Meantime he was busying himself with striking a fire to set alight a small heap of dry sticks he had made ready beforehand on that spot which in all the circuit of the Bay was perfectly screened from observation from the land side.

The clear flame shooting up revealed him in the black cloak with a hood of a Mediterranean sailor.  His eyes watched the dancing dim light to seaward.  And he talked the while.

“The only fault you have, Senor, is being too generous with your money.  In this world you must give sparingly.  The only things you may deal out without counting, in this life of ours which is but a little fight and a little love, is blows to your enemy and kisses to a woman. . . .  Ah! here they are coming in.”

I noticed the dancing light in the dark west much closer to the shore now.  Its motion had altered.  It swayed slowly as it ran towards us, and, suddenly, the darker shadow as of a great pointed wing appeared gliding in the night.  Under it a human voice shouted something confidently.

“Bueno,” muttered Dominic.  From some receptacle I didn’t see he poured a lot of water on the blaze, like a magician at the end of a successful incantation that had called out a shadow and a voice from the immense space of the sea.  And his hooded figure vanished from my sight in a great hiss and the warm feel of ascending steam.

“That’s all over,” he said, “and now we go back for more work, more toil, more trouble, more exertion with hands and feet, for hours and hours.  And all the time the head turned over the shoulder, too.”

We were climbing a precipitous path sufficiently dangerous in the dark, Dominic, more familiar with it, going first and I scrambling close behind in order that I might grab at his cloak if I chanced to slip or miss my footing.  I remonstrated against this arrangement as we stopped to rest.  I had no doubt I would grab at his cloak if I felt myself falling.  I couldn’t help doing that.  But I would probably only drag him down with me.

With one hand grasping a shadowy bush above his head he growled that all this was possible, but that it was all in the bargain, and urged me onwards.

When we got on to the level that man whose even breathing no exertion, no danger, no fear or anger could disturb, remarked as we strode side by side: 

“I will say this for us, that we are carrying out all this deadly foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes of the Senora were on us all the time.  And as to risk, I suppose we take more than she would approve of, I fancy, if she ever gave a moment’s thought to us out here.  Now, for instance, in the next half hour, we may come any moment on three carabineers who would let off their pieces without asking questions.  Even your way of flinging money about cannot make safety for men set on defying a whole big country for the sake of—­what is it exactly?—­the blue eyes, or the white arms of the Senora.”