“Pardon, Señor” exclaimed the fellow in Spanish, with an air of mystery, as he took off his sombrero with a flourish, “but have I the supreme honour of addressing the noble Englishman who owns the beautiful yacht that came in yesterday?”
“If you refer to the English yacht Thetis,” said Jack, “yes, I am the owner of her.”
“Mil gracias, Señor, for your condescension,” answered the man. “Señor,” he continued, “I have a very great favour to beg of you. It has been said that the Señor is about to visit Cuba. Is this so?”
The mention of Cuba instantly put Jack on his guard: he at once suspected that he was face to face with another Spanish spy, and felt curious to know what the fellow was driving at. Yet he was careful to conceal the fact that his suspicions had been aroused; he therefore answered, with an air of carelessness:
“Indeed! That is curious, for I am not aware that I have thus far mentioned my intentions to anyone ashore here. And, as to visiting Cuba—well, I am not at all certain that I shall do so; for, from what I have gathered to-day, I am led to understand that the country is in a very disturbed condition, and that it is scarcely safe for strangers to go there at present. But you have not yet mentioned the favour that you wish to ask me. Has it anything to do with my supposed intention to visit Cuba?”
“Assuredly it has, Señor; most intimately,” answered the other. “Señor,” and the speaker assumed a yet more furtive and mysterious manner, “I am a Cuban—and a patriot; I am destitute, as my appearance doubtless testifies, and I am most anxious to return to my country and take up arms against the oppressor. The English, enjoying liberty themselves, are reputed to be in sympathy with us Cubans in our endeavours to throw off the hated yoke of a foreign oppressor; and I have ventured to hope that the Señor would be magnanimous enough to give me a passage across to Havana in his beautiful yacht.”
“I think,” said Jack, with an air of hauteur, “that you have altogether mistaken the character of my vessel. She is not a passenger ship, but a private yacht in which I am taking a cruise for the benefit of my health; and it is not my custom to give passages to total strangers, especially when by so doing I should run the risk of embroiling myself with the Spanish authorities, with whom I have no quarrel. No, Señor, you must pardon my seeming churlishness in refusing so apparently trivial a favour, but I decline to associate myself in any way with the quarrel between your country and Spain. I have the honour to bid you good-day.”
“Ah, pardon, Señor; just one moment!” persisted the man. “The noble Señor disclaims any intention to associate himself with the quarrel between Cuba and Spain; yet two well-known Cuban patriots are guests on board his yacht!”
“It would almost appear that my yacht and I are attracting a quite unusual amount of attention here,” laughed Jack. “The gentlemen of whom you speak are personal friends of mine—the younger of them, indeed, went to the same school as myself, in England—which should be sufficient to account for my intimacy with them. But it does not follow that, because they happen to be friends of mine, I am to give a free passage to Cuba to anyone who chooses to ask me. Were I to do so I should probably have to carry across half the inhabitants of Key West! No, Señor, I must beg to be excused.”
And, bowing profoundly to his ragged interlocutor—for with the language Jack always found himself falling into the stately mannerisms of the Spaniard—the young man passed on, wondering whether he had indeed been guilty of an ungracious act to a genuine Cuban patriot, or whether the man whom he had just left was a Spanish spy.