“Suddenly she turned, ran in waist deep, and plunged seaward.  Cogan, seeing her over her head and alone, began to worry; but he might have saved himself the worry—­she came tumbling back like a young dolphin, found her feet on the beach, and flew to where was a cloak and a pair of Chinese slippers piled on the sand.  The long rays of the just rising sun were now flashing level atop of the sea, and the sea-water clinging to her in a million twinkling drops as she ran.  Cogan remembered a marble nymph he had once seen under a fountain in a square on a sunny morning in Rome, only the figure in Rome was a couple of hundred, or perhaps a couple of thousand, years old and needed washing, and being marble the water didn’t cling so lingeringly.

“Her bare young legs, as they twinkled on the beach, were like a pair of moving poems to Cogan, and then the long cloak enveloped her.  An instant later the little feet slipped out from beneath the cloak and into the sandals, and then a big woman came running down the beach.  Cogan recognized her—­the same big Indian who had come after his Peruvian friend the night before.  He decided she must be a descendant of the old Incas that Pizarro conquered, and of course that didn’t make it any less interesting.  She began to scold the girl, peering distressfully around while she was talking as if to see if any early hotel riser had seen them.  But the girl only made a face up at her, and that gave Cogan his first sight of her teeth.  He thought her the most delightful looking creature he had ever seen.  They disappeared between a row of trees further up the beach—­a row of palms which guarded a line of cottages from the wash of the surf.

“‘That,’ said Cogan to himself, when his eyes couldn’t make out the fluttering of her cloak any more—­’that must be Valera.’  And he sat down to the hotel breakfast with a great appetite, thinking happily that by and by he would see her father again.

“But Cogan, who was off a cruiser in Colon harbor, had to be back aboard for quarters that morning; and after quarters it was up the coast to Chiriqui Lagoon to coal ship, and it was three days more before he was back in Colon.  His Peruvian friend he could not find, but he looked up the Chinese trader that he’d first seen him with and who had a shop on the corner between Martin Jackson’s and the faro joint.

“The Chinaman could tell him.  Senor Roca had taken the choo-choo back to Callao—­si, si—­Oh, yes, for Lima.

“Cogan asked for the name and address and got it.  ‘Senor Luis Roca,’ he repeated.  ’I’ll remember that—­and the street and number.  And some day I’ll take a run down to Peru—­to Lima.’

“‘Si, si—­fine cit-ee.  And bull fight—­granda, senor,’ said the Chinaman, who, like Martin Jackson, had also a Spanish accent.”

* * * * *