But I never got so far as the palace. Not that time. About a quarter-mile up from the beach was a joyous-lookin' hotel with shaded verandas all 'round and a banana grove in the yard, and on a second look a cantina shinin' with mirrors and glasses and colored bottles on the ground floor, and on another look spacious-lookin' suites o' rooms such as were befittin' to señors of wealth and leisure on the floor above. And over these premises I cast one sailor-like view, and through the for'ard gangway of that glass-mounted cantina I hove my clothes-bag and myself followed after. There was also a roulette wheel, which didn't hurt the looks of the place either.
I felt so right to home that I anchored right there—oh, three or four or five or six days; maybe it was two weeks; but anyway—all that don't matter—when I steadied down so's to reason like the man o' sense my skipper always used to say I was at bottom, I was down on the beach and it was early in the mornin', and I was watchin' a lemon-colored sun trying to rise out of the smooth Caribbean sea, and I was wonderin' where it was I'd mislaid my clothes-bag. I could account for everythin' but my clothes-bag. But that don't matter either now. I never saw it again.
And while I sat there, not feelin' just like a high-score gun-captain after target-practice, I hears a light step behind me, and pretty soon I could feel an eye looking me over, and by'n'by a voice said: "A ver-ry fine good morning, sir."
"Is it?" I says, and I looks up to see who the cheerful party is. And there was a good-lookin', well-dressed, young, dark-complected chap, with a little bamboo cane which he kept stickin' into the sand.
And he looks at me again and says, plainly pleased and yet a little sad, too: "The Blues are in." And I says: "That so? Since when?" And he says: "Since last nigh-it. You did not hear, the revoloo-shee-onn?"
And I says: "I didn't—I must 'a' been takin' a nap." But I guessed it was a good thing; leastways they couldn't be any worse than the Reds—or was it the Yellow chaps were in last?
"No Yellow in Tangarine," he says.
"Ha, ha!" I says—"an authority."
"No Yellow—Blues and Reds only. And as for the Reds, bah! But the Blues, good—ver-ry good," and he pulls the cane out of the sand, lunges at the air, comes to a present, and says: "I salute you, sir." And I said: "And I al-so salute you, señor." And he says: "Americano?" And I said: "You betcher." And he said: "Of course. Ver-ry good. I have been one time in your country. I have studied the langooage there, yes. Ver-ry fine, ver-ry fine. All American people ver-ry fine. All heroes. Yes, yes, I think so. I have read it also in your books. But par-don, sir, what is it you do now?"
And I said I wasn't doing anything except makin' up my mind whether I'd go back to the navy or not, and if I did, how I'd get back.