“Then, you have only to ask it,” Kit replied.

“I know,” said Adam, feebly.  “You’re staunch.  Well, you have seen the despatch-box in the office, marked Hattie G., though I lost the old boat long before you came out.  She was a coal-eater and didn’t pay to run, but I kept her going until she hit the reef.  My first steamboat—­I got her when she was going cheap; but she was bought with my wife’s money, and called after her.

“I met Hattie in Florida about the year you were born.  She was Vanhuyten’s cousin and the finest thing that ever wore a woman’s shape.  Northern grit and Southern fire, for she sprang from New England and good Virginia stock; I’ve seen no woman with her superb confidence.  Well, I was a contrabandista with some ugly tales against my name, but I fell in love with Hattie and married her in a month.”

Adam was silent for a few minutes, and while Kit mused, shovels clinked in the stokehold and the vessel began to lift.  The tilted lamp straightened and its light rested on Adam’s wasted form.  His silk pyjamas rather emphasized than hid his gauntness; he looked strangely worn and weak, but Kit could picture the strong passion of his love-making.  There was something fierce and primitive about the old Buccaneer, and it was not hard to see how he had, so to speak, swept the romantic girl off her feet by the fiery spirit that had burned him out.  Yet he had never talked about other women, and though he knew the South, Kit thought he had cared for none.

“I left her in a few weeks,” Adam went on.  “Alvarez was putting up for president and my savings were at stake.  Hattie went home to Virginia while I helped Alvarez on the coast.  He was hard up against it, though he’s been president three times since.  Well, when things looked blackest, I was knocked out in Salinas swamps, by fever and a bullet that touched my lungs.  They took me to the old Indian mission—­we were cut off from the ship—­and Father Herman put the rurales off my track.  I’ve sent him wine and candles, he’s at the mission yet; it stands between thick forest and swamps like this, and the padre’s the only white man who has lived there long.  Get down the chart and I’ll show you the landing place.”

Kit did so, feeling that he ought to indulge a sick man’s caprice, and Adam, after giving him clear directions, was quiet for some minutes.  Then he began again, with an effort: 

“Vanhuyten told Hattie, and I found out afterwards, that she had had trouble at home.  Her folks had never trusted me and wanted to keep her back, but she had rich friends who sent her out, like an American princess, on a big steam yacht.  She got to the mission when I was at my worst, and finding I could not be moved, sent the yacht away.  It was some days before I knew she had come.  There was no doctor to be got.  Alvarez could not send help, and the government soldiers were hunting for his friends, but Father Herman knew something about medicine and Hattie helped him better than a trained nurse.  I can see her now, going about the mud-walled room in her clean, white dress, without a hint of weariness in her gentle eyes.  That was when she thought I was watching, but sometimes at night her head bent and her figure drooped.