Romance

Carlos, however, used to declare with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... 'I cut his throat out, though,' Castro would grumble darkly; 'so, like that, and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I put on my blade. See, I transfix you that fly there.... See how astonished he was. He did never expect that.' He had actually impaled a crawling cockroach. He spent his days cooking extraordinary messes, crouching for hours over a little charcoal brazier that he lit surreptitiously in the back of his bunk, making substitutes for eternal gaspachos.

All these things, if they deepened the romance of Carlos' career, enhanced, also, the mystery. I asked him one day, 'But why do you go to Jamaica at all if you are bound for Cuba?'

He looked at me, smiling a little mournfully.

'Ah, Juan mio,' he said, 'Spain is not like your England, unchanging and stable. The party who reign to-day do not love me, and they are masters in Cuba as in Spain. But in his province my uncle rules alone. There I shall be safe.' He was condescending to roll some cigarettes for Tomas, whose wooden hand incommoded him, and he tossed a fragment of tobacco to the wind with a laugh. 'In Jamaica there is a merchant, a Senor Ramon; I have letters to him, and he shall find me a conveyance to Rio Medio, my uncle's town. He is an quliado.'

He laughed again. 'It is not easy to enter that place, Juanino.'

There was certainly some mystery about that town of his uncle's. One night I overheard him say to Castro:

'Tell me, O my Tomas, would it be safe to take this caballero, my cousin, to Rio Medio?'

Castro paused, and then murmured gruffly:

'Senor, unless that Irishman is consulted beforehand, or the English lord would undertake to join with the picaroons, it is very assuredly not safe.'

Carlos made a little exclamation of mild astonishment.

'Pero? Is it so bad as that in my uncle's own town?'

Tomas muttered something that I did not catch, and then:

'If the English caballero committed indiscretions, or quarrelled—and all these people quarrel, why, God knows—that Irish devil could hang many persons, even myself, or take vengeance on your worship.'

Carlos was silent as if in a reverie. At last he said:

'But if affairs are like this, it would be well to have one more with us. The caballero, my cousin, is very strong and of great courage.'

Castro grunted, 'Oh, of a courage! But as the proverb says, 'If you set an Englishman by a hornets' nest they shall not remain long within.':

After that I avoided any allusion to Cuba, because the thing, think as I would about it, would not grow clear. It was plain that something illegal was going on there, or how could 'that Irish devil,' whoever he was, have power to hang Tomas and be revenged on Carlos? It did not affect my love for Carlos, though, in the weariness of this mystery, the passage seemed to drag a little. And it was obvious enough that Carlos was unwilling or unable to tell anything about what pre-, occupied him.

I had noticed an intimacy spring up between the ship's second mate and Tomas, who was, it seemed to me, forever engaged in long confabulations in the man's cabin, and, as much to make talk as for any other reason, I asked Carlos if he had noticed his dependent's familiarity. It was noticeable because Castro held aloof from every other soul on board. Carlos answered me with one of his nervous and angry smiles.

'Ah, Juan mine, do not ask too many questions! I wish you could come with me all the way, but I cannot tell you all I know. I do not even myself know all. It seems that the man is going to leave the ship in Jamaica, and has letters for that Senor Ramon, the merchant, even as I have. Vaya; more I cannot tell you.'

This struck me as curious, and a little of the whole mystery seemed from that time to attach to the second mate, who before had been no more to me than a long, sallow Nova Scotian, with a disagreeable intonation and rather offensive manners. I began to watch him, desultorily, and was rather startled by something more than a suspicion that he himself was watching me. On one occasion in particular I seemed to observe this. The second mate was lankily stalking the deck, his hands in his pockets. As he paused in his walk to spit into the sea beside me, Carlos said:

'And you, my Juan, what will you do in this Jamaica?'

The sense that we were approaching land was already all over the ship. The second mate leered at me enigmatically, and moved slowly away. I said that I was going to the Horton Estates, Rooksby's, to learn planting under a Mr. Macdonald, the agent. Carlos shrugged his shoulders. I suppose I had spoken with some animation.

'Ah,' he said, with his air of great wisdom and varied experience, of disillusionment, 'it will be much the same as it has been at your home—after the first days. Hard work and a great sameness.' He began to cough violently.

I said bitterly enough, 'Yes. It will be always the same with me. I shall never see life. You've seen all that there is to see, so I suppose you do not mind settling down with an old uncle in a palace.'

He answered suddenly, with a certain darkness of manner, 'That is as God wills. Who knows? Perhaps life, even in my uncle's palace, will not be so safe.'

The second mate was bearing down on us again.

I said jocularly, 'Why, when I get very tired of life at Horton Pen, I shall come to see you in your uncle's town.'

Carlos had another of his fits of coughing.