more pretentious and the more permanent structures of the
restaurants and eating-places, with stairways and verandas, facades of
ornate but inexpensive stucco, masking the frailty of such pomp under
ostentatious names: _The Paris Hotel and Restaurant_, _The Miramar_,
_The Fonda del Buen Gusto_; and between these pedants of summer-time
gastronomy, the lunch-rooms of the natives, huts with roofs of matting,
rickety tables with wine jugs in the center, and outdoor kitchens,
dispensing shell-fish with vinegar dressing from Saint John's day till
mid-September, under signs of delightfully capricious spelling: _Salvaor
and Neleta, wines, bears and likers_.

Along the roads through this mushroom city, that vanished like a fog
with the first gales of autumn, street and steam cars dashed full speed,
whistling to scare you before they crushed you flat; or _tartanas_
creaked along, their red curtains flapping like banners of pure joy; or
crowds of people pressed their way, with the murmur of many, many
voices. It was the humming of a bee-hive, varied with the calling of
vendors, the thrumming of guitars, the nasal screaming of accordions,
the clack-clack of castanets, the wailing of hand organs, all the kinds
of noise that men with smoothed hair and soft white shirts can dance to,
after internal baths with anything but water and preparatory to the
return to town for a slashing or boxing fray with the first innocent
policeman they come across.

The people of the sea, beyond the drain, watched the gathering of this
annual invasion with interested eyes, but without taking part in all its
jollity. Let them enjoy themselves--if they were willing to pay for it!
All that merry-making was the source of the Cabanal's pin-money, for the
other seasons of the year.

On the first of August the Rector's boat was, you might say, done. And
what a beauty she was, come now, tell the truth and don't be envious!
The proud owner spoke of his creation much as a grand-daddy sizes up a
new baby in his son's family. "The timber? Well, did you ever see
solider beams than hers! And look at the finish on that mast! Not a
cross grain to it from deck to point! A bit thick amidships! But I
wanted her like that--handles rough water better. But just take a peep
at that bow of hers! Sharp enough to cut paper with! Black along the
scuppers, but with a shine like the patent leather shoe of a Grandee of
Spain; and the body of her, white, but smooth as an eel, and ju