“Oh, it’s intoxicating!” cried Edith, as she sank to a seat, feasting her eyes upon the scene below.  “After lunch, shall we climb the mountain?”

“I’m ready for anything,” Kirk assured her.  “Maybe we’ll go swimming.  That seems to be the main occupation of the inhabitants.”

Up the path toward them came two timid children, one bearing a pineapple half as large as himself, the other lugging an armful of strange fruit.  Kirk bought their entire burden, and they scuttled away in high glee.

By now the spirit of the woods was in the picnickers; the gladness of the day possessed them wholly, and the afternoon sped quickly.  If at times Kirk found his companion regarding him with a strangely timid, half-defiant look, he refused to connect it with the episode of their landing.  It was a fleeting look, at most, gone almost before he surprised it, and, for the most part, Edith showed a seemingly quite natural gayety that helped him to forget his recent self-consciousness.

Promptly at four they came down the drunken little main street and out upon the beach.  But no launch was in sight.

“Hello!  Where’s our boat?” exclaimed Kirk.

“The captain told me he’d be ready at four.  Perhaps he has run over to Taboguilla or—­” She hesitated, with a troubled frown.

“You told him to wait?”

“Distinctly.”  Seeing an idler in the square above she questioned him in Spanish.  “This man says the launch left for Panama two hours ago.”  She turned tragic eyes upon Kirk.

“Do you think they intend to leave us?”

“I don’t know.  These people are liable to do any thing.”  Once more she questioned the loiterer.  “It is just as I suspected,” she explained; “they went on a Sunday spree.  He says they came ashore and bought a lot of liquor, and he heard them quarrelling later.”

“That means we’ll have to get another boat.”

“I don’t know where we shall find one.”

“Neither do I, but there must be some sort of craft that plies back and forth regularly.”

“Only once or twice a week, I believe, and it belongs to the sanitarium.”  She nodded toward some buildings perched upon a point farther around the bay.  “Mr. Cortlandt looked it up before leaving and found the boat doesn’t run on Sundays, so he hired that launch.  Perhaps we’d better wait awhile; our men may come back.”

They found seats in the square and were grateful for the rest; but an hour passed and the sun was getting low, while no sign of their truant craft appeared.

“There must be sail-boats to be had,” said Kirk; but on inquiry they learned that, although a few belonged to the island, they all happened to be away.  He suggested that they hire a man to row them across.

“It’s twelve miles,” Edith demurred.  “Do you think it would be safe?”

He scanned the twilit sea and gave up the idea; for the afternoon trades, balmy and soothing as they were, had lifted a swell that would prove difficult for a skiff to navigate.  Uneasily they settled themselves for a further wait.  At last, as the sun was dipping into a bed of gold, Kirk broke out: