Romance

that the Lugarenos were cowardly, divided by faction, incapable, by themselves, of combining for any length of time, and still less of following a plan requiring perseverance and hardihood.

'They can't mean anything in the nature of open attack,' I affirmed. 'They may have attempted something of the sort in Nichols' time, but it isn't in their nature.'

Sebright said that was practically Castro's opinion, too—except that Castro had emphasized his remarks by spitting all the time, 'like an old tomcat. He seems a very spiteful man, with no great love for you, Mr. Kemp. Do you think it safe to have him about you? What are all these grievances of his?'

Castro seemed to have spouted his bile like a volcano, and had rather confused Sebright. He had said much about being a friend of the Spanish lord—Carlos; and that now he had no place on earth to hide his head.

'As far as I could make out, he's wanted in England,' said Sebright, 'for some matter of a stolen watch, years ago in Liverpool, I think. And your cousin, the grandee, was mixed up in that, too. That sounds funny; you didn't tell us about that. Damme if he didn't seem to imply that you, too... But you have never been in Liverpool. Of course not....'

But that had not been precisely Castro's point. He had affirmed he had enemies in Spain; he shuddered at the idea of going to France, and now my English fancifulness had made it impossible for him to live in Rio Medio, where he had had the care of a good pad-rona.

'I suppose he means a landlady,' Sebright chuckled. 'Old but good, he says. He expected to die there in peace, a good Christian. And what's that about the priests getting hold of his very last bit of silver? I must say that sounded truest of all his rigmarole. For the salvation of his soul, I suppose?'

'No, my cousin's soul,' I said gloomily.

'Humbugs. I only understood one word in three.'

Just then Tomas himself stalked into sight among the men forward. Coming round the corner of the deck- house, he stopped at the galley door like a crow outside a hut, waiting. We watched him getting a light for his cigarette at the galley door with much dignified pantomime. The negro cook of the Lion, holding out to him in the doorway a live coal in a pair of tongs, turned his Ethiopian face and white ivories towards a group of sailors lost in the contemplation of the proceedings.' And, when Castro had passed them, spurting jets of smoke, they swung about to look after his short figure, upon whose draped blackness the sunlight brought out reddish streaks as if bucketfuls of rusty water had been thrown over him from hat to toe. The end of his broken plume hung forward aggressively.

'Look how the fellow struts! Night and thunder! Hey, Don Tenebroso! Would your worship hasten hither....' Sebright hailed jocularly.

Castro, without altering his pace, came up to us.

'What do you think of her now?' asked Sebright, pointing to the strange sail. 'She's grown a bit plainer, now she is out of the glare.'

Castro, wrapping his chin, stood still, face to the sea. After a long while:

'Malediction,' he pronounced slowly, and without moving his head shot a sidelong glance at me.

'It's clear enough how he feels about our friends over there. Malediction. Just so. Very proper. But it seems as though he had a bone to pick with all the world,' drawled Sebright, a little sleepily. Then, resuming his briskness, he bantered, 'So you don't want to go to England, Mr. Castro? No friends there? Sus. per col., and that sort of thing?'

Castro, contemptuous, staring straight away, nodded impatiently.

'But this gentleman you are so devoted to is going to England—to his friends.'

Castro's arms shook under the mantle falling all round him straight from the neck. His whole body seemed convulsed. From his puckered dark lips issued a fiendish and derisive squeal.

'Let his friends beware, then. Por Dios! Let them beware. Let them pray and fast, and beg the intercession of the saints. Ha! ha! ha!...'

Nothing could have been more unlike his saturnine self-centred truculence of restraint. He impressed me; and even Sebright's steady, cool eyes grew perceptibly larger before this sarcastic fury. Castro choked; the rusty, black folds encircling him shook and heaved. Unexpectedly he thrust out in front of the cloak one yellow, dirty little hand, side by side with the bright end of his fixed blade.

'What do I hear? To England! Going to England! Ha! Then let him hasten there straight! Let him go straight there, I say—I, Tomas Castro!'

He lowered his tone to impress us more, and the point of the knife, as it were an emphatic forefinger, tapped the open palm forcibly. Did we think that a man was not already riding along the coast to Havana on a fast mule?— the very best mule from the stables of Don Balthasar himself—that murdered saint. The Captain-General had no such mules. His late excellency owned a sugar estate halfway between Rio Medio and Havana, and a relay of riding mules was kept there for quickness when His Excellency of holy memory found occasion to write his commands to the capital. The news of our escape would reach the Juez next day at the latest. Manuel would take care of that—unless he were drowned. But he could swim like a fish. Malediction!

'I cried out to you to kill!' he addressed me directly; 'with all my soul I cried. And why? Because he had seen you and the senorita, too, alas! He should have been made dumb—made dumb with your pistol, Senor, since those two stupid English mariners were too much for an old man like me. Manuel should have been made dumb—dumb forever, I say. What mattered he—that gutter-born offspring of an evil Gitana, whom I have seen, Senor! I, myself, have seen her in the days of my adversity in Madrid, Senor—a red flower behind the ear, clad in rags that did not cover all her naked skin, looking on while they fought for her with knives in a wine-shop full of beggars and thieves. Si, senor. That's his mother. Improvisador—politico—capataz. Ha.... Dirt!'

He made a gesture of immense contempt.

'What mattered he? The coach would have returned from the cathedral, and the Casa Riego could have been held for days—and who could have known you were not inside. I had conversed earnestly with Cesar the major- domo—an African, it is true, but a man of much character and excellent sagacity. Ah, Manuel! Manuel! If I———But the devil himself fathers the children of such mothers. I am no longer in possession of my first vigour, and you, Senor, have all the folly of your nation....'