It was about seven o'clock in the evening when sobrecargo Austin boarded the little mail-boat Estremedura as she lay rolling at anchor on the long, moon-lit heave that worked into the roadstead of Santa Cruz, Palma. Sobrecargo means much the same thing as purser, and Austin was an Englishman, though the Estremedura was to all intents and purposes a Spanish steamer. She traded round the islands of the Canary archipelago with mules and camels, tomatoes, bananas, onions, and seasick English tourists, as fortune favoured her. Now, as the heavily sealed document Austin carried in his pocket declared, she was to sail for Las Palmas, Grand Canary, with the Cuban mail, by the gracious permission of the young King of Spain.
He had trouble on getting on board of her, for there were a good many bullocks swimming about her side waiting until the red-capped crew should heave them on board beneath the derrick-boom by means of a rope twisted round their horns. It probably hurt the bullocks, and now and then one succumbed to a broken neck during the operation; but the Castilian, who can face his losses placidly, is not, as a rule, particularly merciful to his beast. There were also stray sheep, goats, and donkeys, as well as olive-faced peasants with blankets strapped about their shoulders, wandering about the after portion of the main deck, which was supposed to be reserved for the second-class passengers, when Austin stopped a moment by the covered hatch. A big electric light hung from the spar-deck beams above his head, and he looked about him with a little ironical smile.
He was a young man of average stature, and there was nothing especially distinguished in his appearance, though he had good grey eyes, and a pleasant bronzed face. He was somewhat lightly made, though he looked wiry, and held himself well, and there was a certain languidness in his smile which seemed to suggest that he was not addicted to troubling greatly about anything. Because the Scotchman who ran the Estremedura's engines had sold his white uniform jacket with the resplendent buttons a day or two before, he was just then attired somewhat incongruously in a white cap with the very large and imposing badge of the Spanish mail service clasped into the front of it, a brown alpaca jacket, white duck trousers, and pipe-clayed shoes. The latter two items were, however, by no means immaculate, since he had, as a special favour to the mate, brought off certain sheep and goats in his despatch-boat, as well as a camel tied astern of it. Spaniards and Englishmen do not invariably agree, but they lived like brothers on board the Estremedura, which, however, had its disadvantages. Austin objected in particular to the community of property.
That evening the steamer hummed with life, and the clatter of polyglot tongues. Parsee dealers in silver-thread embroideries, German commercial travellers, Madeiran Portuguese, Canario hillmen, and Peninsular Spaniards, moved amidst the straying livestock, while a little group of Anglo-Saxons naturally sat apart upon the hatch. There were, as is usual when Englishmen foregather in a country where wine is cheap, empty bottles scattered about. The engineer from the sister ship and an athletic tourist, stripped, at least as far as was permissible, were wrestling in Cumberland fashion on the hatch, with much delicate manœuvring of their feet and futile clutches at each other's waists. Macallister, who, when he felt inclined, superintended the Estremedura's machinery, alternately encouraged them sardonically and solaced himself with one of the bottles. He was a big, gaunt man, and just then extremely dirty, and when he saw Austin he looked up with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
"I have been waiting for ye anxiously," he said. "Ye may now have the pleasure of lending me five dollars."
"I'm afraid not!" said Austin decisively. "For one thing, I haven't got them. I very seldom have – as you ought to know."
Macallister made a little gesture of resignation. "Well," he said, "ye have always your clothes, and if ye had known us better ye would not have brought so many of them on board the Estremedura. I'm half expecting yon Jackson o' Las Palmas, who gave us two dollars for the last white suit, to come round for some more o' them when we get in."
Austin tried the door of his room close by, and was consoled to find it locked, as he had left it.
"They cost me five, and I naturally never saw a peseta of the money. I suppose you kept the Correo buttons?"
"I did not," said Macallister, unabashed. "Ye may observe Miguel, the quartermaster, walking round in them. It was no a bad bargain – a basket o' big grapes an' a watermelon."
Austin bore it patiently. There was, in fact, nothing to be gained by protesting, and he knew that it was useless to expostulate with Macallister when he spoke his own tongue, which was not an invariable custom with him. Then the engineer turned and glanced at the wrestlers, who were still stamping up and down the hatch with feet spread well apart, compassionately.
