ops, gamblers, pretty
Creole girls with easy manners, and ragged desperados who carried knives,
in Santa Brigida. In fact, it offered too many opportunities for romantic
adventures. In consequence, Dick went to the Hotel Magellan, which they
reached after walking from the end of the line, and took Jake into the
bar.

"You had better stop here; I won't be longer than I can help," he said.
"They'll make you a rather nice iced drink of Canary _tinto_."

"Just so," Jake replied. "_Tinto's_ a thin, sour claret, isn't it? In New
York not long ago you could get iced buttermilk. Can't say I was fond of
it, but I reckon it's as exhilarating as the other stuff."

Dick left him with some misgivings and went about his business. It was
eight o'clock in the evening and the foundry would be closed, but he knew
where the manager lived and went to his house, which was situated in the
older part of the city. He had not taken Jake because he had to pass some
of the less reputable cafes and gambling dens and thought it undesirable
that the lad should know where they were. The foundry manager was not at
home, but a languishing young woman with a thickly powdered face, who
called her mother before she conferred with Dick, told him where Don
Tomas had gone, and Dick set off again in search of the cafe she named.

A half moon hung low in the clear sky, but, for the most part, its light
only reached a short distance down the white and yellow fronts of the
flat-topped houses. These got light and air from the central courtyard,
or patio, and the outer walls were only pierced by one or two very narrow
windows at some height from the ground. The openings were marked here and
there by a faint glow from within, which was often broken by a shadowy
female form leaning against the bars and speaking softly to another
figure on the pavement below.

There were few street lamps, and in places the houses crowded in upon the
narrow strip of gloom through which Dick picked his way with echoing
steps. Most of the citizens were in the plaza, and the streets were quiet
except for the measured beat of the surf and the distant music of the
band. A smell of rancid oil and garlic, mingled with the strong perfumes
Spanish women use, hung about the buildings, but now and then a puff of
cooler air flowed through a dark opening and brought with it the keen
freshness of the sea. Once the melancholy note of a guitar came down from
a roof and somebody began to sing in a