settled; upon the
conditions I have named you can have her,"--I made a pretty shrewd guess
at it.

In the meantime Dona Antonia had reappeared, very little the worse for
her adventure; she was very pale, it is true, and she became perceptibly
paler when, with that want of tact which is one of my most marked
characteristics, I abruptly told her that we were on the point of
leaving her to rejoin our ship. But she amply redeemed this want of
colour by the deep rosy flush with which she greeted Smellie's approach
and the low whispered request in response to which she placed her hand
on his arm and retired with him to the verandah.

It was about 9:30 p.m. when they reappeared, Smellie looking very grave,
but at the same time rather exultant, and poor Antonia in tears, which
she made no attempt whatever to conceal. I was, of course, all ready to
start at a moment's notice. We had no preparations to make, in fact,
and we at once proceeded to the disagreeable task of saying farewell to
our kind and generous host. It was a painful business; for though we
had not known Don Manuel and his daughter very long, we had still known
them quite long enough to have acquired for them both a very large
measure of esteem and regard--in Smellie's case there could no longer be
the least doubt that his feelings toward his hostess were even warmer
than this--so we hurried over the leave-taking with all speed, and then
set off down the pathway, under Pedro's guidance, on our road to the
creek.

It was by this time pitch dark. The stars had all disappeared; the sky
had become obscured by a heavy pall of thunder-cloud; and away to the
eastward the lightning was already beginning to flash and the thunder to
growl ominously. Before we reached the gate in the palisading Pedro had
volunteered the prognostication of a stormy night, utterly unfit for
such an expedition as that upon which we were bound, and had strongly
urged us more than once to follow his counsel and postpone the attempt.
But to this proposition we could not, of course, listen for a moment.
If we missed the present opportunity to rejoin the _Daphne_ it was
impossible to conjecture when another might offer; and pleasant though
our sojourn under Don Manuel's hospitable roof had undoubtedly been, it
was not _business_; every day so spent was a day distinctly lost in the
pursuit of our professional interests. So we plodded steadily on, and
in about half an hour's time reached the