When I did reach the Tenth Street Poniente, it was to discover that the address given me at the State Department was wrong. His Excellency lived somewhere else. But at last, after four hours of a house-to-house canvass, I found him. Having obtained the necessary visé, I caught the first train to La Unión, on the Gulf of Fonseca, from which one could look across a strip of blue water and see the hills of Honduras itself.
“How soon can I catch a boat?” I inquired.
The citizens of La Unión shrugged their shoulders.
“Perhaps the day after to-morrow, señor, or the day after that. But quién sabe? In the meantime you had better visit the local commandante to secure permission.”
II
As a matter of fact, the boat did not leave for several days.
La Unión was the usual type of Central-American port town—a colorless, uninteresting little city, with numerous buzzards hopping about its mud-flats, as hot as blazes, and devoid of entertainment.
I was welcomed at a small hotel with an inquiry as to whether I possessed a watch. No one knew the time. But since it was growing dark, the proprietor assumed that it was nearing the hour for supper. A slatternly maid brought out some tableware that had barely survived the last earthquake, and served the usual Central-American meal of beans, rice, beans, chicken, beans, coffee, and more beans.
On the hotel wall a notice proclaimed that this establishment was preferred not only by tourists, but by people of good taste. Its principal attraction seemed to be Berta, its beautiful bar-maid. Berta, although a rather dark-complexioned young person, had a pleasant smile that revealed the whitest of teeth. She took great care of those teeth. At five-minute intervals, she rinsed them with a glass of water, and expectorated upon the bar-room floor. The town bachelors spent most of their idle hours—about sixteen each day—whispering sweet nothings to Berta, to which she smiled roguishly but shook her head. Such was her popularity that she had never learned to open a beer bottle. Whenever a patron wished a drink, Berta had only to glance toward the group of idlers, and some energetic young man would step forward to open the bottle by chewing off the top.
Berta was studying English. She would sit on the counter, with a book before her, reciting: “Wan, too, tree, fo-ur, fivvy, sixxy, ay-it, tenny.” The proprietor’s wife sat beside her in a large armchair, examining my photographs with untiring interest. She was rather stout, and inclined either to head-ache or stomach-ache or both. She fanned herself with a palm-leaf fan, and groaned, and exclaimed from time to time, “Ay! What heat it is making to-day!” She would hold up each photograph, and inquire, “What is this?” The inscription was written on the back of each, but the Señora did not read Spanish, much less English. Berta always interpreted for her, with fantastic results: “A tee-pee-cal stritty sinny een Gua-te-ma-la.” Then she would smile again, and the scowls of the local swain would suggest that if the boat did not sail pretty soon for Honduras, the village buzzards would have a change of diet.