Wyndham nodded. "Day's breaking; it will soon be blazing hot. The sun may kill the wind, but I don't know. It's a fiery dawn." Blocks began to rattle and when the first boat swung across the rail Marston looked about. Broad beams of light stretched across the sky and the red sun rose out of the sea. He went to a chair under the awning and threw himself down. He had earned a few minutes' rest, but when they had gone he did not move and Wyndham smiled as he noted his even breath. Beckoning a Krooboy, he sent him for a blanket and gently covered the sleeping man. Marston was wakened by a lurch that threw him off the chair, and getting up stiffly he noted the sharp slant of deck. Then he saw foam boil behind the lee rail and straining curves of canvas that kept their hollowness when the yacht rolled to windward. She trailed a snowy wake across the backs of the sparkling seas and her rigging hummed on a high, piercing note. The sky was blue, but the blue was dim and the sunshine had lost its dazzling glare. One felt a bracing quality in the breeze. "Looks as if we had hit the _Trades_," he said. "What's her course?" "About North, North-west," said Wyndham, who sat on the stern grating and indicated the Kroo at the wheel. "Bad Dollar is steering by the wind. I reckoned we had better make some northing while we can. Off our course, but the _Trades_ are fickle in this latitude. Suppose you get your sextant. It's close on twelve o'clock." Marston looked at the nearly vertical sun and laughed. "I feel as if I'd just gone to sleep," he said and went below. The breeze freshened and held, _Columbine_ with all plain sail set made good speed, and they laid off a straight course on the big Atlantic chart. The risks of the middle passage were left behind. If they were lucky, she would reach far across on the starboard tack, without their shifting a rope. Their hopes were justified and at length they made Barbadoes, and sailing between the Windward Isles, entered the Caribbean. One phase of the adventure was over, but Marston with vague misgivings realized that another had begun. Somehow he felt he had not done with the shadow he had shrunk from in Africa. For all that, nothing happened to disturb him as they followed the coast, stopping now and then at an open roadstead, and now and then in the stagnant harbor of an old Spanish town. Indeed, Marston found much that was soothingly familiar; smart liners, rusty cargo boats, and busy hotels. In parts, the towns had been modernized, but civilized comforts, and sometimes luxuries, contrasted sharply with decay and customs that had ruled since the first Spaniards came.