ways ready to
make the first advances. He is a salted traveller. He knows what is the
best of everything, how to get it, and, moreover, how to get it
cheaply. He never plagues you with "shop," or secondhand guide-book
extracts, or sentiment about scenery and sunsets. Cheeriness and
_bons mots_ are part of his stock-in-trade; brazen good-fellowship
is his strong specialty.

Haigh and I went up to our hotel, asked for a bedroom, and in Spanish
style got a suite of apartments. We were just in time for dinner, and,
having arrived _en prince_ in our own vessel, were going to be
billeted amongst the _habitues_ of the place--garrison soldiers,
petty "proprietors," and priests--who sat round the superior table in
the big room. There we should have been in company that was vastly
respectable and prodigiously slow. But nearer the street entrance was
another smaller room, occupied chiefly by the commercial fraternity,
and thither we went, the landlord fully comprehending our taste.
"Gentlemen do like to have a bit of a fling to rub away the salt, don't
they, senores?" said he.

There is no shyness about the drummer. Before we had eaten our
preliminary olive, the fat man at the end of the table had struck up
conversation with Haigh; and before the _sopa_ was out of the
room, my next-door neighbour, a dapper Marseillais in the ready-made
clothing line, was calling me _amigo_. Whilst he helped himself
from amongst the red sausages and beans and beef and pork and other
trifles on the dish which held the next course, the fat Cuban sketched
out a plan for the evening; and as he doused his salad with
full-flavoured oil, my little Frenchman endorsed the proposal of the
flaxen-haired timber agent opposite that they should stand treat. And
while we munched our burnt almonds for dessert, some one ordered in a
bottle of bad sherry (which, being imported, is naturally thought more
of than the good country wine), and we agreed that we were all dear
friends, and had known one another intimately for a matter of ten
years. And then we rerolled fresh cigarettes, got our hats, and went to
a _cafe_, six of us, where we crammed our _petits verres_
with sugar-knobs and lighted them, meanwhile drinking bitter black
coffee till the blue demon of the brandy should have flickered away.
You know the style; it's the usual way of beginning.

After some half-hour's stay in the _cafe_ we seperated--Haigh and
the Cuban going off to a dance, whilst the little