whip, leans against our balcony with the
air of a showman, as each black approaches with crossed arms to crave
his or her master's blessing.

'La ben'dicion, miamo.'

'It is given,' says Miamo Don Severiano with the supremest indifference.

Being in the country, and moreover tired, we retire for the night at a
reasonable hour. We have to make the best of our extemporised couches,
for our luggage and furniture are yet on their way, and probably will
not put in an appearance before morning. Some of the guests, therefore,
betake themselves to swinging hammocks, while others occupy the mayoral
Don Jose's catres--a species of folding bedstead not unlike an open
apple-stall with a canvas tray.

Not until we have fairly taken possession of our temporary couches, do
we fully appreciate Dona Belen's fore-thought in providing many yards of
mosquito netting. I have always dreaded a country life, no matter in
what part of the world, on account of strange vermin. A shudder runs
through me at the mention of earwigs and caterpillars; but give me a
hatful of those interesting creatures for bedfellows in preference to a
cot in Cuba without a mosquito net!

What is that sweet creature crawling cautiously towards me along the
brick floor, looking like a black star-fish with a round body?

'Oh, it is nothing, massa,' says my black valet 'I kill him in a minute,
massa.' Which he does with his naked heel. Only an 'arana peluda;' in
plain English, a spider of gigantic proportions, whose lightest touch
will draw you like a poultice. I let the 'cucurrachos' pass, for I
recognise in them my old familiar friend the cockroach, whose worst
crime is to leave an offensive smell on every object he touches. Neither
do I object to the 'grillo,' a green thing which hops all over the
room; for I know it to be but a specimen of magnified grasshopper, who
will surely cease its evening gambols as soon as the light is
extinguished. But oh, by Santiago or any other saint you please, I would
have you crush, mangle, kill, and utterly exterminate that dark brown
long-tailed brute, from whose body branch all kinds of horrible limbs,
the most conspicuous of which are a pair of claws that resemble the
handles of a jeweller's nippers. Only an 'alacran,' is it? Son of the
tropics, it may sound mildly to thee in thy romantic dialect, but in the
language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less
than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting