A week later, toward sundown, the Sarah came up the half-mile channel and dropped her hook in Havana Harbor close to the old anchorage of the Maine. A Royal Mail boat passing out gave her the kick of its wash as she settled down to her moorings, a customs boat dropped alongside, and the customs men, hailing Satan as a friend and brother, came aboard and transacted business with him in the cabin. The wind blew warm, bringing scents and sounds across the vast harbor, fluttering the flags of the shipping, and Ratcliffe, standing at the rail, dazzled by the brilliance of the scene before him, knew that his cruise was over.

It was like coming to the end of a book,—a volume suddenly handed to him by Fate to read, and of which he was condemned to write the sequel.

He remembered the morning at Palm Island when he boarded the Sarah first, and the picture was still fresh in his mind of the Haliotis as they had left her in the lagoon at Cormorant, Sellers and Cleary and their men swarming about her and tinkering her up. They intended to ship the spare propeller and bring her along under her own motive power to the nearest port, Nassau in the Bahamas.

They had been so busy with the engines and the hull that they had never noticed how completely she had been stripped. They were unconscious of the fact that she had been left with her anchor down—unfortunates! He could still see them like ants laboring in the sun, at the task set to them by the grimly humorous Satan.

Satan had won the game they had forced on him, holding, as he did, a thousand and forty dollars, the “tripes” of the Haliotis, and the secret of the mug trap, to be disposed of, perhaps, later on for a consideration. Satan would, no doubt, set other unfortunates digging for the Nombre just as he had set Cleary and Sellers tinkering and towing at the Haliotis, just as he had held up freighters for a bunch of bananas, just as he had made Thelusson and his crew careen and scrape the Sarah, just as he had made Ratcliffe an accomplice in his plans and a handy man to help him in his works; yet the funny thing about the scamp was the fact that he was absolutely dependable, when not dealing with companies or governments or derelicts. Ratcliffe would have trusted him with his last penny.

Dependable if you took hold of him by his handle and not by his cutting edge! Trustable if you trusted him!

Then Jude came up in her harbor rig; that is to say, boots and a coat.

“Satan’s clacking away with the customs an’ the port doctor man,” said Jude. “You can’t see across the cabin with the smoke, and I had to change my rig in the galley.”

“You going ashore?” asked Ratcliffe.

“No,” said Jude, “Satan’s going. I’ve got to keep ship. You going with him?”

“I suppose so.”

Appeared Satan, followed by the port men, who tumbled into the boat and rowed off.

“Goin’ ashore?” asked Satan. “Well, I’ll row you to the wharf after I’ve had a bite of supper. Jude’ll bring the boat back, and we can get a shore boat off for half a dollar.”

Half an hour later, just as the electrics were springing alive and the anchor lights of the shipping marking the dusk blue sky, they started. They stood on the wharf steps for a moment watching Jude row off, then they turned to the town.

Havana smells different from any other seaport. She smells of rum and garlic and dirt and cigars and the earth of Cuba, which is different from the earth anywhere else. The harbor and the town exchange bouquets; the negroes help; Spanish cigarettes, Florida water and decaying vegetables lend a hand. Satan led the way. He knew the place as well as the inside of his pocket, and as he trudged along beside Ratcliffe under the electrics across plazas, or through short-cut cut-throat-looking byways, he pointed out the notable features of the place,—Dutch Pete’s, the Alvarez factory, the great opera house, the Calle Commacio, the cathedral. They passed Florion’s with its marble tables, drinkers, and domino players, and Satan suddenly hove to.

“Where d’you want to go now?” said Satan. “D’you want drinks?”

“No, I don’t want drinks,” said Ratcliffe. “Come over here.”

A blazing cinema palace shone across the way, and they entered, Ratcliffe paying.

The place was in black darkness. A cowboy shooting up a bar was on the screen, and a man with an electric torch led them to their seats.

Then they sat watching the pictures, Satan criticizing the actors sometimes, and in a loud voice and not always favorably. The cowboy shot himself off the screen, the lights flared up for half a minute, went out, and the pictures resumed.

Ratcliffe felt a nudge, and in the darkness Satan’s voice, muted now, came in his ear.

“Say,” whispered Satan, “did you see him?”

“Who?”

“The man that dropped you at Pa’m Island.”

“Skelton!”

“That’s him. He’s sittin’ right a front of you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure as sure.”

Skelton here! But where, then, was the Dryad? Had he wrecked her, or what?

The words of Satan seemed to alter everything, from the music to the picture of John Bunny on the screen.

The darkness, filled with native Havana scents, became tinged with the atmosphere of British Respectability. Skelton at the pictures! Why, he ought to have been at the opera or one of the theaters or walking on the alameda digesting his dinner and thinking of Tariff Reform or Anglicanism. It seemed impossible; yet when the light flared up again there was Skelton, sure enough, sitting with another man, and now he was rising, evidently tired of the show, and passing out, followed by his friend, grave as though he had been attending his mother’s funeral instead of the marriage of John Bunny to Flora Finch in a Pullman car with negro accompaniments.

He wore evening clothes, covered by a light overcoat. Ratcliffe rose and, followed by Satan, pursued him, touching him on the shoulder outside and in the full blaze of the lamps.

“Good God!” said Skelton. “Ratcliffe!”

“Just got in,” said Ratcliffe. “Had a ripping time. Where’s the Dryad?”

