Meditating, maybe sadly, I was on the distrust of Regulations and the defection of Monaghan, when I looked up to find myself abreast of a cantina that was run by an Americanized native called Tony, the same who one time kept a fruit-stand on West Street in New York till he discovered that bananas and pineapples and lemons were not the most staple articles of diet on the water-front of a great American port. "Tony," I says, "'twould grieve a certain superior officer of my ship exceedingly were I to order one single draft of spirituous liquor on this my first day of liberty in two months. But 'tis no summer resort on the New England coast this is. Will you, in God's name, give me something to cool the blazing throat of me?"
"When I tended bar in a hotel one time in a prohibition State in your country," says West Street Tony, "we made one drink especially for temperance people. I mix one now," he says; and he did.
"Lemonado Porto Bello we call that down here," says Tony.
"'Tis satisfying," I said; and had another, and passed on my way.
'Twas truly a beautiful port—Porto Bello—in the low latitudes; and there were little children playing in the streets and long-tailed birds singing in the trees; and from one place to another I passed, having here and there along the way a lemonado Porto Bello by way of abating the heat of the hot morning. And so, until approaching noon found me under the portales of a hotel on a fine high hill.
'Twas in truth a hot morning. The Hot Coast the guide-books in the ship's library called all that country, and no misname in that; but when a waiter steps up with a negligée air and a towel and swipes a battalion of camping flies from the marble deck of my table to the scuppers of the sidewalk, and says: "Vairy gooda beer on icey—two bottlas for-r da one-a peso," like a friendly soul who would help out a thirsty and innocent foreigner, I said no.
"No," I said; "no intoxicating beverages will I order myself this day. Lemonade Porto Bello," I said: "duo"—holding up two fingers to maybe help out his lack of his own language. "One for me, one for him," I said, and pointing to a glass a young fellow with an air of preoccupation and melancholy at the next table had standing empty to his elbow.
"Bueno, bueno!" said the waiter, and in good season brought me one and replaced the empty glass of the abstracted young man with the other.
It was, as I said, a hot day. As to that, I've yet to see a morning in twenty years of cruising on that blasted coast when it wasn't hot. Sitting in the shade of the portales on that high hill and almost a breeze coming in from the waters of the Gulf—even so, all ready to soak iced Porto Bello lemonados into me, even so it was hot.
And while I'm waiting there having another lemonade, and by and by another and another, a young girl enters the shade of the portales; and no man could carry two eyes in his head and not notice the loveliness of her. Lovely and good. I could feel it in the air when I wasn't looking straight at her. Women's hats and men's cigarettes bobbed in high approval, and the watery eyes of two gray-whiskered old rounders grew almost bright and decent to look at when from over the tops of their newspapers they gazed after her in passing.