Before me the rocks opened in a deep narrow crevasse, a long rift, evidently slashing back into the cliff, beneath the road on which I had been treading.  I could see the moonlit water vanishing into a sort of gleaming lane between the vast overhanging walls.  In a few moments I was near the entrance, but, as yet, I could not touch bottom with my feet, and so I swam on into the giant portal, into a twilight which was still luminous with reflections, and to which my eyes readily accustomed themselves.

Presently I felt my feet rest lightly on firm sand, and, still shoulder deep in the water, I walked on another yard or two—­to be brought to a sudden stop.  There she was coming toward me, breast high in that watery tunnel!  The moon, continuing its serene ascension, lit her up with a sudden beam.  O! shape of bloom and glory!

For a moment we both stood looking at each other, as if transfixed.  Then she gave a frightened cry, and put her hands up to her bosom; as she did so, a stream of something bright—­like gold pieces—­fell from her mouth, and two like streams from her opened hands.  Then, as quick as light, she had darted past me, and dived into the moon-path beyond.  She must have swam under the water a long way, for when I saw her dark head rise again in the glimmering path, it was at a distance of many yards.

I had no thought of following her, but stood in a dream among the watery gleams and echoes.

So, once in a lifetime, for a few fortunate ones, all the various magics of the earth, all the mysterious hints and promises of her loveliness that make the heart overflow with a prophetic sense of some supernatural happiness on the brink of coming to pass, combine in one supreme shape of beauty, given to us by divine ordering, on the starlit summit of one immortal hour.

For me had come that hour of wonder; for me out of that tropic sea, into whose flawless deeps my eyes had so often gone adream, had risen the creature of miracle.

O! shape of moonlit marble!  O! holiness of this night of moon and stars and sea!

CHAPTER IV

In Which I Meet a Very Strange Individual.

Yes!  I was in love.  Yet I hope, and think, that the reader will not resent this unexpected incursion into the realms of sentiment when he considers that my sudden attack was not, like most such sudden attacks, an interruption in the robuster course of events, but, instead, curiously in the direct line of my purpose.  Because the eyes of an unknown girl had thus suddenly enthralled me, I was not, therefore, to lose sight of that purpose.

On the contrary, they had suddenly shone out on the pathway along which I had been blindly groping.  But for the accident of being in the dirty little store at so psychological a moment, hearing that strangely familiar voice and catching sight of that mysterious doubloon as well as those mysterious eyes, I should have set sail that very night, and given up John P. Tobias’s second treasure in final disgust.  As it was, I was now warmly on the track of some treasure—­whether his or not—­with two bright eyes further to point the way.  Never surely did a man’s love and his purpose make so practical a conjunction.