A great change has come over Navarro. His eye is bright and his step elastic and he tells Ashley, as they stride along in the cool air of the morning, that he is terribly hungry and would appreciate a good breakfast.
As good a meal as Cuba affords is forthcoming, and as Ashley suddenly recollects the now happily unnecessary letter to Don Quesada, Navarro tears it into fragments and says abruptly:
“Ashley, amigo, have you ever seen the Pearl of the Antilles?”
“No; I haven’t been in Santiago quite twenty-four hours yet. You mean the insurgent cruiser?”
“Ah, no; I mean the most beautiful girl in Cuba. She is the daughter of Don Manuel de Quesada, and is at once the joy and the despair of half the unmarried jeunesse doree of Santiago. Would you like to meet her?”
“By all means. Next to a good horse and a trim yacht, I know of nothing that interests me more than a beautiful woman.”
“Good. I am going out to La Quinta de Quesada. Hunt up a horse and accompany me.”
Navarro is already provided with a steed, a magnificent black animal that interests Ashley far more than the prospects of the acquaintance of the Pearl of the Antilles. “Came into my possession yesterday,” Navarro tells him. “Isn’t he a beauty?”
“He is that,” is Jack’s appreciative reply. “If you run across his mate put me in the way of acquiring him and I will do my war correspondence in the saddle.”
Ashley succeeds in chartering a fairly presentable beast for the day, and the two young men set out for Santos in the best of spirits. They are in no hurry and the ride of something over four miles through El Valle de Bosque Cillos, the wooded valley, occupies an hour.