e, upon whose draped blackness the sunlight
brought out reddish streaks as if bucketfuls of rusty water had been
thrown over him from hat to toe. The end of his broken plume hung
forward aggressively.

"Look how the fellow struts! Night and thunder! Hey, Don Tenebroso!
Would your worship hasten hither...." Sebright hailed jocularly.

Castro, without altering his pace, came up to us.

"What do you think of her now?" asked Sebright, pointing to the strange
sail. "She's grown a bit plainer, now she is out of the glare."

Castro, wrapping his chin, stood still, face to the sea. After a long
while:

"Malediction," he pronounced slowly, and without moving his head shot a
sidelong glance at me.

"It's clear enough how _he_ feels about our friends over there.
Malediction. Just so. Very proper. But it seems as though he had a bone
to pick with all the world," drawled Sebright, a little sleepily.
Then, resuming his briskness, he bantered, "So you don't want to go to
England, Mr. Castro? No friends there? _Sus. per col._, and that sort of
thing?"

Castro, contemptuous, staring straight away, nodded impatiently.

"But this gentleman you are so devoted to is going to England--to his
friends."

Castro's arms shook under the mantle falling all round him straight from
the neck. His whole body seemed convulsed. From his puckered dark lips
issued a fiendish and derisive squeal.

"Let his friends beware, then. _Por Dios!_ Let them beware. Let them
pray and fast, and beg the intercession of the saints. Ha! ha! ha!..."

Nothing could have been more unlike his saturnine self-centred
truculence of restraint. He impressed me; and even Sebright's steady,
cool eyes grew perceptibly larger before this sarcastic fury. Castro
choked; the rusty, black folds encircling him shook and heaved.
Unexpectedly he thrust out in front of the cloak one yellow, dirty
little hand, side by side with the bright end of his fixed blade.

"What do I hear? To England! Going to England! Ha! Then let him hasten
there straight! Let him go straight there, I say--I, Tomas Castro!"

He lowered his tone to impress us more, and the point of the knife, as
it were an emphatic forefinger, tapped the open palm forcibly. Did we
think that a man was not already riding along the coast to Havana on
a fast mule?--the very best mule from the stables of Don Balthasar
himself--that murdered saint. The Captain-General had no such mules.
His late excellency owned a sugar es