It was still very bright, very hot; but already, as though for sheer weight and wiltedness, the huge sun lolled in its orbit, and like a turbulent bed smoothed out at last for the night the green mangrove-pillow and white sand-sheet of the fast-receding shore gleamed soft and cool at last above the taut blue blanket of the Gulf. Perched high in the bow of the launch Daphne sat staring back at her traveling companions--the puny Outlaw, the gigantic Lost Man, her own most distinguished-looking father, and the mysterious lady. Like a crippled phonograph record her mind seemed to catch suddenly on that phrase "her most distinguished-looking father and the mysterious lady--the mysterious lady." . . . And they were all bound somewhere on a mysterious [148] errand--an all-night mysterious errand concerning some mad woman who didn't like red and--and----Quite alarmingly her heart began to pound and pound and pound! "And a month ago," she thought, "I was getting up when bells rang, and going to bed when bells rang, and thinking when bells rang, and stopping thinking when bells rang!" In a curious little shiver she looked up suddenly to find Lost Man's eyes fixed on hers with a distinctly benign and apostolic smile, but even as he smiled he hunched his shoulders up, clapped his hands together and burst once more into the old English song: "Diaphenia, like the daffadowndilly, White as the sun, fair as the lily. . . ." With a single outcry, Daphne tossed back her head and shrieked her nerves into space. "Good!" said her father. "Now you'll feel better!" [149] II IT was dark when they sighted the yellow lantern light on Martha's Island. Darkness drops down so suddenly in the far south! It's rather spooky! Rather a nice spooky, though, if you happen to be a reasonably innocent Northerner looking for thrills. It's only poor souls like Lost Man and the Outlaw, and perhaps even Martha herself, to whom Darkness symbolizes a stab in the back, a shot from ambush, or God knows what! To Daphne, this night, the darkness was all a-tingle with magic and pain. High overhead in ineffable crispness the blue-black dome of the sky seemed fairly crackling with stars. Close around her in murky mystery the great Gulf chuckled and prattled of coral and pearl. From the dark, huddled group in the stern of the boat not a face or a feature flared familiarly to hers. And drowned in the shuddering gasp and throb of the engine [150] her father's deep-voiced raillery, even the Brown Khaki Lady's light laughter, sounded like something from another world. It was Daphne's own little world that concerned her most at that moment, a world in chaos!