water didn't cling so lingeringly.

"Her bare young legs, as they twinkled on the beach, were like a pair of
moving poems to Cogan, and then the long cloak enveloped her. An instant
later the little feet slipped out from beneath the cloak and into the
sandals, and then a big woman came running down the beach. Cogan
recognized her--the same big Indian who had come after his Peruvian
friend the night before. He decided she must be a descendant of the old
Incas that Pizarro conquered, and of course that didn't make it any less
interesting. She began to scold the girl, peering distressfully around
while she was talking as if to see if any early hotel riser had seen
them. But the girl only made a face up at her, and that gave Cogan his
first sight of her teeth. He thought her the most delightful looking
creature he had ever seen. They disappeared between a row of trees
further up the beach--a row of palms which guarded a line of cottages
from the wash of the surf.

"'That,' said Cogan to himself, when his eyes couldn't make out the
fluttering of her cloak any more--'that must be Valera.' And he sat
down to the hotel breakfast with a great appetite, thinking happily that
by and by he would see her father again.

"But Cogan, who was off a cruiser in Colon harbor, had to be back aboard
for quarters that morning; and after quarters it was up the coast to
Chiriqui Lagoon to coal ship, and it was three days more before he was
back in Colon. His Peruvian friend he could not find, but he looked up
the Chinese trader that he'd first seen him with and who had a shop on
the corner between Martin Jackson's and the faro joint.

"The Chinaman could tell him. Señor Roca had taken the choo-choo back to