gaged a colored Cuban fisherman
to meet me with a sail-boat at 4 A.M. He had been waiting for me,
patiently or impatiently, more than three hours; but he merely looked at
me reproachfully, and pointed to the sun, as if to say, "You agreed to
be here at daybreak, and now see where the sun is." I laid my head down
sidewise on the palm of my hand, shut my eyes, snored vociferously, and
explained to him in Russian that I had overslept myself. I was gratified
to see that he understood my Russian perfectly. In communicating with
Cubans and Spaniards I have always made it a practice to address them in
Russian, for the obvious reason that, as they are foreigners, and
Russian is a foreign tongue, they must necessarily understand that
language a little better than they could possibly understand English. It
may seem like an absurd idea, but I have no hesitation in saying that a
skilful and judicious combination of Russian with the sign-language is a
good deal more intelligible to a Cuban fisherman than either
Pidgin-English or Volapuek. Voltaire once cynically remarked that
"paternosters will shave if said over a good razor." So Russian will
convey a perfectly clear idea to a Cuban fisherman if accompanied by a
sufficiently pictorial pantomime. I tried it repeatedly on my boatman,
and became convinced that if I only spoke Russian a little more
grammatically, and gesticulated the sign-language a little more
fluently, I could explain to him the outlines of cosmic philosophy and
instruct him in the doctrines of esoteric Buddhism. I never should have
got to Morro Castle and back with him if I had not been able to draw
diagrams in the air with both hands and my head simultaneously, and then
explain them to him in colloquial Russian.

The surface of the bay, as we pushed off from the pier, was almost as
smooth and glassy as an expanse of oil; and although my negro boatman
whistled persuasively for a breeze, after the manner of sailors, and
even ejaculated something that sounded suspiciously like "Come up
'leven!" as he bent to his clumsy oars, he could not coax the Cuban
AEolus to unloose the faintest zephyr from the cave of the winds in the
high blue mountains north of the city. He finally suspended his
whistling to save his breath, wiped his sweaty face on his shirt-sleeve,
and made a few cursory remarks in Spanish to relieve his mind and
express his unfavorable opinion of the weather. I shared his feelings,
even if I could not adopt