The horse plunged, the wheels jarred the pavement, there was a crash as a stall overturned, and the tartana rolled across the square and vanished. Kit heard Considine's hoarse shout and all was quiet. He looked about. The girl who wore the yellow dress was gone, but the man stood close by and gave him a quiet smile. He had a thin, brown face and Kit saw a touch of white in his hair. A mark on his cheek looked like an old deep cut.
"You didn't go with your friend," he remarked.
"I did not; I've had enough," said Kit and added anxiously: "D'you think he'll get the African boat?"
The other looked at his watch. "If he runs over nothing before he makes the port, it's possible. A West-coast trader, I expect?"
"No," said Kit. "He's the governor of a jail. An old soldier, I understand."
His companion smiled. "The British Colonial office uses some curious tools, but if he sweated for you in India, their plan's perhaps as good as handing out a job to a political boss."
"Then, you're not English?"
"I'm an American. I don't know if it's important, but since you'd had enough of the fellow, why did you bother?"
"For one thing, I wanted to get rid of him," Kit said naïvely. "Then, of course, since he is English, I felt I had to see him out."
The other nodded. "A pretty good rule, but if you stick to it at Las Palmas, I reckon you'll be occupied! Which way do you go?"
"To the Fonda Malagueña," said Kit.
His companion indicated a shady street and left him at the top, and when Kit loafed in the patio after his six o'clock dinner, he pondered. Las Palmas was not at all the romantic city he had thought, and the men he had met going south on board the steamer were a new type. They were business men, holding posts at African factories, but they were not the business men he knew at Liverpool. He could not picture them punctual, careful about small things, or remarkably sober. They had a touch of rashness he distrusted but rather liked. Yet he understood some occupied important posts. In fact, it looked as if the Liverpool small clerk's rules did not apply everywhere; in the south men used others. Although Kit was puzzled his horizon was widening.
CHAPTER III
A MOUNTAIN EXCURSION
Two weeks after Kit joined his ship, she returned to Las Palmas, and on the whole he was satisfied with his occupation. Campeador was fast and built on a steam yacht's model, except that her bow was straight. Although she rolled horribly across the combers the Trade-breeze piles up, she shipped no heavy water. Then Kit thought it strange, but she was kept as clear as a British mail-liner.
He had begun to like her crew; the grave bare-legged fishermen who rowed the cargo launches, and the careless officers. All were Spanish but Don Pedro Macallister, the chief engineer, for although the roll stated that his birthplace was Portobello, it was not in Spain. The rules require that Spanish mail-boats be manned by Spanish subjects, but government officials are generally poor and English merchant houses sometimes generous.
For two weeks Campeador steamed round the islands, stopping at surf-hammered beaches to pick up cattle, camels, sheep and mules. Now the livestock was landed and Kit, waiting for a boat to carry him ashore, mused about his first encounter with the captain. Campeador was steaming out from Las Palmas, rolling violently as she breasted the long, foam-crested seas, and Kit staggered in the dark across the lumbered deck where the crew were throwing cargo into the hold. She had, as usual, started late, for in Spain nobody bothers about punctuality.
He reached the captain's room under the bridge. Don Erminio had pulled off his uniform and now wore a ragged white shirt and shabby English clothes. His cap, ridiculously shrunk by spray, was like a schoolboy's. Kit inquired politely what he was to do about some goods not recorded in the ship's manifest, and the blood came to the captain's olive skin.
"Another animal! All sobrecargos are animals; people without honour or education!" he shouted. "I am a Spanish gentleman, not a smuggler!"
Kit was half daunted by the other's theatrical fury, but his job was to keep proper cargo lists, and what he undertook he did. It was not for nothing his ancestors were hard sheep-farmers in the bleak North.
"Nevertheless, I want to know about the chemical manure for Palma," he said.
Don Erminio seized the tin dispatch-box and threw it on the floor.
"Look for the documents! Do I count bags of manure? I am not a clerk. When the company doubts my honour I am an anarchist!" He kicked the tumbled papers. "If you find five pesetas short, I throw the manure in the sea. People without education! I go and tear my hair!"
He went, and when the door banged Kit sat down and laughed. He had borne some strain, but the thing was humorous. To begin with, Don Erminio's hair was very short. Then, although his grounds for anger were not plain, Kit thought it possible the cargo belonged to a relation of the captain's. Picking up the papers, he returned to his office, and when Campeador reached port the bags of manure were entered on the manifest. Don Erminio, however, bore him no grudge. In the morning he met Kit with a friendly smile and gave him a list of the passengers, for whom landing dues must be paid.
"Sometimes one disputes about the sum. It is human, but not important," he remarked. "You will write three lists for the robbers who collect the dues."
Kit said the list obviously did not give the names of all on board, and Don Erminio grinned.
"It is a custom of the country. If one pays all one ought, there is no use in having official friends. I put down the names of people the collectors know."
When the steamer was ready to leave Palma, Kit and Don Erminio went to the agent's office and were shown a pile of bags of silver. There was a bank at Las Palmas, but for the most part the merchants did not use its cheques, and Kit's duty was to carry the money to their creditors. The agent gave him a list.
"You will count the bags before you sign? It is the English habit!" he said.
Kit saw Don Erminio studied him and imagined the agent's voice was scornful. For a moment or two he thought hard, and then took up a pen.
"I expect all the money is here?"
"I have counted," said the agent and Kit signed the document.
He knew he had broken a sound business rule and perhaps had run some risk, but he had begun to see the rules were different in Spain. When he went out he heard the agent say, "Muy caballero!"
"This one is not altogether an animal," the captain agreed.
Kit afterwards counted the silver and found the list accurate. On the morning he waited for his boat at Las Palmas, he mused about it, and admitted that perhaps his philosophy did not cover all the complexities of human nature. By and by Macallister joined him, and he asked: "Who is the American with a scar on his cheek I met before we sailed?"
"I'm thinking ye mean Jefferson. A fine man! He was Austin's partner and they transact some business together noo."
"Then who is Austin?"
"He was sobrecargo and held your post, but he didna bother aboot the freight. Pented pictures, until he and Jefferson salved the Cumbria and I married him to Jacinta Brown."
"You married him to the lady," Kit remarked.
"Weel, I reckon I had something to do with it. For a' that, Don Pancho Brown is cautious, and although he's anither daughter, I doubt if I could do as much again. Ony way, if ye trust old Peter, ye'll no go far wrang."
Kit was frankly puzzled about his new friend. Macallister's hair was going white, but his eyes twinkled humorously, and Kit often found it hard to determine whether he joked or not. All the same, people did trust Macallister. In the meantime, Kit wanted to know about Austin and Jefferson. Macallister told him.
Jefferson was mate of an American sailing ship, and inheriting a small legacy, undertook to float a wreck on the African coast. His money soon ran out, his men fell sick,