up and stretched himself lazily,
and said he was going to turn in; but Peter still sat where he was in his
deck-chair.

'There might be a hundred different endings to your tale, Dunbar,' he
said, 'each one as likely as the other. The boat, for instance, might
have capsized, with too many men crowded into her, and have drifted
ashore and been burned accidentally or otherwise by the people who found
her. Or the crew and captain of the _Rosana_ may never have taken to the
boat at all, and she may have foundered with all hands (as you say the
newspaper reports had it at the time); or the _Rosana_ may be sailing in
another part of the world with her villainous captain and E. W. Smith and
no end of swag on board. Or both men, again, may be sleeping very
peacefully at the bottom of the sea at this moment; that, after all,
seems to me the most likely ending to them. Of course,' he finished, 'I
don't know what grounds you may have for making another suggestion about
their probable fate.'

Dunbar looked at him keenly for a moment. 'I would not have made the
suggestion,' he said quietly, 'only, you see, since the wreck of the
_Rosana_ I have seen E. W. Smith or his ghost, and that is why I do not
believe in the final disappearance of a man till I have set eyes upon his
corpse.'

CHAPTER XII

Peter sat on a cow's skull, bleached and white, at the Estancia Las
Lomas, reading a letter from Jane Erskine. He had begun to think that
the Royal Mail Steam Packet Service was run for the sole purpose of
carrying correspondence between himself and her, and he felt pleased
with its punctuality in delivering his letters.

'It feels a bit queer being here,' he said to himself, gazing round him
as he spoke. It was the evening of a hot day, and there was a flame of
crimson over to westward, where a few minutes ago the sun had sunk
through great bars of flame. All round him was a vast, solitary land,
but nearer the estancia were pleasant homely sights and sounds. A cart
yoked with five horses abreast stood by the galpon; a flock of geese
walked with disdainful, important gait across the potrero; and the
viscashos popped in and out of their holes with busy importance, like
children keeping house. The farm horses, turned out for the night,
cropped the short grass near where he stood. Peons, their day's work
over, loitered in the patio, and the major-domo's children rode by, all
three of them on one horse, their arms round eac