In the few minutes that passed before she met Sebastien Francesca had regained self control. To his reproof, “This was foolish; why did you linger?” she calmly replied, “I wished to make sure that all the people were out.”

He nodded approval. “Then no one is left?”

“No one.”

“Bueno! We have no more than time to make the hills. Pancho’s beast is stronger than yours. Give him the child.” She had begun to hope, but it died within her as he went on: “In my rooms are valuable papers. ’Twill take but a moment to get them. Ride on, you. My horse goes two paces to your one. I can catch you halfway to the hills.”

She almost fainted when he rode off, for just as surely as though she had seen him questioning the fugitive women she knew now that he was aware of Seyd’s presence. She reined her animal around to follow, then checked it sharply under a sudden inspiration.

“Why do you wait, Pancho?” she asked, sharply. “While you sleep the flood will be on us. Ride! Ride your hardest! I will follow.”

The mozo, to tell the truth, was damning with inward tremblings the luck that had placed him in such jeopardy. Only the fear of Sebastien had kept him from bolting, and now, without even a backward glance, he laid on with quirt and spurs and galloped off with Roberta, leaving Francesca free to carry out her plan.

It was quite simple. In this, the rainy season, the shade trees were draped from crown to foot with green lace of morning glories, and on the outer edge of the nearest clump a banyan had been converted into a huge tent which would have stabled a hundred horses. Parting the lacework of leaves with one hand, after she had ridden under it, Francesca obtained, through the gateway, an oblique view of the guardhouse at the moment Sebastien closed the iron doors. The crash of the bars carried to her tree, and had he looked that way he might have seen the curtain of leaves swing under the forward move of her beast. But, controlling the impulse, she reined it back again. When Sebastien raced past a couple of minutes later she dropped her hand and shrank in sudden fear.

It was, however, impossible for him to see her. Moreover, the intervening clumps prevented him from discovering that she was not with Pancho until he came bursting out on his heels in open pasture half a mile ahead.

“Tonto! where is thy mistress?”

The mozo’s look of frightened surprise proclaimed at once his ignorance and fear. Both had reined in, and under the other’s deadly look Pancho cowered behind his bent arm. Sickly green patches stained his dull chocolate. When Sebastien pulled a pistol from his holster he bowed down to the saddle horn, his face in his hands. Leaning over, Sebastien placed the muzzle against the fellow’s head. His finger even had tightened. Then, checking the impulse, came Roberta’s whimper, “Señor! oh, señor!” Above it rose a distant thunderous roar, and, glancing northward, he saw in the far distance a writhing movement in the jungle beyond the pastures.

“Off, fool! Save the child!”

Striking the man’s shoulders with the pistol, he wheeled his horse and shot away, heading back to the hacienda. Riding, he kept one eye on the green wave that was moving with the speed of the wind over the jungle. As he passed in among the shade trees it boiled over the far edge of the pastures, and from beneath the swaying trees emerged a muddy wall crowned with bristling black. Traveling more swiftly in the open, it came on at an acute angle which had its point in the flooded lands along the river, its base in the jungle close to the hills, and when Sebastien dashed out of the timber the point had passed the hacienda.

Even then he must have known it for hopeless. The thunderous diapason had risen into a furious crescendo which was spaced by the tear and crash of uprooted trees, and, higher than his head, the liquid wall was coming on under the pressure of the yellow frothing sea that stretched behind to the limit of sight. Yet, laying on quirt and spurs, he raced down its front in a desperate spurt for the gates.

While he was still a hundred yards away the wave struck the northern wall of the compound that fenced the buildings. Built solidly of stone, it melted, vanished without a premonitory shiver, and in its overthrow accomplished good. Catching root and branch in the debris, the grinding welter of fallen trees hesitated, then piled in a huge tangled bar upon the line of cottages and stables which intervened between the wall and house.

To Sebastien, however, this brought no respite. Shooting along the eastern wall, the wave outraced him and beat him to the gate by a long fifty yards.

While Francesca was still under the banyan she had heard the roaring diapason of the flood. Clothed in dripping lacery of leaves and flowers torn away by the beast’s leap from the spur, she galloped into the patio, and when she dismounted the vines still twined around her limbs. Without waiting to tear them off she threw all of her strength into a vain effort to swing the bars of the guardhouse doors, but, swollen by the rain, they were fast in the staples.

“Oh, what shall I do?”

Her cry carried through to Seyd. After a fruitless attempt on the door he was just about to attack the window bars with an oaken club he had found in one corner. Now, tearing away the sacks of maize that blocked the one small square window on her side, he thrust it between the bars.

“Knock them up with this!”

But after the bars yielded the rusty doors defied her strength. “They will not budge! Oh, I cannot move them!”

