This room was so built that the slightest noise in the street distinctly reached the ears of persons in it, while stifling any they might make, however loud it might be.
The worthy landlord, occupier of this house, had naturally a rather mixed custom of people of every description—smugglers, rateros, rogues, and others, whose habits might bring them into unpleasant difficulties with the Chilean police; consequently, a whaleboat constantly fastened to a ring under a window opening on the sea, offered a provisional but secure shelter to the customers of the establishment whenever, by any accident, the agents of government evinced a desire to pay a domiciliary visit to his den.
This house was known—and probably is still known, unless an earthquake or a fire has caused this rookery to disappear from the face of the earth of Valparaiso—by the name of the Locanda del Sol.
On an iron plate suspended from a beam, and creaking with every breath of wind, there had been painted by a native artist a huge red face, surrounded by orange beams, possibly intended as an explanation of the sign to which I have alluded above.
Señor Benito Sarzuela master of the Locanda del Sol, was a tall, dry fellow with an angular face end crafty look; a mixture of the Araucano, Negro and Spaniard, whose morale responded perfectly to his physique; that is to say, he combined in himself the vices of the three races to which he belonged—red, black, and white—without possessing one single virtue of theirs, and that beneath the shadow of an avowed and almost honest trade he carried on clandestinely some twenty, the most innocent of which would have taken him to the presidios or galleys for life, had he been discovered.
Some two months after the events we described in a previous chapter, about eleven of the clock on a cold and misty night, Señor Benito Sarzuela was seated in melancholy mood within his bar, contemplating with mournful eye the deserted room of his establishment.
The wind blowing violently, caused the sign of the mesón to creak on its hinges with gloomy complaints, and the heavy black clouds coming from the south moved weightily athwart the sky, dropping at intervals heavy masses of rain on the ground loosened by previous storms.
"Come," the unhappy host muttered to himself with a piteous air, "there is another day which finishes as badly as the others. Sangre de Dios! For the last week I have had no luck. If it continues only a fortnight longer I shall be ruined a man."
In fact, through a singular accident, for about a month the Locanda del Sol had been completely shorn of its old brilliancy, and the landlord did not know any reason for its eclipse.
The sound of clanking glasses and cups was no longer heard in the room, usually affected by thirsty souls. Strange change in human things! Abundance had been too suddenly followed by the most perfect vacuum. It might be said that the plague reigned in this deserted house. The bottles remained methodically arranged on the shelves, and hardly two passers-by had come in during the past day to drink a glass of pisco, which they hastily paid for, so eager were they to quit this den, in spite of the becks, and nods, and wreathed smiles of the host, who tried in vain to keep them to talk of public affairs, and, above all, cheer his solitude.