Father Serapion and Charlie were old friends, and, when we had accepted the Father’s invitation to step into his neat little house—­also built with his own hands—­and dissipate with him to the extent of some grape juice and an excellent cigar, Charlie took occasion to confide in him with regard to Tobias, and, to his huge delight, discovered that a man answering very closely to his description had dropped in there with a large sponger two days before.  He had only stopped long enough to buy rum at the little store near the landing, and had been off again through the bight, sailing west.  He might have been making for Cuba or for a hiding-place—­of which there were plenty on the western shore of the island itself.  Father Serapion, who knew Charlie Webster’s shooting ground, promised to send a swift messenger, should anything further of interest to us come to his knowledge within the next week or so.  As he was, naturally, in close touch with the natives, this was not unlikely.

And then we had to bid the good priest farewell—­not without a reverent hush in our hearts as we pondered on the marvel of noble lives thus unselfishly devoted, and as we thought, too, of the loneliness that would once more close around him when we were gone.

It was not until we had left him that I suddenly recalled King Coffee’s first vision.  Clearly, Father Serapion was the man in overalls shingling the roof!  If only his other visions should prove as true!

Then we sailed away from Behring’s Point, due west through the North Bight.  But we had spent too much time with the good Father, and in various pottering about—­making another landing at a lone cabin in search of fresh vegetables and further loading up our much-enduring craft with three flat-bottomed skiffs, for duck-shooting, marvellously lashed to the sides of the cabin deck—­to do much more sailing that day.  So at sunset we dropped anchor under the lee of Big Wood Cay, and, long before the moon rose, the whole boat’s crew was wondrously asleep.

Morning found us sailing through a maze of low-lying desert islands of a bewildering sameness of shape and size, with practically nothing to distinguish one from another.  Even with long experience of them, one is liable to go astray; indeed Charlie and the captain had several friendly disputes, and exchanged bets, as to which was which.  Then, too, the curious milky colour of the water (in strange contrast to the jewel-like clearness of the outer sea) makes it hard to keep clear of the coral shoals that shelve out capriciously from every island.  In the daylight, the deeper water is seen in a bluish track (something like the “bluing” used in laundry work), edged on either side by “the white water.”  One has to keep a sharp lookout every foot of the way, and many a time our keel gave an ominous grating, and we escaped some nasty ledges by the mere mercy of Heaven.

We had tried bathing at sunrise, but the water was not deep enough to swim in.  So we had paddled around picking up “conches”—­those great ornamental shells which house with such fanciful magnificence an animal something like our winkle, the hard white flesh of which, cut up fine, makes an excellent salad; that is, as old Tom made it.