"You look," continues he, "as if you had broke loose from a prison, and like nothing else; and if you be taken to task by the mayor, or other busybody, to account for your condition, your answer or your silence will at once betray you for a foreigner. So will you be clapped up in jail, and the female be worse off than ever."
I was forced to admit that he was in the right, and to ask what he designed.
"Why," says he, "I shall go into the town as a shipwrecked mariner, cast ashore off Buenaventure, fallen sick of a leprosy, and begging my way to my friends at Cartagena, and no one shall count this a lie by the bravery of my dress."
Indeed he looked beggarly enough, having not a rag of shirt to his back, nor any clothes but his shoes, breeches, and a jacket of skins, with an old hat that no one would have picked off a dust-heap.
"In this guise," continues he, "may I go all through that town, asking alms in good Portuguese, so that men will be more glad to get out of my way than to stop me. And if, when I have been to all the inns and places of rest, I find De Pino is not yet come, I will sit me down against a church-door, the town gate, or elsewhere most convenient for spying who enters by the road from Darien, and wait there till nightfall, when I will come again to you. And, lest I get no broken victuals, do you have a good supper ready by way of alms to give a hungry beggar."
I promised him he should not lack for food.
"Now, master," says he, "give me something as a token that I may slip into the female's hand, when I go to beg of her, as she passes, whereby she may know that you are at hand."
I was greatly pleased with his forethought, which showed a kind consideration for Lady Biddy's happiness, and delighted to think I might thus communicate with her. So, undoing my waistcoat, I cut a fair piece from the breast of my shirt, which was of fine linen, and having pierced my finger with a thorn I contrived to trace "B. P." on this rag with my blood.
Meanwhile Matthew had gone about to find some purple berries which he crushed in divers places upon the flesh of his legs and face, so that when he came forth I scarcely knew him again, as he looked for all the world, by reason of this disfigurement, like one who was sore of a plague.
"I wager," says he, "no one will want to lay hands on me now; and as for De Pino, he will turn away in disgust at the first glance, for these Portugals pretend to have mighty nice stomachs. Howsomever, I must give myself another touch or two to deceive his eye."