush as the sun struck it; a
flamingo flapped by, matching its dainty pink with the sun's best
tints; a dolphin's fin broke the dark purple water near shore.

Then the eastern horizon became a flare of flame and fire, and the sea
grew rosy. Beyond its brim a great conflagration seemed to be raging,
throwing its flames of gold, of red and of uncountable tints high into
the sky. Higher it rose, its rays more insistent; and then, as with a
clashing of brazen cymbals, the full-blown dawn was upon the world.

Payne now saw that the light had revealed two yachts moored to a short
pier which ran out from the eastern shore. One, a splendid sixty-foot
cruiser of the luxurious type seen in Florida waters during the tourist
season, lay at the end of the pier ready to sail. From bow to stern
she was immaculate white with shiny brown trimmings, and on her bow the
sun revealed in small gilt letters the name Egret.

The second boat was a low, dirty forty-footer--the Cormorant--the boat
to which the Swastika's passengers were to transfer for the trip up the
river.

A Japanese steward, in spick and span whites, came down the Egret's
shiny gangway, entered the path leading to the Swastika's dock, and in
a few minutes came hurrying back to his boat carrying a handbag.

The sun now had splashed boldly upon the languid wet fronds of the
palms, upon the trunks of trees and the hanging moss. It lighted up
the tunnellike vista, painting rosy the shell path underfoot and
revealing the Swastika beyond. In the morning stillness Payne heard
light, swift steps creaking crisply upon the crushed shells of the
path. Then, from his place in the shadows beneath a palm, he saw the
girl. She came to the open space before the sea, whistling softly to
herself an irrepressible, tuneless matin song of youth, and thus she
walked unexpectingly into the full power of the relentless dawn. For a
moment she halted, blinking, astounded.

"Ah!"

Her exclamation was a cry of the joy of youth. She stood facing the
coming day, and the sea and sun; and a puff of morning breeze flung
behind her a vagrant strand of golden hair.

She was quite tall, and upon her young figure, long of waist and lithe,
yet well-rounded, the thin white dress of the subtropics was but a
filament, a feminine accessory to the virgin