the cabin of the schooner.

They left me alone there, and I sat with my head on my arms for a long
time, I did not think of anything at all; I was too utterly done up with
my struggles, and there was nothing to be thought about. I had grown to
accept the meanness of things as if I had aged a great deal. I had
seen men scratch each other's faces over coat buttons, old shoes--over
Mercer's trousers. My own future did not interest me at this stage. I
sat up and looked round me.

I was in a small, bare cabin, roughly wainscotted and exceedingly
filthy. There were the grease-marks from the backs of heads all along a
bulkhead above a wooden bench; the rough table, on which my arms rested,
was covered with layers of tallow spots. Bright light shone through a
porthole. Two or three ill-assorted muskets slanted about round the foot
of the mast--a long old piece, of the time of Pizarro, all red velvet
and silver' chasing, on a swivelled stand, three English fowling-pieces,
and a coachman's blunderbuss. A man was rising from a mattress stretched
on the floor; he placed a mandolin, decorated with red favours, on
the greasy table. He was shockingly thin, and so tall that his head
disturbed the candle-soot on the ceiling. He said: "Ah, I was waiting
for the cavalier to awake."

He stalked round the end of the table, slid between it and the side,
and grasped my arm with wrapt earnestness as he settled himself slowly
beside me. He wore a red shirt that had become rather black where his
long brown ringlets fell on his shoulders; it had tarnished gilt buttons
ciphered "G. R.," stolen, I suppose, from some English ship.

"I beg the Senor Caballero to listen to what I have to record," he said,
with intense gravity. "I cannot bear this much longer--no, I cannot bear
my sufferings much longer."

His face was of a large, classical type; a close-featured, rather long
face, with an immense nose that from the front resembled the section of
a bell; eyebrows like horseshoes, and very large-pupilled eyes that
had the purplish-brown lustre of a horse's. His air was mournful in
the extreme, and he began to speak resonantly as if his chest were
a sounding-board. He used immensely long sentences, of which I only
understood one-half.

"What, then, is the difference between me, Manuel-del-Popolo Isturiz,
and this Tomas Castro? The Senor Caballero can tell at once. Look at me.
I am the finer man. I would have you ask the ladies of Rio Medio, and
l