[SDL] Blitting through an Intermediary

[Brian]

I am using one png file (with alpha) to hold several images belonging to a
sprite.  
I have a sprite class which I would like to have a function returning a
surface corresponding to a given request.  
My attempt at this has been calling SDL_CreateRGBSurface(…) with the default
options as presented in the documentation.
I then blit to this surface and return it.  On the upper level now I blit 
this temporary surface to the screen.  
The result is simple: nothing appears.  
If I set the amask to 0 I get a black box, but any other value (including
default 0x000000ff) seems does nothing.  
Every SDL command I call returns success. 

Some relevant code:

image = IMG_Load_RW( SDL_RWFromFile( imageFile, "rb" ), 1 );
…
temp = SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_HWSURFACE, 40,80,32,rmask,gmask,bmask,amask);
…
src.w = 40;
src.h = 80;
src.x = 40*i;
src.y = 80*j;
dst.x = 0;
dst.y = 0;
SDL_BlitSurface( image, &src, temp, &dst );
…
(passed up)
…
dst.x = 2;
dst.y = 2;
SDL_BlitSurface( temp, NULL, target, &dst );


Where “target” is the screen.  
Other blits going from File -> Surface -> Display work with alpha. 
(As oppose to this File -> Surface -> Surface -> Display)

I’ve removed all my error checking and obviously quite a bit of other code,
but this is everything involving SDL calls.  
The sprite is currently 40x80 pixels,and the png file holds 3x3 images.

Thanks.