Sitting in the rounded bow of the wretched riverine steamer Honda, Padre Josè de Rincón gazed with vacant eyes upon the scenery on either hand. The boat had arrived from Barranquilla that morning, and was now experiencing the usual exasperating delay in embarking from Calamar. He had just returned to it, after wandering for hours through the forlorn little town, tormented physically by the myriad mosquitoes, and mentally by a surprising eagerness to reach his destination. He could account for the latter only on the ground of complete resignation--a feeling experienced by those unfortunate souls who have lost their way in life, and, after vain resistance to molding circumstances, after the thwarting of ambitions, the quenching of ideals, admit defeat, and await, with something of feverish anticipation, the end. He had left Cartagena early that morning on the ramshackle little train which, after hours of jolting over an undulating roadbed, set him down in Calamar, exhausted with the heat and dust-begrimed. He had not seen the Bishop nor Wenceslas since the interview of the preceding day. Before his departure, however, he had made provision for the burial of the girl, Maria, and the disposal of her child. This he did at his own expense; and when the demands of doctor and sexton had been met, and he had provided Marcelena with funds for the care of herself and the child for at least a few weeks, his purse was pitiably light. Late in the afternoon the straggling remnant of a sea breeze drifted up the river and tempered the scorching heat. Then the captain of the Honda drained his last glass of red rum in the _posada_, reiterated to his political affiliates with spiritous bombast his condensed opinion anent the Government, and dramatically signaled the pilot to get under way. Beyond the fact that Simití lay somewhere behind the liana-veiled banks of the great river, perhaps three hundred miles from Cartagena, the priest knew nothing of his destination. There were no passengers bound for the place, the captain had told him; nor had the captain himself ever been there, although he knew that one must leave the boat at a point called Badillo, and thence go by canoe to the town in question. But Josè's interest in Simití was only such as one might manifest in a prison to which he was being conveyed. And, as a prisoner of the Church, he inwardly prayed that his remaining days might be few. The blows which had fallen, one after another, upon his keen, raw nerves had left him benumbed. The cruel bruises which his faith in man had received in Rome and Cartagena had left him listless, and without pain. He was accepting the Bishop's final judgment mutely, for he had already borne all that human nature could endure. His severance from a life of faith and love was complete. Nor could Josè learn when he might hope to reach Badillo, though he made listless inquiry.