The evening monsoon had set in, rippling the surface of the sea and humming its cooling refrain through the rigging. Casey yawned heavily and went below to seek the planter's early sleep. Cochran remained with Terry for a half-hour, enlightening him with a running talk of the problems confronting the planters. He was well educated, progressive, and backed by ample family means had developed the best holding in the Gulf. He told Terry that on this trip he had succeeded in persuading thirty timid Visayan families to settle upon his plantation despite their native fear of all things Mindanaoan, and that his profits for the year would return him sixty per cent of the capital he had invested in his place. "You will soon understand conditions, Lieutenant," he declared as he rose to go below. "Most of the planters need labor, and they need capital." He threw his cigar butt over the rail, debating the ethics of uttering what might be thought a criticism of his associates. "And they need farming intelligence most--too many of them were army men or government men before coming down here, yet they tackle a highly specialized form of tropical agriculture with utter confidence! They aren't farmers--they're just heroes!" He half-turned to go, hesitated: "Lieutenant, you're going to like it down here--because we're going to like you. Now, of course it's none of my business, but if I were you I would keep away from Sears' place--he will make his threat good. He has it in him to become a pretty bad man--but as I say, it's none of my business. Goodnight, sir." After Cochran had gone, Terry, sleepless, slowly walked the gently rolling deck. Ledesma stood at the rail near the forward lifeboat gazing into the soft shadows which shrouded the muttering ship. At Terry's quiet approach he turned to address him abstractedly in the liquid Spanish of cultured Filipinos. "Buenas Noches, Senor Teniente." Terry answered in the same tongue: "Good Evening, Senor Ledesma. A fine night." The natives' vague fear of the dark--wrought into instinct by a thousand generations of ancestors who crouched at night around flickering campfires in jungles through which crept hostile men and marauding beasts--had fastened upon him, stripping him of the thin veneer of civilization the Spaniards had laid but lightly over the Malayan barbarism. He shifted uneasily, looked out over the starlit sea. "Teniente," he murmured, "I like not the night. The dead rise ... some sing ... some complain ... drift through the black mists searching for those they have long lost ... the vampires seek for unprotected children.... I like not the night...."