Again his practical sense served. “Slip a stirrup over the staple, then start your horse gently. Fine!” He heard the groan of the moving door. “Key gone! Never mind, I can shoot out the lock. Stand away – off to one side.”

Above the roar of the flood Sebastien heard the shots. A few seconds later he saw Seyd look out of the gateway, then rush back in. Behind the gates an iron ladder led up to a lookout post on top of the guardhouse, and, racing down the front of the wave, Sebastien saw Seyd rise above the low parapet and lift Francesca to his side.

At the same moment they saw him. In Francesca’s outstretched hands Sebastien saw her impulse to save. In the sudden covering of her eyes he read his fate. The fifty yards that lay between him and the gates might just as well have been a thousand, for, less than half the distance away, the great yellow comber rose high over his head.

Before it broke, however, he did two things – reined his horse to face it, then, just before he went under the grinding welter, with the same easy courtesy which he would have shown to a kinsman or a friend, he turned in the saddle and waved his hand.

CHAPTER XXIV

From the time Seyd rode into the hacienda up to that moment less than twenty minutes had passed, but events had leaped to a conclusion.

The barrier of debris across the outer buildings had diminished the force of the blow upon the house, and had the water gained instant access to the interior and equalized the pressure it might have stood. As the wave raced past, level with the high wall, the patio presented for an instant a curious resemblance to a square vessel pressed down till its edges just rose above the water. The next, its stout walls fell inward, and over them a yellow wave leaped at the house. Reinforced by its partition walls, it withstood for a few seconds the enormous pressure. Then above the cracking and grinding of debris and the mingled roar of the flood rose the boom of doors and windows blown out of their frames.

Because of its length the guardhouse went first. Feeling it tremble under his feet, Seyd lifted Francesca and held her face in against his breast. Not that he was in the least resigned. Never in all his life had he felt a keener desire to live. His glance darted hither and thither, and when, freed by the fall of the stone lintels, a patio gate sprang out of the yellow cauldron almost at his feet he snatched up Francesca, leaped, and landed in its very center. Falling under her, he was, for an instant, breathless. But in the few seconds that he lay there gasping circumstances worked in their favor. Thrust by the impact into the recoil of the wave from the house wall, the gate was heaved out of the patio, and passed the guardhouse just before the heavy tiled roof collapsed with the walls.

Almost in an instant the house crumbled and melted with scarcely a splash. Sitting up a few seconds later, Seyd looked back on all that was left of El Quiss, the barrier of debris rising, a black reef, out of a yellow sea. A mile ahead the wave roared on, its furious crescendo again reduced to a booming diapason. While the gate was being carried with incredible swiftness across the El Quiss pastures the roar sank to a distant hum, and presently died altogether, leaving only the quiet lapping of the waters in the falling dusk.

So quickly had it all passed that Seyd found it hard to believe they were floating in comparative safety. The gate, which was ten feet by twelve in size and four inches thick, floated evenly, and if an occasional wave ran across it the tepid rain water of the tropics caused no discomfort. Neither were they in danger from the debris, logs, and uprooted trees which floated at equal speed on currents that were setting back to the river. With a pole that he picked up Seyd was able to keep out of the way of the few that rolled and tumbled when their branches caught on the bottom, and when at last they drifted on the deeper, slower currents of the river he turned to Francesca, who had remained a huddled, sobbing heap just where she fell.

She looked up when he touched her shoulder. “Oh, I feel wicked!” she cried, remorsefully. “If I had only waited for a few more days, given you time to explain, he would still be alive.”

“It was perfectly natural,” Seyd comforted her. “He would absolve you from all blame were he here, for with all his faults he was big and brave.”

“You really think that he would?” She looked up with tearful anxiety.

“I’m sure of it. How could he do otherwise?”

“But he was – my husband. And I left him – for you.”

“Yet I do not think that he held you in blame.”

Kneeling beside her, with one arm around her shoulders, he gave his reason – Sebastien’s last salute. Even if this started her tears anew she, nevertheless, felt comforted. When a black shape forged out of the dusk alongside, and he had to return to his pole, her natural spirit reasserted itself.

“Here am I, crying like a child instead of helping. What can I do?”

There was really nothing. But to keep her from brooding he placed her on watch. “If you’ll keep a lookout I’ll take a shove at everything that floats in reach. The current is setting across the river, and we have nearly twenty miles to work in. With any old luck we ought to be able to land at Santa Gertrudis.”

