He knew that he must soon begin to live his own life.  His every faculty was deeply urging.  Equatoria had little to do with the realities for which he had gathered more than thirty years’ equipment.  He felt a serious responsibility toward his fortune, though absolutely without the thrill of personal possession.  The just administration of these huge forces formed no little part of his work, and in his entire thinking on this subject, New York stood most directly in the need of service.  It was there that the Captain’s accumulated vitality must be used for good.

Early in the second month, Bedient came in at noon from a long ride across the lands, and reaching the great porch of the hacienda, he turned to observe a tropic shower across the valley.  The torrent approached at express speed.  It was a clean-cut pouring, several acres in extent.  Bedient watched it fill the spaces between the little hills, sweep from crest to crest, and bring out a subdued glow in the wild verdure as it swept across the main valley.  Sharp was the line of dry sunlit air and gray slanting shower.  Presently he heard its pounding, and the dustless slopes rolled into the gray....  Now he sniffed the acute fragrance that rushed before it in the wind, and then it climbed the drive, deluged the hacienda, and was gone....  In the moist, sweet, yellow light that filled his eyes, Bedient, fallen into deeps of contemplation, saw the face of a woman.

He went inside and looked up the Dryden sailings.  The Hatteras would clear, according to schedule, in ten days.  That meant that the Henlopen was now in port.  His eyes had looked first for the former, since it had brought him down, and was the Captain’s favorite....  Yes, the Henlopen was due to sail to-morrow at daylight....  He told Falk he would go....  In that upper room across from his own, he bowed his head for a space, and the fragrance still there brought back the heaving cabin of the Truxton....  Then he rode down to Coral City in the last hours of daylight.

His devoirs were paid to Dictator Jaffier, who confided that he had purchased a gunboat and search-light on behalf of the government.  Its delivery was but ten days off, and with it he expected to keep that old sea-fighter, Celestino Rey, better in order....  Bedient had the evening to himself.  In one of the Calle Real cafes, he was attracted by the face and figure of a young white man, of magnificent proportions and remarkably clean-cut profile.  The stranger sipped iced claret, watched the natives moving about, and seemed occasionally to forget himself in his thinking.