mas to take me out of the
_Breeze_. He had come down in the raw morning, before the schooner had
put out from behind the point, to impress very elaborate directions upon
Tomas Castro; indeed, it was whilst talking to Tomas that he had burst a
blood-vessel.

"He said to me: 'Have a care now. Listen. He is my dear friend, that
Senor Juan. I love him as if he were my only brother. Be very careful,
Tomas Castro. Make it appear that he comes to us much against his will.
Let him be dragged on board by many men. You are to understand, Tomas,
that he is a youth of noble family, and that you are to be as careful of
compromising him as you are of the honour of Our Lady."!

Tomas Castro looked across at me. "You will be able to report well of
me," he said; "I did my best. If you are compromised, it was you who did
it by talking to me as if you knew me."

I remembered, then, that Tomas certainly had resented my seeming to
recognize him before Cowper and Lumsden. He closed his eyes again. After
a time he added:

"_Vaya!_ After all, it is foolishness to fear being compromised. You
would never believe that his Excellency Don Balthasar had led a riotous
life--to look at him with his silver head. It is said he had three
friars killed once in Seville, a very, very long time ago. It was
dangerous in those days to come against our Mother, the Church." He
paused, and undid his shirt, laying bare an incredibly hairy chest; then
slowly kicked off his shoes. "One stifles here," he said. "Ah! in the
old days------"

Suddenly he turned to me and said, with an air of indescribable
interest, as if he were gloating over an obscene idea:

"So they would hang a gentleman like you, if they caught you? What
savages you English people are!--what savages! Like cannibals! You did
well to make that comedy of resisting. _Quel pays!_... What a people...
I dream of them still.... The eyes; the teeth! Ah, well! in an hour we
shall be in Rio. I must sleep...."

CHAPTER SEVEN

By two of the afternoon we were running into the inlet of Rio Medio. I
had come on deck when Tomas Castro had started out of his doze. I wanted
to see. We went round violently as I emerged, and, clinging to the side,
I saw, in a whirl, tall, baked, brown hills dropping sheer down to a
strip of flat land and a belt of dark-green scrub at the water's edge;
little pink squares of house-walls dropped here and there, mounting the
hillside among palms, like men standing in tall g