"What a pity," cooed Don José, contentedly. "You will have to wait till to-morrow."
"Yes, you can go to-morrow," indulgently added the driver, and the official chimed sweetly in, "Mañana por la mañana!"
"But is there no other train to-day?" I asked.
The official admitted that there was one at three o'clock. Don José gave him a reproachful glance.
"But you do not want to go by train," said my ingenious host. "Perhaps to-morrow you can go by steamboat."
"Perhaps I can go by steamboat now," I returned, seizing my opportunity. "When does that boat start?"
Nobody knew. I asked the cabman to drive us to the Golden Tower, off which sea-going vessels usually anchor. Don José fell back in his seat, exhausted.
The cabman drove so fast, for Seville, that we ran into a donkey and made a paralyzed beggar jump, but we reached the river in time to see a small steamer just in the act of swinging loose from the pier. In the excitement of the moment Don José forgot everything save the necessity of properly presenting me to the captain, and I, for my part, was absorbed in the ecstasy of sailing from the foot of the Golden Tower along the Silver Road.
It was not until a rod of water lay between boat and wharf that the captain shouted to Don José, who struck an attitude of utter consternation, that this craft went only to Bonanza, and no connection could be made from there to Cadiz until the following afternoon. And I, mindful of the austere dignity that befitted these critical circumstances, could not even laugh.
It was a dirty little boat, with a malodorous cargo of fish, and for passengers two soldiers, two peasants, and a commercial traveller. But what of that? I was sailing on a treasure ship of the Indies, one of those lofty galleons of Spain, "rowed by thrice one hundred slaves and gay with streamers, banners, music," that had delivered at the Golden Tower her tribute from the hoard of the Incas, and was proudly bearing back to the open roads of Cadiz.