“Well, ’taint so very bad, Mas’r Harry,” he grumbled out. “But ain’t them sharkses?”
I followed his pointing finger, and, to my horror, I could see, cleaving the blue and creamy-foamed water, close inshore, the black fins of one—two—three—half a score of sharks; while all the time, dashing and splashing in and out of the surf, busily unloading boats and larger vessels, were dozens of mulatto porters.
I expected every moment to hear a shriek and to see the silver foam tinged with red. My heart beat intermittently, and there was a strange dampness in my hands; but I soon learned that familiarity bred contempt, and that probably from the noise and splashing kept up, the sharks rarely ventured an attack. But all the same, that one incident made me gaze down into the blue depths where we were at anchor with a shudder, and think that the waters were not so safe as those of home.
I had yet to learn something of the land.
“What’s this place called, Mas’r Harry?” said Tom, interrupting my reverie. “You did tell me, but I’ve forgotten.”
“La Guayra!”
“Humph!” ejaculated Tom. “Why can’t they call places by some name in plain English?”
But the various strange sights and sounds soon silenced Tom’s tongue, and, tired out at last with a long walk, we went to the house that had been recommended to me, and after partaking of coffee—the best I ever remember to have drunk—I sought my room, Tom insisting upon sleeping on the floor in the same chamber, and my last waking recollections were of the pungent fumes of tobacco, and the tinkle, tinkle, twang of a guitar beneath my window.
I must have been asleep about three hours, and I was dreaming of having found gold enough to load a vessel homeward bound, when I was wakened by some one shaking me violently, and as I started up I became aware of a deafening noise, a choking sensation, as of dust rising in a cloud, and the voice of Tom Bulk.
“Mas’r Harry—Mas’r Harry! Wacken up, will you?”