d flipper, with two under
pockets in his shirt, and something in them, a pair of filthy old canvas
trowsers, and no hanger by his side, where there had been so much
hanging in the good old times, slipped overboard like a conger eel, and
swam on shore at St. Jago de Cuba. Without a _real_ of wages--for he was
to work his passage--and because he didn't feel inclined to work, the
_capitano_ in command assisted his agile subordinate to kick him all the
voyage.

Had, however, the mate presented that cold eel his knife for a moment
before he jumped overboard and squirmed to the shore, that cuchillo
would have found a redder sheath than the crimson sash which usually
held it. Fortunately perhaps for the mate, he was not of a generous
disposition, save with kicks and ropes'-ends, or else he might have
regretted his philanthropy.

So soon as the icy-blue man had congealed, as it were, in the sun until
he was quite dry and frozen again, he slunk away to the ditch of the old
fort, where he thawed till nightfall, and then entered the town; hanging
round the pulperias, smacking and cracking his parched lips for a
measure of aguardiente, only two centavos a cup, and not caring for that
fine, generous, pale, amber-colored old Port sent to him by the good
Archbishop of Oporto! But, not having the copper centavos--though his
own coppers stood so much in need of moisture--he continued to skulk
on.

Presently, coming to the wide streets and to the outskirts of the town,
he spied a large mule, ready caparisoned for the road, hitched to the
door of a house, waiting for his owner to mount him. The icy green-eyed
individual, disgusted for the time with blue salt water, and being, as
we know, a capital cavalry-man--in dashing charges among the patriots,
and caprioling also up the Blue Mountains to Escondido--thought he would
take another gallop on the dry ground, just to keep his hand and little
finger in; so he quietly cast off the mule's painter, and flung his
canvas legs over the beast as if he belonged to him. And so he did; for
he told the man at whose place he passed an hour or two that night, and
who thought he knew the master to whom the mule had once belonged, that
it had been presented to him by an old friend, whose name--as had the
mule's--escaped him.

All this time the one-eyed man, with his banana woman, Pancha, were
creeping along the water part of the land--with the Peak of Tarquina in
sight--toward Cape Cruz, bound round