ruse passed for the moment, but was exposed by a flock or swarm of
cockroaches, which, scenting a favorite food, suddenly sprang upon
the table and upon us, leaping and flying into the plates and
drawing Corsican curses from Capriata and Norwegian maledictions
from Lee. I did not wait to see them throwing the invaders from the
battlements of the table into the moat of salt water and spilt wine
below, but quickly, though feebly, climbed to the deck and laid
myself beside Pere Olivier, nor could cries that the enemy had been
defeated and that "only a few" were flying about, summon me below
again.

Pere Olivier and I stayed prone all night in alternate pelting rain
and flooding moonlight, as a fair wind bowled us along at six knots
an hour. Padre Olivier, between naps, recited his rosary to take his
mind from his woes. I could tell when he finished a decade by his
involuntary start as he began a new one. I had no such comfort as
beads and prayers, and the flight of those schooner griffins had
struck me in the solar plexus of imagination.

"Accept them as stations of the cross," said the priest. "This life
is but a step to heaven."

I replied with some comments indicating my belief that cockroaches
belonged on a still lower rung, and going in an opposite direction.

"I know those _blattes_, those _saligauds_," he said with sympathy.
"They are sent by Satan to provoke us to blasphemy. I never go below."

Those pests of insects can hardly be estimated at their true
dreadfulness by persons unacquainted with the infamous habits of the
nocturnal beetle of the tropics. Sluggish creatures in the temperate
zone, in warm countries they develop the power of flying, and
obstacles successfully interposed to their progress in countries
where they merely crawl are ineffectual here. They had entire
possession of the _Roberta_.

The supercargo, Lee, was not to be blamed, for he told me that once
he had taken time in port to capture by poisonous lures a number he
calculated at eight thousand, and that within a month those who had
escaped had repopulated the old schooner as before. Then he despaired,
and let them have sway. To sleep or eat among them was not possible
to me, and the voyage was a nightmare not relieved by an incident of
the second night.

Capriata, whose feet were calloused from going bare for years, awoke
from a deep slumber that had been aided by rum, to find that the
cockroaches in his berth had eaten through the