"Ramon, _que dice_?" The boy understood English. Dan added, "Don't be a fool, Ramon! Tell me--" Hulda gasped, "What--what is it, Dan?" He swung on her, and as he saw her face, the solemn fear in her dark eyes, his laugh faded. "Hulda, he says he was riding home from a fiesta over at the Rolf plantation in Factor. Coming back--you know the hills back there where the bat caves are--what we call our Eden tract? He saw something--a woman like a ghost, he says--a woman's figure that jumped--it's out there now!" Ramon had shrunk against the wall, shuddering; the whites of his black eyes glistened in the blue glare of the vacuum tube. "Ramon, you been drinking?" "No! Oh, no--no, señor!" "What--else, Dan?" Hulda wanted to laugh. It was funny, taking seriously, paying attention to a native's devil story. Other years, an Americano señor would laugh derisively at any peon who talked of a ghost he had seen in the moonlight. But not now; there was an uncanniness in the very air everywhere in the world this winter. The boy was quieter. He told Dan more and Dan soberly translated it. A thing like a great round silver ball--big as a native shack--glistening with the moonlight on it as it lay in a coconut grove, a mile from the Cains' plantation house, near the hills where the bat caves are. Ramon's pony had suddenly shied, and then Ramon had seen the gleaming white thing lying there. And then he had seen a figure--like the white figure of a woman or a girl--a white girl, with flowing white hair. It was quite near him. Standing beside the sloping trunk of a big palm tree that grew on the hillside. Twenty feet away, perhaps, and ten feet higher than the trail along which he was riding. Ramon was stiff with fear. His pony had halted; it stood with upraised head and pointing ears. It saw the white woman's motionless figure and suddenly raised its head with a long shuddering neigh of fear. The sound must have startled the white woman up there. Ramon saw her crouch; then she leaped from the hillside. His pony bolted. And then he lashed it for home, fearing the thing was chasing him. Dan was very solemn. "That doesn't sound like a ghost tale, Hulda. Ramon, saddle our ponies. Mine--_Parti-blanco_--and the señorita's. Not with the _aparejo_--with the man's saddle." He glanced at Hulda, her trim figure in leather puttees and brown riding trousers; and her face was now almost as white as her white blouse. She stammered. "You want to go out there--go and see--" Ramon whimpered, "Señor, I'm afraid, here at the corral--if it followed after me." * * * * * Dan strode to the porch. The broad spread of the plantations lay solemn and still under the cold white moon. The thatched roof of the corral was dark, with inky black shadows beside the building. The banana trees arching up over the house waved gently in the night breeze. Everything was sharply white and black. But there was no sign of any intruder, human or otherwise.