gruesome
significance. Our invasion must have displeased him because he got off
the chairs brusquely and walked out leaving with me an indelibly weird
impression of his thin shanks. One of the men with me said that the
fellow was the most desperate gambler he had ever come across. I said:
"A professional sharper?" and got for answer: "He's a terror; but I must
say that up to a certain point he will play fair...." I wonder what the
point was. I never saw him again because I believe he went straight on
board a mail-boat which left within the hour for other ports of call in
the direction of Aspinall. Mr. Jones' characteristic insolence belongs
to another man of a quite different type. I will say nothing as to the
origins of his mentality because I don't intend to make any damaging
admissions.

It so happened that the very same year Ricardo--the physical
Ricardo--was a fellow passenger of mine on board an extremely small and
extremely dirty little schooner, during a four days' passage between two
places in the Gulf of Mexico whose names don't matter. For the most part
he lay on deck aft as it were at my feet, and raising himself from time
to time on his elbow would talk about himself and go on talking, not
exactly to me or even at me (he would not even look up but kept his eyes
fixed on the deck) but more as if communing in a low voice with his
familiar devil. Now and then he would give me a glance and make the
hairs of his stiff little moustache stir quaintly. His eyes were green
and every cat I see to this day reminds me of the exact contour of his
face. What he was travelling for or what was his business in life he
never confided to me. Truth to say the only passenger on board that
schooner who could have talked openly about his activities and purposes
was a very snuffy and conversationally delightful friar, the Superior of
a convent, attended by a very young lay brother, of a particularly
ferocious countenance. We had with us also, lying prostrate in the dark
and unspeakable cuddy of that schooner, an old Spanish gentleman, owner
of much luggage and, as Ricardo assured me, very ill indeed. Ricardo
seemed to be either a servant or the confidant of that aged and
distinguished-looking invalid, who early on the passage held a long
murmured conversation with the friar, and after that did nothing but
groan feebly, smoke cigarettes and now and then call for Martin in a
voice full of pain. Then he who had become Ricardo in the