n the whole. He bent his head over the strings,
plucked one, tightened a peg, plucked it again, then set the instrument
on the table, and dropped on to the mattress. "Will you have some rum?"
he said. "You have grown broad and strong, like a bull.... You made
those men fly, _sacre nom d'une pipe_.... One would have thought you
were in earnest.... Ah, well!" He stretched himself at length on the
mattress, and closed his eyes.

I looked at him to discover traces of irony. There weren't any. He was
talking quietly; he even reproved me for having carried the pretence of
resistance beyond a joke.

"You fought too much; you struck many men--and hard. You will have made
enemies. The _picaros_ of this dirty little town are as conceited as
pigs. You must take care, or you will have a knife in your back."

He lay with his hands crossed on his stomach, which was round like a
pudding. After a time he opened his eyes, and looked at the dancing
white reflection of the water on the grimy ceiling.

"To think of seeing you again, after all these years," he said. "I did
not believe my ears when Don Carlos asked me to fetch you like this.
Who would have believed it? But, as they say," he added philosophically,
"'The water flows to the sea, and the little stones find their places.'"
He paused to listen to the sounds that came from above. "That Manuel is
a fool," he said without rancour; "he is mad with jealousy because for
this day I have command here. But, all the same, they are dangerous
pigs, these slaves of the Senor O'Brien. I wish the town were rid of
them. One day there will be a riot--a function--with their jealousies
and madness."

I sat and said nothing, and things fitted themselves together, little
patches of information going in here and there like the pieces of a
puzzle map. O'Brien had gone on to Havana in the ship from which I
had escaped, to render an account of the pirates that had been hung at
Kingston; the Riegos had been landed in boats at Rio Medio, of course.

"That poor Don Carlos!" Castro moaned lamentably. "They had the
barbarity to take him out in the night, in that raw fog. He coughed
and coughed; it made me faint to hear him. He could not even speak to
me--his Tomas; it was pitiful. He could not speak when we got to the
Casa."

I could not really understand why I had been a second time kidnapped.
Castro said that O'Brien had not been unwilling that I should reach
Havana. It was Carlos that had ordered To