Thick dusk presently merged into night, but they were helped by a full moon which shed a dew of light through the falling rain. Not that they voyaged without hazard. Twice they were almost swamped by trees which rolled over under the thrust of Seyd’s pole. Farther down they narrowly escaped shipwreck on wooded islands. Yet, thrusting and hauling, he worked steadily with the favoring current, and they had gained almost across when, rounding a bend, they sighted a distant light.

“Caliban’s, for sure! Only another hour to food and fire!” Seyd cheered her.

He had, however, his own misgivings. As they drew into the shadow of the Barranca wall the moonlight grew fainter, and, drifting later over the submerged jungle, they were hard put to avoid the treetops which upreared like huge mushrooms above the flood. More than once they were almost swept off the raft by bejucos, vegetable cables, which stretched from top to top, and as these grew thicker Seyd saw that disaster was merely a question of time. He was hoping desperately that their capsizing would not entail too long a swim, when out of the obscurity rose a huge black shape.

With a shock that threw them both down, the raft grounded in shallow water.

It was the plateau on which the new smelter stood. But, changed as it was in the new geography of the flood, Seyd did not recognize it until, scrambling ashore with Francesca, he saw above the dark mass of the buildings the cable and iron ore buckets in dim outline against the sky.

“Why, it’s the smelter!” he shouted, in glad surprise. “Ever since the explosion we have kept a man here on guard. Ola! Calixto! Ola! Ola!”

While he was calling a yellow oblong broke out of the building’s mass, framing the black silhouette of a man. “It is the jefe!” They heard his comment to his woman inside, then, uttering a volley of surprised “Caramba’s!” he came rushing down the bank with his lantern.

When Francesca’s pale wet face shone under its sudden glow he dropped the lantern, which, fortunately, did not go out. Picking it up again, he lighted their way to the adobe that had served Billy for house and office while the smelter was building.

For use during the rains, a chimney and wide hearth had been installed in the adobe, and while Calixto was building a roaring fire Seyd directed a piratical raid on Billy’s trunks. At first his search returned only muddy overalls and soiled clothing of various sorts, but at the very bottom – just as they had been placed by the hands of a careful mother – a new suit of flannel pajamas and a voluminous woolen bathrobe appeared. When, with some misgivings, and confused, he suggested a change, a touch of the girl’s old archness flashed out. Her smile was almost mischievous as she returned thanks.

“I’m sorry there’s nothing better to offer.” The smile emboldened him to add: “But they will serve till we have something to eat. Then you may have the fire all to yourself to dry your own things.”

She smiled again when, returning with food and coffee prepared by Calixto’s woman, he exclaimed, “You look like the Queen of Sheba!”

With the brown-black hair swinging almost to her knees and the bathrobe – a gorgeous affair in pink chosen with an eye to Billy’s vivid taste – belted in to her waist and pajamas ballooning beneath over small bare feet, she did look Oriental. When the coffee and food had relit her eyes and restored her usual faint color he was sure that she had never looked so distractingly pretty. The effect was not diminished either by her small vexed frowns at the revelations of smooth whiteness caused by the persistent slipping of the wide sleeves. When, as they sat by the fire after the meal, warmth and fatigue moved her to a yawn and he caught the full redness of her mouth before she could cover it the intimacy of it all sent the blood drumming through his pulses. If her serious eyes restrained him, they did not repress his thought.

“I have you – now! I have you at last, and I’ll never let you go again!”

Undoubtedly she furnished the inspiration which kindled a sudden light in his eyes. “Why not?” he urged against the one objection that occurred in his thought. “It’s an awful smash at the conventions, but – it’s the only way. He locked me in to drown – and do you suppose that he’d hesitate if he were here now in my shoes? I guess not. And if he would, I won’t. By the Lord, I’ll do it!”

He rose soon after reaching his conclusion. “You must be very tired, so I’ll go now and leave you to dry your things. You know, we start early in the morning.”

“Start early?” She opened her sleepy eyes.

“Listen!” He took her gently by both shoulders. “We have been held apart so far by all sorts of accidents and misunderstandings. You know how closely we came to utter shipwreck?” Her shiver answering, he went on, “Now, will you trust – leave all to me?”

She had been no woman if she had not divined the restraint behind his quiet during the last warm hour, and, rising suddenly upon small bare toes, she paid him for his consideration. “I will do anything you say.”

CHAPTER XXV

Breaking through the stream of ocean vapors, the morning sun showed the jungle raising a languid head above the ruins of the flood. Long rents in its green mantle, bare patches of yellow mud, dark bruises where acres of debris had been piled in twisted masses, testified to the force of the wave. But, overlooking the wreckage from the smelter, Seyd took notice principally of a fact that suited his purpose – the river had been swept clean of driftwood. Not since the beginning of the rains had it shown such open stretches.

“Good!” he muttered. “The sooner we get away the better. I’ll call her at once.”

