By the time we reached the eastern cape, or headland of the small bay, the sun, near his setting, had tinged the whole calm sea, as far as the eye could reach, with a bluish purple. The stars appeared larger than usual; some of them surrounded with tiny haloes; and the planet Venus, as she struggled up in the east, loomed like a small moon. We wound downwards along a zig-zag path, hewn out of the rock, until we arrived at the beautiful white beach, which we had admired so much from above. The swell from the offing tumbled in towards the land, in long purple undulations, and as it broke on the rocky coast beyond the promontory, the noise was like the distant roar of a populous town, borne on the swell of the breeze. In the bay itself, however, all was still; the surface of the sea clear and calm as a mirror. The sun was still visible to us, but already every thing was in shade on the opposite side of the anchorage--here about a quarter of a mile across, where the dark trees and bushes were reflected with startling distinctness: There was no ascertaining the water line in that direction, as the bank was high and precipitous, and the foliage darkened down to the very water's edge; on our side, at the head of the bay, there was a small wooden wharf that ran into the sea, alongside of which lay a shallop with her sails hoisted, but hanging motionless in the dead calm, from the spars. A solitary negro was walking slowly up and down this erection, smoking; his shadow in the water looking like his _doppel ganger_, or a familiar spirit. There was a large schooner lying right in the centre of the bay, very heavily rigged, and apparently armed, but I could see no one on deck at first; presently, however, there was a bustle on board of her, and two boats were hoisted out. "What schooner is that?" I asked Mr Hudson--he did not know--it must be some coaster he thought. "It cannot be that they are startled at our appearance, surely," said Helen; "yet it looks like it." "Oh, nonsense!" cried Don Lorenzo--"a drogger waiting for coffee; a drogger, Miss Hudson, believe me." But I was not sure of this, for all at once, under the cliff on the opposite side, we heard the sound of a hammer, and could see a forge at work, by the sparks that rose up like clouds of fire-flies, and the sudden jets of light that glanced on the water: flashing on the hairy chest and muscular arms of a swarthy-looking fellow, naked all to his trowsers, who was busily employed with his hammer, and on the dingy figure of a negro that worked the bellows for him. "When Vulcan forged the bolts of Jove," sang Listado, but the sound of his own voice in the unnatural stillness, startled both himself and us, and he broke off abruptly. Next moment the flame of the forge disappeared, the clink of the hammer, and the creaking and puffing of the bellows ceased. A boat now put off from the schooner, and pulled in the direction of the forge.