Don Felix shrugged. "_Quien sabe?_ Who knows what they do up yonder? These people they are _drôle_. Sometimes they bring me cargo. Sometimes they come to beg; there is a _fiesta_ in their village, they make _fandango_, _jamboree._ The trader pays for the fiesta and gets back nothing." "Then why do you pay?" "It is better," Don Felix replied and looked at the door, as if to see there was nobody about. "They are _bête_, the _Mestizos_, but when one is wise one does not make enemies. There is much Obeah in the bush." "_Obeah_'s something like African Ju-Ju? Magic of a sort?" Marston suggested. "Something like that," Wyndham agreed. "I don't know much about it." He looked at the agent. "Do you?" Don Felix made the sign of the cross. "Me, I am good Catholic; I know nothing. They are _drôle_ in the bush. When I think about their folly I laugh." "Not always, I imagine," Wyndham remarked dryly. "However, we must persuade these folks we have goods they'd find useful. That's the beginning of trade. When a man sees he needs things somebody else has got, he gets to work and looks for something to sell. Now let's consider----" Marston listened while his comrade talked. Harry sometimes surprised people who did not know him well. He was romantic but he had a calculating vein. Harry could plan and bargain, and Marston reflected that while the Wyndhams had long been adventurers they were traders, too. After an hour's talk he had arranged much that promised to help the agent's business and they went back to the creek. "In a way, we're lucky," Wyndham observed while they paddled down stream. "The people we're going to deal with are nearly pure Africans and we know something about negroes." Marston said nothing. He did not know if they were lucky or not and rather doubted. They returned to the schooner and in the morning cargo began to arrive. Two or three days afterwards Wyndham went off to the village with some of the crew and Marston gave the others leave to go ashore. Neither the boys nor Wyndham came back at dark, but this did not matter. Although the schooner rose upright for a few hours when the tide flowed, she would not float until the new moon, and the muddy lagoon was as smooth as a pond.