"'Douse that shirt and come down, you sir,' he thundered out; 'down instantly, or I will shoot you like a coon.'
"But, desperate with fear, the poor fellow now stood upon the yard, and while one hand grasped the topping lift, with the other he waved his shirt to the Spaniards. I heard the crack of a pistol, and next moment he fell a quivering mass upon the deck, stone dead, shot by the revolver.
"'That will teach you to make signals from my ship, you varmint,' snivelled the merciless skipper, giving the body a kick; 'and as for you,' he continued, addressing me, and ramming home his words with an oath; but before he could get further, I levelled him on the deck by a blow from a handspike, and tossed his knife and revolver overboard.
"His right arm was broken. There was a great row about all this before the Alcalde when we got into harbor; our bell was unshipped and our canvas unbent by a party of Spanish marines; but the captain crossed the Alcalde's hand with silver or gold, and there was an end of it. There was an end of my engagement too; for the Yankee weathered me about my salary, seized my chest, my quadrant, even an old silver watch which my mother gave me to make me comfortable, when I first went to sea, and then turned me out of the ship.
"So with nothing except a Mexican dollar in my pocket, but followed by my Newfoundland dog Hector, I found myself on a wet and dusky evening on the great quay of Matanzas, which faces the bay that opens into the Gulf of Florida.
"Low alike in spirit and funds, I had to endure being jostled by negro porters, scowled at by alguazils, ordered about by redcapped and blackbearded Spanish sentries, who were shirtless and tattered, and whose brown uniforms and red worsted epaulettes tainted the very sea-breeze with the odor of garlic and coarse tobacco.
"The sun had set behind clouds as red as blood. The bay was all of a deep brown tint, and the shores were black or purple. I was very sad at heart, and thought it hard that I, a British seaman, should be there an outcast, and all my kit reduced to the clothes on my back, in the very place where the same flag that Pococke and Albemarle hoisted on Havana, had brought all the Don Spaniards on their knees in old King George's time.
"However, that would neither find me supper or a bed. I lost or missed my Newfoundland dog Hector, and in the bitterness of my heart I banned the poor animal for ingratitude in leaving me. Just as I was looking about for a humble posada, where a moiety of my dollar might procure me a bed, a man stumbled against me.
"'Look alive, cucumber shanks,' said he angrily, in English.
"'Do you take me for a negro?' I asked, fiercely.