At this juncture, Bedient was startled by the clapping of hands from somewhere up the winding steps toward The Pleiad.  The Chinese leaped up to listen for a repetition of the signal, which his kind answers the world over.  The hands were clapped again, and then the voice: 

“Oh, Boy, won’t you come up here for a moment?  I’m afraid to climb down all these steps alone with this big package.  It must be put aboard for to-night.”

“The unparalleled genius——­” Bedient breathed.

The Chinese understood, and stepped ashore quickly.  Bedient began to roll forward with the first movement of the boy.  The red chalk mark would hardly be needed.  He had just torn his finger upon a thorn.  Seeing the blood rise, it occurred that one is never without a bit of red.  At the base of the bank he turned his eyes upward.  The Chinese was plodding up the stairs, the woman holding his mind occupied with words.

Bedient leaped across to the deck, and sank into the cabin of the Savonarola.  From the shaded roomy quarter then, he ventured a last look.  John Chinaman’s broad back was still toward him, and Miss Mallory was laughing.  “How good of you!” she said to the boy.  “The steps looked so many and so rickety, and I was all alone.  Here’s a peso for you.  We’ll be aboard about six.”  She laughed again.

“What a bright light to shine upon a man!” Bedient thought, as he covered his bleeding finger with a handkerchief, to avoid leaving a trail in the spotless cabin.  He moved forward toward the right compartment, unsteadily; then entered and closed the door.

* * * * *

This was Adith Mallory’s especial afternoon and evening.  She was emphatically alive.  One of her dearest desires, and one which had long seemed farthest from her, was to do some big thing for Andrew Bedient.  The plan was hers, every thought of it, and now she saw him safely stored in the forecastle.

She tried to put away all thoughts of fear.  The party, of which she was the blithest,—­ah, how she loved sailing!—­stepped on board at six.  Framtree was brought to the meeting.  Celestino Rey was beguiled from his Pleiad throne, and helped to a seat in this floating Elba.  Here, too, came the Sorensons and the Chinese—­mob-stuff.  There is a mob in every drama—­poor mob that always loses, of untimely arousings, mere bewildered strength in the wiles of strategy.  Poor undone mob—­its head always in the lap of Wit, to be shorn like Samson....  And the Glow-worm—­that incomparable female facing the South, her great yellow smoldering eyes, filled with the dusky Southern Sea, and who knows what lights and lovers of Buenos Aires, flitting across her dreams?...  Had there been absolute need for an ally, Miss Mallory could almost have trusted the Senora.

“We didn’t care to heat up the cabin from the galley,” Senor Rey declared as they descended for supper, “so I have had our repast prepared at The Pleiad, save, of course, the coffee.  You will not miss for once the entree, if the cold roast fowl is prime, I am sure.  There are compensations.”