The Presidente, Mr. Howland, and high officers of the Government sat on a long dais at the head of the room; the other guests, including the Tampico’s party, were at round tables with red-shaded lamps.  It was a pleasing picture, and Dan, for the first few courses, was glad he had come.  However, when he found that those with whom he was seated could not speak English, while he could understand little of Spanish, the evening began to wear.  At length, with the long post-prandials at hand, he arose.

Flanking one side of the room, which was large, were windows reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling, which, when the weather was fair, were opened, giving access to a garden of small, twisted trees and tropical plants with small tables beneath, to which the pleasure-loving population came at night, to sip iced drinks and listen to the music of the orchestra as it flowed out of the dining-room.

Here Dan made his way and, stepping out of one of the windows, paused on the garden’s edge.  The cool air was grateful, and with a sigh of relief he drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it slowly, From beneath the trees came little patters of conversation, and the red lights of cigarettes and the glint of white gowns enlivened the darkness.

As he stood there, Virginia Howland and Oddington came out of one of the windows.  The girl was talking vivaciously, familiarly, and Oddington was laughing.  She was in what she would have termed one of her “Oddington moods,” when his personality appealed to her most, when the congenial bond seemed closest.  To-night the lights, the music, the soft air rustling the lampshades, after all the long days on shipboard, exalted her.  She looked at her companion with kindling eyes.

It seemed hardly the moment to run full upon the Captain of the Tampico, who had just thrown his cigar away with the intention of returning to the dining-hall.

Dan realized this instinctively.  He smiled at the two in an abstracted manner, as though his mind were occupied with thoughts which he did not care to interrupt, and turned toward the window, when Virginia, who had greeted him simultaneously with a smile obviously designed to convey a similar impression, and, piqued to perversity by the fact that Dan had so readily interpreted her wishes, paused in the middle of a sentence and looked back over her shoulder.

“Captain,” she said, “is it possible you prefer speeches in Spanish to our company?”

Dan paused.  Oddington was smiling in an exceedingly perfunctory manner, and the young Captain was about to make some laughing acknowledgment when the girl, still looking at him, said: 

“Mr. Oddington and I were just arguing about the night air of San Blanco.  He says it is filled with malaria.  Is it?”

Dan walked slowly toward them.

“Not any more than the day air,” he replied, declining Oddington’s proffered cigarette case and drawing his pipe and pouch from his pocket.  “I should say that San Blancan air is filled with malaria at all times—­and with other bad things.”