“Up at the wharf, coaling,” replied Skelton, absorbing Ratcliffe’s rough and ready garb, the cloth cap he was wearing, and Satan. “I’m staying at the Matanzas; but I go aboard tomorrow morning, and we’re off in the evening. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Oh, having no end of fun. We found an old treasure ship and blew her up and found she was full of skulls and bones. You know Satan?”

Skelton, who had ignored Satan, acknowledged his existence by a little nod.

“Who’s your friend?” asked Ratcliffe, glancing at Skelton’s companion, who had removed himself a few paces.

“Ponsonby—diplomatic service. See here, come on board to lunch tomorrow—one-fifteen.”

“Right.”

“I have some gear of yours.”

“Right. I’ll see about it.”

“’Night.”

“’Night.”

Off he went.

They had seen enough of the pictures, and having no inclination for cafÉs or taverns or gambling shops they made back toward the wharves, Satan walking in profound silence, Ratcliffe thinking.

The whole evening he had been followed by a miserable sort of half-depression. It had attached itself to him first on the deck of the Sarah, born of his return to civilization; it had managed to decolorize the past few weeks and demagnetize Jude.

His conscious mind had never quite gauged the hold that Jude had managed to get upon him, and this subconscious devil, rising at the touch of civilization, like a gas bubble from his conventional past, had burst, with spoiling effect, robbing the Sarah of her romance and sea-charm and the past few weeks of their brightness. Jude had dimmed with everything else, become part and parcel of what seemed an illusion.

It was while sitting at the pictures, in black darkness, with knowledge of Skelton’s presence, that the atmosphere began to clear, the waves to beat again on Cormorant Cay, the gulls to fly and call—and Jude come back to life.

He heard again that queer little laugh of hers as she removed his hand. He felt again the warm body that had rested confidingly against him away there on the sandspit.

And then she was out on the black harbor alone in the Sarah, while he and Satan were watching the pictures! Suppose some lumbering sailing craft being towed to her moorings or some incoming mailboat were to smash into the Sarah—and they were to row off and find nothing—no Jude?

The thought almost made him rise from his seat to leave the place. But he could not explain to Satan; so he sat on till the lights flared out. And all the time, mocking the pictures on the screen, came pictures of Jude, all sunlit, real, fresh as herself!

Then, as they pursued their way to the wharf after leaving Skelton, the impatience increased; the darkness of the night, the blaze of the town, the gay life of the streets, and the revelry of the cafÉs seemed sinister and banded in a conspiracy against him and the lonely little figure of Jude. The indifference of Skelton, the way he had gone hurriedly off, the way he had ignored Satan, were part of the business, blended with the blazing cafÉs, the moving crowd of Chinks, colored men, Spaniards, and Americans, the brilliance and gaiety without heart, that seemed like a barrier between him and the humble little Sarah and Jude away out there in the darkness alone—waiting for him! It came to him that Jude was the one sole thing he wanted in the cruel, odd, electric-lit world—and he had left her!

They passed through narrow streets like the streets in an evil dream and blazing streets hideous with noise. Then at last they reached the wharf with its amber lights spilling on the black waving water. Satan hired a boat, and they put off, two dagoes rowing and Satan at the yoke-lines.

The Sarah was anchored a mile out, and the vast three-mile harbor, vague in the starlight and circled by the hills, seemed to Ratcliffe more immense than when seen by daylight.

Lights, lights everywhere,—scattered lights of shipping, some near, some far away, gem-crusted bulks that were great liners at anchor, songs and voices, and the creak of the oars in the rowlocks! Then a sudden green, red, and white light ahead and a fussy and furious little tug that nearly ran them down and left them rocking in her wash.

“Scowbankers!” said Satan. Then: “I can’t make out the light of the Sarah, nohow.”

A clutch came to Ratcliffe’s heart, the clutch of something cold and malign which had seemed following him ever since Skelton’s presence had made itself felt like an evil omen.

They were so far out now that the sounds of the town and wharves had died to nothing; but still the creak of the oars in the rowlocks kept on. Then came Satan’s voice: “That’s her, over beyond them three lights on the starboard bow.”

Ratcliffe breathed again, and his heart leaped in him as he picked out the light.

Satan altered their course.

“Are you sure?” asked Ratcliffe.

“Sure.”

“You gave me the devil of a fright.”

“Which way?”

“I thought she might have been run down by some ship coming in—or something.”

“Oh, she’s well out of the track,” said Satan.

“All the same, I didn’t feel easy.”

Then they hung silent, Ratcliffe’s eyes on the light and his hand in his pocket feeling for dollars to pay the boatmen.

“What’s there to pay?” asked he.

“A dollar, seeing there’s two of them,” replied Satan. “Sarah ahoy!”

“Ahoy!” came Jude’s voice, and a lantern swung over the side.

Satan bundled on board, and Ratcliffe crammed five dollars into the hand of the stern oar; then he followed, and the fellows pushed off.

“Took it without fightin’!” said Satan. “Lord’s sake, what’s come to them?” Then he bundled below to make some coffee.

Jude snuffed the lantern out.

She was moving away from the side and away from Ratcliffe, when he caught hold of her round the body. She did not resist him. He held her close to his heart.

“Jude!”

“What is it?” asked Jude, with a sudden catch in her breath and speaking in a whisper. “Whacha want?”

Then his lips met hers, full.

Five minutes later Satan, making his coffee over the Primus stove of the Haliotis, heard a struggling sound, mixed with stifled laughter, and Ratcliffe appeared at the cabin door. He was dragging Jude in; she was half-resisting, and her face was hid in the crook of her arm.

“Satan,” said Ratcliffe, “I’m going to marry Jude.”

“God help you!” said Satan.