The governor’s car, a Cadillac--tribute to the far-flung efficiency of American salesmanship--was driven by the chauffeur over what I took to be the edge of a sheer precipice. I inhaled noisily. Then we were gliding down a cobbled road that, serpentine, embraced a fairy port. Nestling in a cleft, a volcanic chasm, its terraced roofs silvered by the crescent moon, lay a town asleep. Patches of colour, as though a Titan artist had thrown uncleaned palettes into the hollow, crowded upon and overlay the white walls. Green fronds peeped above pools of shadow. A beautiful auditorium, this town looked down upon the eternal drama of the sea. O’Shea spoke to the chauffeur in Portuguese. His command of unpronounceable languages was not the least of his acquirements. The powerful brakes were applied and our switchback descent ceased. We proceeded on foot. Where a low stone wall prevented the traveller from falling through the roof of a villa some twenty feet below, O’Shea pulled up, grasped my arm, and pointed. Displaying her graceful, creamy shape like a courtesan stretched upon blue velvet, a fine-lined motor boat rode in the tiny harbour. Lights shone out from her cabin ports. O’Shea unbuttoned the coat that he wore over dinner kit and began to twirl his monocle to and fro upon its black ribbon about an extended finger. “There is Da Cunha’s boat,” said he; “and there, no doubt, is what we are after. But it looks----” “As though Nanette had failed to keep Macalister?” O’Shea turned to me, and his eyes gleamed very coldly in the moonlight. “Decies,” he said, “you remind me of an unpleasant truth: that if I succeed in this matter I shall be indebted to a girl.” “She will have done a big thing for England.” “I don’t begrudge her that. It would hurt me to think she had done it for me.” For a moment I hesitated; then: “I think she knows it,” I ventured, “and wants to hurt you.” “Why?” “Because you hurt _her_.” He stared very fixedly out over the harbour for some moments, but he did not seem to have taken offence. At last: “If I had married very young, Decies,” he said, “and God had been good to me, I might have had a daughter like Nanette. Even if there were no other reason, shouldn’t I be a blackguard to think of her except as a wilful child?” But I could find no answer. This man’s codes were beyond me. Young though he was in the days of the Big Push, he had won a name that had outlasted those of a score of general officers and more than one field marshal. The fact came home to me and brought with it a great humility, that I was not of the stuff that histories are made of. “Suppose we go and look for a boat,” I said. O’Shea aroused himself--for he had his dreams even as you and I. “A boat it is,” said he. “As I have no official status whatever, there’s nothing for it but frank piracy. Are you game?” “Every time.”