The month of August found the _Spirito Santo_, all sail set, running down the Pacific coast before a north-westerly wind. Elderkin watched the weather carefully, for he had no idea of losing his life, or, for the matter of that, the lives of any of his crew who could be allowed to retain them with safety to himself and the partners. For there is always the personal equation to be studied in a matter of this kind, and Elderkin had given much thought to the members of his crew. He had hoped, while always fearing the futility of it, that the first mate, Isidore Lemaire, might be kept in ignorance. For a while it seemed as though this were so, but since leaving port Elderkin had felt doubtful of the creole. Lemaire had a furtive way with him at the best of times, a hint as of something that crept and glided rather than walked normally, but then so had many of his race. He was supposed to be a white--in the expressive Island phrase, he "passed for white"--but on the French and Spanish and even the Danish islands the objection to racial mingling is not nearly so strong as in the colonies that have always been English. Also, Lemaire came from Martinique, which, after Haiti, is the headquarters of Obeah, and worse, of voodoo. Even quite good families in decaying Martinique had dealings with the unclean thing, and St. Pierre was known, even among sailors, for a hotbed of strange vices. All this was why Lemaire made such a powerful mate, for the crew, except for the red-headed Danish engineer from St. Thomas, were either half-castes from the Islands and the southern continent, or full-blooded negroes; which was to say that superstition was so part of them that the last vestige of it would only run out with the last drop of blood from their bodies. Elderkin knew better than to penetrate the forecastle, but he was aware of the bottles filled with dead cockroaches, bits of worsted and the rest of the paraphernalia for the casting of spells, which hung there. He himself had found that the only way to keep his steward off his whisky was to decorate his locker with a similar charm, and since he had done so had suffered no more from pilfering. All this was obeah, harmless enough, and if now and then, a white cock was sacrificed in the forecastle and a seaman went somewhat mad on its blood, Elderkin ignored the matter. But Lemaire was, he knew, suspected by the crew of darker dealings. There had been a rumour that the reason Lemaire left Martinique was because the disappearance of a planter's child was like to be laid at his door, and the rumour was enough to make the niggers cringe before him. This was a master, perhaps the friend of papalois and mamalois, with the power of life and death. Elderkin loathed him--there are things from which the most hardened white man shrinks, and it would have to be one utterly unregenerate who could dabble his hands in voodooism. Nevertheless, the suspicion made Lemaire the best nigger-driver in the length and breadth of the