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He stopped in his tracks, still, for the first time in Coralio; and then he sped, swift as a deer, to find Vasquez, a gilded native youth, to present him. The young men had named Pasa "La Santita Naranjadita." Naranjadita is a Spanish word for a certain colour that you must go to more trouble to describe in English.
Don Sabas lagged a little behind, looking at the still form of the late admiral, sprawled in his paltry trappings. "Pobrecito loco," he said softly. He was a brilliant cosmopolite and a cognoscente of high rank; but, after all, he was of the same race and blood and instinct as this people. Even as the simple paisanos of Coralio had said it, so said Don Sabas.
But Fate had hurled him headlong down to the tropics, where flamed in his bosom a fire that was seldom quenched. In Coralio they called him a beachcomber; but he was, in reality, a categorical idealist who strove to anamorphosize the dull verities of life by the means of brandy and rum.
The other room was the consul's living apartment. It was eleven o'clock when he returned from the beach, and therefore breakfast time. Chanca, the Carib woman who cooked for him, was just serving the meal on the side of the gallery facing the sea a spot famous as the coolest in Coralio.
Keogh, acclimated beyond all possibility of ill-humour, drew his chair to the table with smiling compliance on his rose-pink countenance, and began to slit open the letters. Four of them were from citizens in various parts of the United States who seemed to regard the consul at Coralio as a cyclopaedia of information.
Every week they expected to see that roll of papers delivered and received in that same manner, and they were never disappointed. Innovations did not flourish in Coralio. The consul re-hoisted his umbrella and walked back to the consulate.
Also the lonesome wash of the waves that beat along the historic shores of the Spanish Main. A two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States of America to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned.
"Hey! black boys!" said the captain, in a dialect of his own; "you sabe, catchy boat and vamos back same place quick." They saw him point to themselves, the sloop and Coralio. "Yas, yas!" they cried, with broader grins and many nods. The four Don Sabas, the two officers and the captain moved to quit the sloop.
Perhaps in years to come Rosine would think how true, how faithful his love had been, and would drop a tear maybe in the cream she would be skimming for Pink Dawson's breakfast. The wheels of politics revolved; and Johnny was appointed consul to Coralio. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetter's to say good-bye.
Colonel Falcon soon came to the reasonable conclusion that if anyone in Coralio could furnish a clue to the vanished money, Frank Goodwin must be the man. But the wise secretary pursued a different course in seeking information from the American. Goodwin was a powerful friend to the new administration, and one who was not to be carelessly dealt with in respect to either his honesty or his courage.
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