When, however, he knocked at the office door Francesca answered “Come!” When he entered she smiled at his surprise. “You said that we were to start early. Here I am, dressed and dried.”

“Not before breakfast,” he laughed. “It is ready. I’ll have it brought right in.”

All through the meal her eyes questioned, but, denying her curiosity, he talked of anything and everything but that which filled her mind. Even when, clothed in his waterproof, she took her seat opposite him in the stern of the dugout he denied their eloquent appeal. While sending the boat with vigorous strokes flying downstream he drew her attention to this and that phase of devastation and commented on the beauty of the morning, but not a word as to his purpose. It was cruel, and her eyes said so. But, remorseless, he held on till, about midway of the morning, they sighted San Nicolas. All the way down he had hugged the Santa Gertrudis side, and she received the first inkling when he replied to her question if it were not time to pull across.

“We are not going there.”

“Not going there?” she repeated, surprised.

“No, we shall keep right on – down to sea.”

“The sea?”

“The sea.” He nodded firmly. “And the minute we land there we’re going to be married.”

The idea was altogether too radical to be absorbed at once. No doubt she thought he was joking, for a smile broke around her mouth. Not until they were almost opposite San Nicolas did it give place to puzzled alarm.

“But, señor – Rob – Roberto.” She changed it in answer to his quick look. “But, Roberto – ”

“Might as well make it Bob,” he cut in, crisply. “It may seem strange at first, but seeing that we’re to be married you might as well begin to get used to it now.”

The San Nicolas walls now lay, a long, warm band, across their beam. From them her glance returned to the pendulum swing of his body. Finality centered in his steady stroke. It told that he had settled down for the day. Had he calculated its effect beforehand he could not have done better. Accustomed to Spanish deference, she was nonplussed by his authoritative air, yet its very unusualness invested it with a certain charm.

“But – Bob?” Somehow the curt appellation acquired grace and softness from her Spanish lisp. It fell so prettily that he made her repeat it. But, though she added to its attraction an appealing glance, he remained grimly obdurate.

“Give me time to think?”

“All you want. At this speed” – the oars creaked under his stroke – “you will have about twenty-four hours.”

She looked at him, frightened. “Please? At least let us talk it over.”

The cheerful roll of oars in the rowlocks returned wooden answer.

“Won’t you?”

He stopped rowing and sat regarding her sternly. “I’m allowing you more time than you gave me. If” – he paused, then, judging it necessary, relentlessly continued – “if he were here in my place do you suppose – ”

“Oh, he would! He did! After he had insured me against – ”

“ – Me,” he supplied, with a dogged shake of the head, then went on, “Well, even if he would, I won’t.” As he bent again to the oars the touch of admiration that leavened her undoubted fright paid tribute to his stubborn logic. Settling to his stroke, he began again: “Supposing that I complied and put you ashore at San Nicolas? Do you think that Don Luis would be any more favorably inclined toward me? You know that he wouldn’t. I should do well to escape with my life. But if you go back as my wife – well, the most they can do is to turn us out. Of course I can understand your feeling. It will be a frightful breach of the conventions – ”

“No, it is not that,” she interrupted him. “My friends will be scandalized, si, but they are long ago broken to that. They would be dreadfully disappointed if I did not fulfil their predictions by making a shameful end. And it isn’t – he. It is wicked to acknowledge it, but I know – I know now that no matter how hard I tried to school myself I should sooner or later have run away to you. They’ll think it shocking – my friends, my mother – but I can endure it.”

“And that can be avoided. I’ll take you away – throw up everything here – make a new start somewhere else.”

“No! no!” She shook her head. “Your work is here, and I am just as proud of it as you could be. Let them chatter. No, it isn’t even that.”

“Then what is it?”

“You wouldn’t understand. It is silly, just a woman’s reason. No, you would not understand.”

“I’ll try.”

“It is so foolish.” Nevertheless, encouraged by his sympathy, she continued: “Do you know that since the first kiss passed between us a year ago we have had speech together only for a few minutes in the presence of others? And her courtship is of such supreme importance in a girl’s life. It is her love time, and she loves to lengthen and draw out its lingering sweetness. And ours has been so short.”

It was the poignant cry of her girl’s heart expressing the yearning of her starved love, and, coming from such spirited lips, it moved him deeply. Slipping the oars, he seized her two hands and pulled her forward into his arms. Then, while her dark head lay pillowed upon his shoulder, he continued the argument to better advantage.

The walls of San Nicolas had dwindled to a golden streak before she looked up in his face. “Supposing that I had refused?”

“I’d have carried you off in spite of yourself.”

And, whether she believed him or not, she clung the closer in that embrace.